On The Cusp of Autumn - Learning To Slow Down Again ｜ Cozy Days in English Countryside

It's the end of August, summer inevitably blends into autumn, and I am slowly coming back to myself again, to the place I feel at home the most. Thoughts are filled with memories of past and childhood and how irreversibly fast life is going by. There is this strange kind of sweetness in these thoughts, interlaced with a tinge of nostalgia. Summer is at its last breath, the season of harvest has begun, grey clouds are swelling up with rain, wild birds, restless, eager, painting the sky black in the distance, awaiting their long journey south. I missed this gloomy, humid, melancholic beauty of late summer. I don't want to rush seasons just yet, instead greedily savouring each scent, sound, flavour while it lasts, but I still can't resist autumn's distant call. I can feel her coming, and I am here, ready, in quiet but eager anticipation. Strong August winds brought change, I am now 30. To me, August serves as a reminder that time is relentlessly moving on. I am trapped in my head, in fear of the future, I can almost feel each minute pass by with my entire body. This is a reminder to myself to slow down, something I honestly struggled with these past couple of months. Yes, I talk about slow living quite often, a lifestyle I adopted after quitting my busy life in London and moving to the English countryside three years ago. But I am not always perfect at it. Sometimes life simply gets in the way of living, or how else should I put it, life that is inevitably full of moments, low and high, where things that are out of our control simply just happen. And living, as in action, the choices we make to give our life a certain meaning, the meaning that is closest to our heart. I had to remind myself what living, or slow living, really is. To me, slow living is being present in the moment, something that, in the overwhelming whirlwind of life, is hard to achieve. Slow living doesn't mean that you have to quit or stop whatever it is that is so important, the inevitable part of life none of us can live without. The bills, the growing up, the learning, the loss, the gain. You are still busy, you are still doing things, but you remember that the only thing you truly have is this moment. Quite frankly, I haven't had a perfect summer. In fact, it feels like summer never happened at all, so these couple of weeks of quietude were really important. I painted outside in nature, finished a book I started reading long time ago, and went for a walk in the evening. My hands stained purple from ripe blackberries I picked on a windswept August afternoon. Baked a cake. I used to bake often, but realized that I haven't done it in a few months. It felt refreshing to touch ingredients again, come up with a recipe of my own. I baked intuitively, swapping ingredients for whatever I had at hand, and then had a piece of cake for breakfast each morning. I will write the detailed recipe for you in the description, with all the potential swaps and alternatives you can do. I used to somewhat pride myself in having no food allergies whatsoever, but the older I get, the more I discover that most people I know, including myself, have intolerances of some sort. I personally learnt that I might have a mild garlic intolerance, which is devastating news to me. And my husband has a lactose intolerance, which is why for this cake I am swapping out dairy for some plant-based alternatives. While baking is a science, of course, I find that some ingredients are very easy to swap out to cater for particular diets. So perhaps this might come handy to you. Recently, someone commented on my video, saying, Your videos used to be poetry, but now you're just documenting life. I don't usually respond to comments that feel negative, but I thought that this was a curious subject to ponder about. I think for any artist, and I believe that artist is a definition that can be applied to absolutely anyone who creates anything in life, regardless of whether the creation is inherently artistic in a traditional sense. Any artist creates from a place deep within, however none of us are immune to whatever is going on with our lives. Whatever we make, for ourselves or for a public eye, is a reflection of the personal inner world, the feelings and perhaps the current place in life we find ourselves in. I find it hard to create with an intention to purely fit a style, aesthetic or an agenda, but rather I create whatever it is I experience at the current moment. Today it might be poetry, tomorrow it will be a documentary. The essence, however, will still remain the same. And the more I pondered over it, the more I realized that not everything in life needs to be shared at all. Not everything needs to be talked about, monetized, done for any particular reason other than our own enjoyment. I think it's rather difficult in the current world we live in, especially being so exposed to the lives of others on the internet, exposed to news and 30 under 30 type of achievement articles. Slowing down, having hobbies, doing things just for pure joy, becomes the hardest thing to do as you find yourself doing nothing but trying to keep up. So an innocent guitar playing becomes a struggle for fame, a lovely country cottage becomes an aesthetic, a holiday memory turns into a blur, when instead of living you try to spew out the poetry that will satisfy the viewer's eyes. I've been there done that. Sometimes people tell me, oh I pity your generation that grew up in this environment. Same people who never get off their phone. Oh, none of us are at all immune to it these days, which is why this August I simply let myself live. I document as an artistic form of expression and as the means to share the thoughts that might reach someone in need of them. Or maybe reach no one at all. I think that's a rather hard concept to grasp, that simple, slow living thing. When the dim light illuminates the room so beautifully on a dark, gloomy day, where deep conversations flow easily and it's raining outside and you simply stay in the moment. When you tie up your windswept hair and sit quietly by the river, staring at the ripples in the water and listening to the quiet rustle of leaves. I learned to love it when at the end of a lovely holiday or a coffee date with a friend, I have no photos to share. These are the best moments. Moments never lost but imprinted so strongly in my memory. I hope to have more moments like that. Some might get documented and shared, but others will stay off record. Remember, what you're seeing is only a little snippet of someone's life. The actual living happens in between.