I’ve been thinking about the kind of life I actually want.
And strangely, I don’t think I want it to be that interesting.
Which sounds odd coming from me, because I have always loved having a full life. I love travelling. I love beautiful hotels, restaurants, clothes, interiors, new places and new experiences. I like having something to look forward to.
I don’t think any of that has changed.
What has changed is that I’m increasingly drawn to the parts of life that don’t really make for much of a story.
A slow breakfast.
Being at home.
Cooking.
Going for a ride.
Spending the morning with my children.
Having people over for dinner.
Working on something quietly.
Having nowhere particular to be.
I think I’ve started to find that incredibly appealing.
Maybe because so much of modern life is built around being interesting.
We’re constantly doing something, seeing something, buying something, travelling somewhere, documenting something.
And I participate in that too. Of course I do.
But lately I’ve found myself wanting a little less of it.
Not less life.
Just less noise around my life.
I don’t want every trip to become content.
I don’t want every purchase to become a recommendation.
I don’t want every thought to become an opinion.
Sometimes I want to do something and not tell anyone about it.
Sometimes I want to have a beautiful day and let it just be a beautiful day.
I think there is something very luxurious about that.
And maybe that’s where my idea of luxury is changing.
I still want beautiful things. I still want to build successful businesses. I still want to travel. I still want a beautiful home and a wardrobe I love and long lunches in places I’ve never been before.
But I also want a garden.
I want to know what my children are doing on an ordinary Tuesday morning.
I want to make breakfast.
I want to sit outside.
I want to have hobbies that have absolutely nothing to do with work.
I want a home that is beautiful because I live in it, not because it photographs well.
I want to have enough time that I don’t have to fill every minute.
Enough privacy that some parts of my life can simply belong to me.
I think that’s what I mean when I say I don’t want to be interesting all the time.
I’m not looking for a smaller life.
I’m looking for a quieter one.
And I don’t think quiet means boring.
I think quiet can be incredibly fulfilling.
There is something aspirational about having nowhere to rush to.
About knowing how to spend an afternoon.
About having people you love around a table.
About being able to make something with your hands.
About having a home you genuinely want to be in.
About waking up and not immediately needing something from the outside world.
Maybe the life I’m most attracted to now isn’t the one with the most stories.
It’s the one with the most moments I don’t need to turn into stories.
And perhaps that’s the kind of luxury I’m interested in now.
Not a cheap life.
Not an uneventful life.
Just a beautiful one that doesn’t always need to announce itself.
This really resonated with me because this quieter life used to be my life. I would have experiences without turning them into a story. I could simply live them and that was enough. Somewhere along the way, particularly because of my business, I convinced myself that putting more of my life out there might be a good thing. Maybe people would connect with the life behind the brand. But it never felt particularly natural to me. Whenever I do it, I feel strangely unsettled afterwards. I actually miss the feeling of having a life that didn’t always need to be documented, explained or turned into something. I noticed it even in little things. I used to take myself on solo dates and just have a lovely time by myself. Now, sometimes I find myself thinking about documenting the experience, getting the perfect shot, editing it, and suddenly something used to feel effortless starts to feel like work. I think that’s why I relate so much to what you’ve written about doing things simply because you enjoy them, and having parts of your life that are just yours. I’ve been on both sides of this now. I know which one I prefer. There is something incredibly freeing about admitting that I would rather just live my life than constantly allowing noise into it. I don’t want a smaller life. I just want a life that feels more like mine. Thank you for writing this🤎. It has given me a lot to think about particularly about how I’ve come to experience and engage with my own life. I think there’s some unlearning and relearning ahead of me.
LikeLike