🎉 Celebrating 100 Episodes of The Slow Life 🥂

When I published the very first episode of The Slow Life, I had no idea whether anyone would ever listen. It was simply something I felt drawn to create: a quiet place where people could slow down for a little while, settle into a comfortable chair—or bed—and let the busyness of the day drift into the background.

That first story was shared on August 10, 2024. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about episode one hundred. I wasn’t imagining hundreds of hours spent writing, recording, editing, designing thumbnails, building a website, learning about podcast hosting, or discovering what SEO even meant. I certainly wasn’t picturing listeners joining me from around the world.

I was simply taking the first step.

Looking back now, it feels as though The Slow Life has grown in much the same way as the village it describes. Not through big moments or sudden success, but through the quiet accumulation of ordinary days.

One story became two.

Two became ten.

Ten slowly became fifty.

And somehow, almost without noticing, I found myself writing episode one hundred.

Most weeks have followed a familiar rhythm. A new idea begins to take shape during an everyday moment: seeing someone hanging laundry on the clothesline, walking along the shoreline, baking something simple, visiting a cozy café, or watching a summer thunderstorm roll across the sky. Those ordinary experiences gradually become stories, and before long I’m sitting in my tiny recording space, hoping they’ll become a peaceful place for someone else to rest for a while.

Over the past two years, The Slow Life has become much more than a podcast. It has grown into a website, a newsletter, printable reading experiences, YouTube videos, Pinterest boards, and a small online community of people who appreciate slowing down. None of it happened overnight. Each piece was added one step at a time, learning as I went, often making mistakes, and slowly finding my way.

There have certainly been moments when I questioned whether to keep going, but not many. Creating a podcast like this means wearing every hat: writer, narrator, sound designer, editor, website manager, marketer, and business owner—all while balancing family life and everything else that fills an ordinary week. There have been technical problems, algorithms that still seem impossible to understand, and seasons where growth felt slower than I hoped.

Yet every time someone tells me they fell asleep to a story, found comfort during a difficult season, or now looks forward to Thursday evenings because a new episode has arrived, I’m reminded why I started.

Those messages have always meant more to me than download numbers.

This hundredth episode feels less like reaching a finish line and more like pausing to look back for a moment. The journey has been built in exactly the same way as the stories themselves: one gentle step after another. One ordinary evening. One page written. One microphone switched on. One listener pressing play.

If you’ve listened to even one episode, thank you for spending part of your time here in The Slow Life. Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or only recently found this little village, you’ve become part of its story. Part of my story.

I truly appreciate you being here, and I hope these stories continue to offer you a quiet place to rest for many evenings to come.

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🪴 Looking for more cozy inspiration? Visit my Cozy Finds page for books, puzzles, and other favourites I’ve curated.

🎧 💜 Prefer to listen instead of read? - Listen to the podcast version of “The Hundred-Year-Old Cottage” HERE 🎧

This story is called The Hundred-Year-Old Cottage, and it’s about a shared anniversary, quiet mornings, and cozy evenings.

We wake early in the cottage, with the morning filtering through the curtains, including the sound of birds, probably enjoying some fresh berries that surround the yard.

This summer marks the cottage’s hundredth year, a milestone that feels remarkable, but there are no celebrations planned, no plaque waiting to be unveiled, and no gathering of guests aside from the two of us. It sits as quietly as we do on its hillside overlooking the lake, just as it has done through a century of seasons.

Our own reason for being here is an anniversary that gave us enough of an excuse to spend a few days together in a place that encourages us to slow down. Sharing the occasion with a cottage that has quietly reached one hundred years feels fitting somehow. Both anniversaries seem content to be acknowledged with simple pleasures and unhurried days.

We begin the morning with tea and a slow breakfast at the kitchen table. As I pour hot water into our mugs, I find myself wondering how many mornings just like this have started in this room.

For one hundred years, people have stood in this kitchen preparing breakfasts, packing lunches for hikes and canoe trips, washing dishes by hand, and watching the weather through the windows above the sink. The cups and plates might have changed over the decades, but the rhythm of the room must have remained surprisingly familiar.

After breakfast, we carry our tea outside and sink into a pair of chairs facing the water. The air is mild, and the lake is nearly still beneath the blue sky. Wild roses bloom along the edge of the property, and a few paddlers move slowly across the distance. We sit comfortably together without feeling any need to fill the quiet. Sitting at a restaurant seems to encourage conversation, but this place invites simple companionship.

As the morning unfolds around us, we wander down a nearby path lined with grasses and summer wildflowers. There is nowhere particular we need to go, and that freedom is part of our gift to each other. We pause whenever something catches our attention: a cluster of daisies growing beside a tree, a weathered stone wall partly hidden by ferns, the view from a hill where the shoreline stretches away in both directions.

When we return, the cottage is waiting exactly as we left it. The screen door gives its familiar creak, and the old floorboards announce our arrival in the same spots. These small signs of age don’t feel like flaws. They feel like reminders that the building has been part of countless ordinary days, each one leaving behind a subtle clue that it was here.

By early afternoon, clouds begin gathering over the water. The sunlight fades gradually, and before long a soft rain starts to fall on the rooftop. I can’t imagine a stay at a cottage without picturing at least one rainy afternoon. We leave a window slightly open so we can listen to the sound of the rain while we settle into comfortable chairs with our books and drinks.

As the hours pass, I find myself thinking about all the lives that have intersected within these walls. Perhaps children once sat beside these same windows watching storms roll in. Someone may have spent an afternoon writing letters at the kitchen table while rain tapped gently against the glass. Knitting may have passed the time by lamplight. Bread may have cooled on the counter. Visitors surely arrived for a day of swimming and were welcomed inside to dry by the fire.

The details are impossible to know, but what interests me most are these little moments, not the big parties someone might have hosted for one reason or another. A century sounds impressive enough when it’s talked about in years, but it’s really made up of countless small mornings, afternoons and evenings. It is made up of meals shared, books read, berries picked, cups of tea enjoyed while watching the weather change outside.

The rain continues for much of the afternoon before finally drifting over the trees. By early evening, the clouds begin to break apart, allowing golden sunlight to spill across the hillside once again. Everything outside looks freshly washed. The leaves shine. The grass twinkles in the lowering light. Even the cottage itself seems brighter, its roof and walls warmed by the return of the sun.

We prepare a simple supper and eat outdoors while the evening arrives. The air is cool enough for a light sweater, and a fire. The lake water, ever-changing, reflects streaks of gold and silver beneath the sunset. As I look back toward the cottage, I imagine the evenings it has witnessed over the last hundred years. There would have been celebrations and getaways, friends and lovers, beginnings and anniversaries. Yet most evenings were probably much like this one—quiet, comfortable, and cozy.

Perhaps that is what gives an old place its character. It’s not built from dramatic events but from the accumulation of ordinary days. The cottage has stood through storms and winters and changing generations, yet what has truly shaped it are the thousands of small moments that filled the years between.

As darkness gradually settles over the lake, we move indoors and turn on dim lamps in corners. Their warm glow fills the room, reflecting softly from the windows. And lighting a fire seems like a must no matter what kind of night it is.

We spend the evening reading, occasionally glancing up from our books to enjoy the peacefulness of the cottage around us.

Once the giggles set in we know it’s time to turn in.

Before bed, I pause for a moment in the kitchen and rest my hand on the old wooden table, original to the cottage. The surface bears the marks of a hundred years of use, with small scratches and worn places that have stories we’ll have to make up ourselves. A favourite meal prepared, a letter written, a project completed, a conversation shared.

In a few days, we’ll leave, and other visitors will arrive. The cottage will continue watching the seasons come and go, collecting new memories while holding space for old ones. Tonight, we are fortunate enough to be part of its story. For a brief moment, our anniversary and its hundredth year overlap, and we celebrate both in the simplest way.

By being here, together.

I wish you sweet dreams.

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