Be Inspired..!!

And honestly? Best decision I ever made.

A quick note from me: I really appreciate you checking out my blog! Just so you know, some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means that if you buy something through them, I might earn a little bit of money, at no extra cost to you. There’s absolutely no pressure to buy anything, but if you do, it genuinely helps support the time and love I put into writing these posts.

Okay so I need to be real with you for a second. I’m sitting here at like 6 PM on a random Thursday, and I just made dinner in an air fryer in like twelve minutes, and I’m having an actual identity crisis about it.

Not even kidding. I’m sitting on my kitchen counter eating crispy chicken thighs and thinking: Am I a fraud?

Because for YEARS, and I mean years, I had this whole thing where slow living meant doing shit the hard way. Like, if you weren’t spending an hour and a half tending to something on the stove while simultaneously feeling guilty about your productivity, were you even really present? That’s the energy I was running on. That’s the lie I was telling myself.

And then I bought a Nest thermostat for like a hundred and twenty bucks, and my whole brain broke.

Here’s what happened: I stopped thinking about temperature. Like, I literally just… never thought about it again. It would adjust itself. Sometimes it was cold, sometimes warm, and I would just… not care? Because it was fine? And suddenly I realized how much of my actual mental RAM had been devoted to going “is it cold in here or is it me? Should I change it? Is it too warm now? Should I change it again?”

I know that sounds insane. But that’s like forty minutes a day of my brain just spinning in circles about HVAC.

And THAT’S when the domino fell.

If I could automate something stupid like temperature and suddenly have more headspace, maybe… maybe doing everything manually wasn’t actually virtuous? Maybe it was just dumb?

So I started experimenting. Like, I got an Instant Pot a couple years ago and felt SO guilty about it because, hello, slow cooking, hello real home cooking takes time and love, right? But then I made this pork in it one night in like twenty minutes and my kid actually ate it, like, actually sat down and ate it instead of us doing the whole “here’s chicken nuggets for the fifth time this week because I didn’t plan ahead” dance, and I thought: wait. The slow cooking isn’t the point. The food is the point.

The slow, tender, delicious food. Which I can now make in sixteen minutes instead of eight hours if I’m smart about my tools.

And THEN I got the air fryer.

Listen, I know everyone has an air fryer. This isn’t news. But here’s what nobody tells you: getting an air fryer is basically admitting that all the stuff you thought mattered actually… doesn’t. Like, I used to roast vegetables and it would take thirty-five minutes and I’d have to stir them and check them and fuss over them like I was defusing a bomb. Now I throw them in this weird little box, set it for twelve minutes, and they come out PERFECT. Crispy. Brown. Better than the oven ever made them.

And instead of standing there watching them, I just… don’t. I go sit down. I scroll my phone. I exist. I’m not stressed about the vegetables.

This is insane, right? But it’s also kind of genius?

Here’s the thing that hit me though, and I’m sorry, I’m kind of rambling, but stick with me, I was treating slow living like it was about suffering through the process. Like the inconvenience was the point. Like if I wasn’t struggling, I wasn’t really being present or thoughtful or intentional.

But that’s backwards.

What if being intentional means being smart about what deserves your attention? Like, roasting vegetables does NOT deserve my attention. It’s not a meditation. It’s not bringing me joy. I don’t feel closer to nature or to my family. I’m just… standing there. Irritated. Waiting for the timer.

An air fryer gives me back fifteen minutes AND better vegetables. How is that not obviously the move?

So I started thinking about this wrong, I think. We’re all pretending we want to slow down, but what we actually want is to stop feeling rushed and anxious and like we’re constantly behind. And sometimes the way to do THAT isn’t to do everything slowly. Sometimes it’s to automate the stuff that’s just noise so you have actual space for the stuff that matters.

Like, I still cook. But now when I cook, I’m choosing it because I actually want to make something interesting, not because I’m stuck on the treadmill of “I have to make dinner and it has to take forty-five minutes or I’m not a real parent.”

I got a Nest because I didn’t want to think about temperature anymore. I got an Instant Pot because I wanted my family to actually eat dinner together instead of me being stressed and resentful in the kitchen. I got an air fryer because I wanted crispy vegetables without the rage.

These aren’t betrayals of slow living. They’re like… slow living shortcuts? They’re me going: “Okay, I’m going to automate the bullshit so I can actually be present for the real stuff.”

And honestly? Since I started doing this, I’ve actually been slower. Like, genuinely slower. Because I’m not running on this constant low-level panic about everything I have to do. I’m not standing in my kitchen seething. I’m not lying awake at night thinking about meal plans.

I’m just like… here. Eating good food that didn’t take all day. Sitting in a comfortable temperature. Not thinking about it.

Maybe that’s the actual secret nobody talks about: you don’t get to slow down by doing everything the hard way. You get to slow down by being ruthless about what doesn’t matter and spending your real energy on the stuff that does.

So yeah. I’m a fraud. I’m a slow living fraud who uses a thermostat that thinks for me and cooks dinner in a weird little box. And I’m somehow more present than I ever was before.

If you’re tired of pretending that struggling is noble, or if you’re sick of that voice in your head telling you that you’re not doing it right, come hang with me on Substack. We’re gonna talk about this stuff. Real talk. No guilt. Just figuring out how to actually live without the performance.

Subscribe. Seriously. Let’s figure this out together.

Subscribe on Medium and Substack

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I may earn from qualifying purchases, but this does not affect my recommendations. I only suggest products I’ve personally vetted.