Tag / slow living

by yojeanyi

Tortoise lifestyle in an egg car

My vision for a tortoise lifestyle was inspired by a diplomat and a low tech bike traveler. Despite being itinerant, they were wholly satisfied and fulfilled in their lives. For me, it had seemed like there was no escape from modernity. It was the all too familiar pressure from family and friends, who believe that the barometer for “survival” is : permanent address, labor/wage contract, and forever dependent. 

Yet still grateful for the advances in medicine and technology that give us the highest quality of life in human history, I realized I could choose the parts of modernity that were beneficial.

Unexpectedly, moving to Asia supports my new vision. Hyper competition means diverse low cost options, high connectivity means convenience, and materialism? it’s easy to tune out the vapidity as a tortoise who lives close to the ground. For example: In a dense capital city, a small alley building has cheaper rent, allowing a mom and pop shop to offer affordable meals. Near the many universities are even cheaper offerings. Public transit is A+. You can get to where you need to go. An impromptu leave requires no planning- just a backpack of personal items. When tired, phone maps direct you to a $10-20 sauna or guesthouse. Convenience stores have 1+1 or 2+1 or 2+2 deals.

It was also helpful to realize, despite being born in the U.S., that my family were newcomers there, and thus without history. I have no precedent for becoming a settler. →(for another post)

“So how much do tortoises carry? A study on Hermann’s tortoises found the shell mass relative to body mass to be between 33.5% and 52.3%.” (source)

Carrying a shelter on your back makes you slow. If you want to be savvy, you could put it on some wheels, and ideally a manually powered one. 

If I had the means, I would make an egg car. But I can only dream.

by yojeanyi

NED: No Electronic Days

COME LETS MAKE A ROAST ON THE FIRE

The theme in my life goes something like this: The ocean is rich. The forest is wealthy. Boredom is bliss. 

In 2018 I adopted a day called “no electronic days,” coined NED for short. Something I began to reclaim my time and my life, NED is simple: all electronic devices are off for 24 hours. It’s digital fasting.

It’s pure coincidence that N.E.D. is also the name of Ned Ludd, the legend who led the Luddites of the 19th century against technofacism.

“The Luddites challenged the emerging capitalist system—which centered on efficiency, maximal productivity, and ultimately human redundancy—and instead championed other human values of finely-honed craft skill, community, worker solidarity, and a living wage.”

https://origins.osu.edu/article/fourth-industrial-revolution-and-ghosts-ned-ludd

So what motivated NED? Well in 2018, it happened from dissatisfaction with our growing dependency and adherence to all things digital. I was saddened by our deteriorating human connections and community in real physical spaces. So, naturally and obviously I went to grad school to make art. (Also so I could teach :))

In one of my projects, “AutoSalvation,” I used Photoshop to isolate subjects in medieval paintings. The computer registered contours as blocks of information, resulting in dismembered / disembodied hands.

I performed this experiment with other early middle age paintings, staring at the floating arms and hands for hours. It felt prescient. At the same time, it was ancient knowledge: that the world would be saved or destroyed by the hand of man. I personally don’t believe this myth, but we can see how it prevails today.

Today we seek neo-salvation with a prophetic god in our hand.

More about neo-luddites :

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/17/humanitys-remaining-timeline-it-looks-more-like-five-years-than-50-meet-the-neo-luddites-warning-of-an-ai-apocalypse

https://nickfthilton.medium.com/do-we-have-the-wrong-luddites-fb412b3f02e4

(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/)

by yojeanyi

A piece of driftwood I stumbled upon this summer whispered “Don’t ignore Your Internal Compass” and why I am going to listen to it

When the World Feels Pointless…Is it because we are ignoring our internal compass?

I guess I’ve been quietly grieving. It’s not a personal loss, but one of value alignment.

We are conditioned to mostly chasing—passive cultural experiences, trendy overpriced foods, variations of things we already have, collectibles, small talk that loops infinitely– filling space and time with more, more, more while neglecting to feed the soul.

We have everything we could ever need for the remainder of our lifetime and probably many lifetimes over. I have worn my mom’s polyester nylon pajamas from the 70s for years and counting. When it comes to U.S. cultural experiences, there are few accessible ones outside the fart of shopping and occasional outdoor recreation.

We receive deeper joy in effort. Things that ask something from us. We haven’t embraced a lifestyle that nurtures our internal values.

I want to go more simple. Imagining my shelter and life as human or solar powered mobility through walking or biking. I’m not thinking like a traveler, but like a tortoise. Slow life. I’m inspired by a Korean woman who biked the world. She was not a cyclist to begin with, and just took on the challenge one day, documenting the journey– the universal moments along the way. Her philosophy is “before she returns to the universe, she wants to experience the universe.”

I’m also inspired by an American medical researcher for the U.S. State Department whom I met at a Korean temple stay. As her job required her to go to remote countries for months or years, she didn’t have a permanent residence. She showed up in the coldest region of Korea with a lightweight quilted overcoat, athletic shoes, and large book backpack. She lives out of this backpack for months at a time. It is her home base.

My internal compass is getting tuned. The tortoise mindset means I cut more possessions down to essential utility and dual purpose items that fit. A spork, a drybag, fast drying shorts that double as swimwear; deep pockets to store sticks. In this state, utility meats creativity. A piece of wonky driftwood I got on the beach now triples as a lightweight digging tool, poking tool, and dirt flattener. It was MVP in the build of a sand sculpture. It’s the kind of design I love: found, natural, simple. It’s the life I aspire to design: found, natural, simple.

the life I aspire to design: found, natural, simple.

by yojeanyi

Bulk Creation as a Creative Tool, Not a Trap

Although counterintuitive to creativity, sometimes we need mass output to push ourselves to the next stage.

Have you noticed how something is being sold to us every second of being on the internet? Recipe filled with pop-up ads every 2 seconds, amusing shorts between pseudo-informative videos.
Innocent people broadcast their lives, maybe trying to organically incorporate their sponsor’s products.

We don’t need any of it.

In the crowd of similar personalities there are genuine hobbyists and experts from whom you can actually learn new things. You can tell they are in it for the love, and not for material gratification. 

Some of the people I follow do pottery, farm, sew, and forage wild edibles. Some have a quirky personality or just like to have fun with their viewers—like exercising on a bike machine while painting, making daily cucumber hats to stop suffering, raising rescue opossums as a character (or real?) psychic.

They usually do their thing for years with a small, but loyal, following. They sell some things casually—like paintings, the best fertilizer, a kit. But their existence is not a money-making venture; they don’t care about gaining as many followers and having high paying sponsors. You can tell—the popular entertainment personal brands have similar styles in their presentation, editing, and sounds. 

I used to let my days meander and melt into one another as I experimented– because that’s creativity. Factory like output is for commercial artists. But making doesn’t always have to be sacred. Just because you care deeply about something doesn’t mean you have to manifest that always, immediately, and in every project as proof.

You’ve been told to separate art that you make for you and art that you make for everyone. It is not a betrayal of yourself to create for different audiences. It’s not like it’ll affect your admittance to the pearly gates.

The purpose of this post is that we can learn something from even the popular content creators. I noticed that people will have the same clothes for many videos. They bulk film content in a few days or weeks that they can spread out and publish over the course of months, possibly the whole year.

This has inspired me to try doing this for my work. Writing and painting in mass consolidation. Writing flows best in long dedicated time blocks anyway. Although counterintuitive to creativity, sometimes we need mass output to push ourselves to the next stage.

So for the months that I’m back in my studio, I’m using up my supplies to paint, draw, and film. Painting supplies are abundant, so I’ll do the most simple thing I know how to do– universally humorous animal paintings that I can produce at high output. I’ll edit and post a few videos (to hold myself accountable), scheduling publication as far out as ~2 months. Since the remaining footage can be edited from anywhere (post-production), having all the content already done eliminates the heavy production side.

Then of course there are always days we refuse to do any of it, so reducing friction by reducing steps is good life maintenance.