Slow living is what you do with your time  = Doing 

A soft life is what you do for your nervous system  = Feeling

Both practices are about removing things. 

Or if you want to get all technical, they're about what you stop doing more than what you start doing. Both reward attention, and both have aesthetic versions on the internet that have almost no resemblance to the actual practice. Here is how I see them and live them both in real time.

Today I bought a clothes drying rack.

The rack cost about $30.00. A small fraction of the beloved washer/dryer. It folds in on itself, so it fits in my tiny laundry room. I plan to use it outside, on the patio, in the Florida sun.

My remarkably smart machine will dry a load of laundry in approximately one hour. Give or take an hour, depending on whether it’s drying towels or socks. The Florida sun, which is free and which I have already paid for in heat and humidity and the particular weight of August afternoons, will dry the same load in fifteen minutes.

This is a fact I've known for years. One of those truths that quietly rolls its eyes in the back of your mind while you complain about how high the electric bill has gotten.

There's a particular kind of judgment reserved for women who fall in love with cultures that are perceived not to be their own. The New York woman obsessed with French aesthetics. The Midwestern woman who turns her home into a Scandinavian dream. The internet has words for these women: Delusional. Try-hard. Performing. Fake.

I watched a video this week that asked the obvious question - are these women pretending to be something they’re not?