this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Simple Living
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Live better, with less
Ideas and inspiration for living more simply. A place to share tips on living with less stuff, work, speed, or stress in return for gaining more freedom, time, self-reliance, and joy.
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Thanks for posting this, it was an interesting read.
I have been thinking a lot about the question in the first post here, what is Simple Living? In the context of moving to Lemmy and thinking about how the sites are structured I have realised what I really value is the time to do things fully, and to be fully in the moment.
Our society is built around consumerism, and constantly chasing the next new thing to aquire. Once we have it we just start looking for the next thing to reach for. The way we consume media is the same - a constant search for the new post, with the fastest replies get rewarded and by the time anyone has been able to craft an actual thoughtful response the conversation has moved on.
I would like my life to have more depth, to focus on learning about things deeply and thoroughly, to be present in the moment more often and enjoy what I have around me. In moving to Lemmy I am hoping to be able to be able to find/develop some communities that foster that.
I envisage the flow of information and communication as being like a river. There are fast-flowing rapids that can be fun and exciting, but most of the river is actually deep pools full of amazing and wonderful resources. Those fast flowing rapids have a place, but also have the potential to wash you away from all the important things underneath. The challenge of creating an online community is to be able to create a way to anchor people into deep and ongoing conversations, without the flow of new things constantly pulling them away.
Reddit always felt to me like it was preventing those deeper conversations from really flourishing. I think the challenge for a moderator here is to find ways of balancing different types of conversations so they can all have a place - some topics can be talked about slowly and thoughtfully for weeks, months, even years. I believe to have a place in a simple living lifestyle the focus needs to be on encouraging those slow conversations. To create a place where you can drop in maybe once a week and not feeling that you are "out of the loop" because you have taken time to engage with the real world.
Being in the moment is huge. I feel like society is paced in a way that can really let life pass you by if you submit to it. Everyone is always rushing. We eat quickly before work or on breaks, coffee is a means to an end rather than a joy, and we scrutinize every moment of our time for its supposed "productivity."
To me, simple living is largely centered around the feelings I get when I step outside of this rush. Walking without destination. Stopping to smell some lilacs. Watching a thunderstorm with a cup of tea. The ritual of making a hot drink. Doing the dishes meditatively. Reading a satisfying longform article that brings me new insight.
Part of why I'm so excited for this new group is that it is so small. I want to have those deep conversations, to share those long articles that give so much insight. Thank you so much for reading, by the way. I often feel like I'm sharing into a void with long pieces like this — that nobody will have the attention span to read them. Reddit especially felt that way in the last few years; though in the early days it was certainly a decent place to find discourse, it became "Instagram-ified" and engagement became reduced mostly to people scrolling and voting on feel-good things they could ingest in a moment.
Thank for being here, and thanks for your insight. 💙