In my Victorian era: The unexpected challenge of learning to live slowly after early retirement

I thought early retirement would naturally lead to a slower, simpler life. Instead, I spent over a year unlearning productivity, redefining my relationship with leisure, and figuring out who I was without work.

When I quit my highly stressful, soul-sucking job 2 years ago, I had a deep desire to live a simple, slow life. I called it my Victorian Era, with romantic notions of long stretches of leisure time and the ability to do the things I love for no reason other than the fact that I enjoy them. A way of moving through my days that wasn’t entirely shaped by urgency or the constant pressure to perform or produce.

Then I spent a little over a year untangling myself from corporate, capitalistic ideas of productivity, figuring out how to structure my days now that I was no longer living my life based on external routines, and finding out what makes me tick without external deadlines or the need to pander to anyone else’s needs but my own.

Turns out, trying living a Victorian life — or rather, a slow life — can be surprisingly difficult, and I feel like no one really talks about it.

I didn’t expect that allowing myself to slow down and follow my joy and curiosity would be harder than leaving work. Early retirement gave me freedom, but it didn’t automatically teach me how to enjoy said freedom.

Now, on the 2-year anniversary of this retired life, I feel like all the pieces of the puzzle are finally falling into place.

What I mean by my “Victorian era” (and why it’s really about slow living)

When I call this my Victorian Era, it’s shorthand for my desire to push back against the constant frenzy we find ourselves in these days — the incessant scrolling, the life lived chronically online, the push to produce more and consume even more.

It’s about doing things at my own pace, having the freedom to linger, to read without watching the clock, to sit with a cup of coffee and not immediately reach for a screen. To spend my days without the need to share, document, or turn it into something “useful”.

But wanting that slow, quiet life and knowing how to live it are two very different things!

Because for most of my adult life, my days were shaped by external structures — deadlines, expectations, goals and performance metrics, the invisible but ever-present gaze of the corporate machine. Even my leisure time had a place within that system. It was a reward, something that I had to earn, something that gave my life meaning beyond simply waking up each day and trudging to work.

When that structure fell away and when leisure became the default rather than something I had to earn, I didn’t quite know what to do with it…how to enjoy it.

Leaving work gave me freedom, but learning how to enjoy that freedom took much longer.

The unexpected challenge of early retirement: learning to enjoy leisure

The first year of my early retirement was, in many ways, a process of unlearning.

I had to untangle myself from deeply ingrained ideas about productivity. From the belief that time must be accounted for, justified, and optimized. From the quiet but persistent sense that I should always be doing something that looked meaningful.

I had imagined that once I stepped away from corporate life, I would naturally fall into a slower rhythm.

Instead, I found myself trying to recreate that same corporate structure in familiar ways. Keeping “office hours.” Sitting at my laptop for long stretches of time, even when I didn’t have anything particular to do. Drifting through YouTube rabbit holes and wondering, at the end of the day, where all my time had gone.

I had the freedom of time, but I didn’t yet know how to use it.

Looking back, much of my first year of early retirement wasn’t really about retirement at all. It was about adjusting to a life that was no longer organized around work — a retirement transition as much as a lifestyle change.

It took time, and a lot of experimentation, to finally figure out what my days could look like when they were no longer organized around external demands.

Why slow living can feel so uncomfortable

I think one of the reasons slow living is so difficult is that many of us have spent decades being taught to measure our worth through the lens of productivity.

Work doesn’t just give us an income. It gives us structure, identity, milestones, and a ready-made answer to the question: “What did you do today?” What I didn’t realize until I retired was how much of my identity had become centered around work.

When that structure disappears, we are left to create our own sense of “enoughness”, and that can be surprisingly uncomfortable. I suspect this is why so many people struggle with retirement, sabbaticals, career breaks, and other forms of newfound freedom.

Retirement solved the problem of not having enough time, but it did not solve the question of what makes a life feel meaningful.

What slow living actually looks like in early retirement

Now, at the two-year mark of this retired life, something has shifted. It’s like all the pieces have started to fall into place.

My mornings have become slower. I start my days with a leisurely cup of coffee — on the balcony when the weather is kind, or curled up on the sofa when it isn’t. On most days, I try to have that first cup of java mindfully. No screens and sometimes, no reading either — just the sounds of the morning, the play of light and shadows on the wall, scratching Simba, my ginger tabby, around his neck.

Later in the day, I might journal, do some memory keeping, get out my tarot cards, or create some art, music playing softly in the background as I move through these simple everyday rituals.

Some Sundays disappear entirely between the pages of a book.

None of this is particularly grand or impressive. None of it has an “impact” on anyone other than me. And perhaps that’s part of the point — I get to choose the moments that form the fabric of my life.

Why slow living still feels difficult sometimes

But it isn’t all sunshine and roses. The modern world has a way of intruding into this idyllic world of mine.

I feel it in the pull of social media, especially Instagram. I deleted the Twitter app in 2020, and more recently, I’ve gotten rid of Facebook and Threads too.

I feel it in the subtle ways productivity is equated with visible output. In the lingering belief that because I have been given this time, I should be doing more with it.

There are days when I feel the need to justify this life. To prove, to someone (I’m never entirely sure who), that I am using my time well.

There are unfinished courses. Half-started projects. Ideas that haven’t yet found their way into form.

There is still, occasionally, that familiar undercurrent of self-doubt. The sense that I am not doing this “well enough.” That slow has become too slow. That I should be further along than I am.

And alongside that, there has been a lot of experimentation. A lot of trying and not quite following through. A lot of learning what actually holds my attention when there is no external pressure or deadline to complete something.

I’m still figuring that out, but I feel like I’m starting to find my footing.

The gap between wanting a slow life and living one

It’s easy to romanticize a slower life, to imagine it as something inherently peaceful, grounded, and effortless.

But living it — really living it — requires a different kind of adjustment.

Because when you remove the external structures that once organized your days, you also remove the frameworks that told you what was enough. And you are left to answer that question for yourself. That is both freeing and deeply uncomfortable.

The identity shift nobody talks about after early retirement

What I’m beginning to see, though, is that this shift will not happen all at once, no matter how much I desire it or think that it should be possible.

It is, instead, a quieter, gentler shift. I am slowly becoming someone who is more comfortable with open time. Someone who doesn’t feel the need to turn on the laptop every single day. Someone who can spend an afternoon reading without mentally trying to turn it into something more “useful.”

I’m learning what holds my attention when it isn’t being externally directed. What I return to, again and again, simply because I enjoy it.

Lately, I’ve even started bringing a sense of play into the way I approach my projects — a gamified system that feels less like pressure and more like curiosity. It’s still relatively new, but it feels…promising. Like something that might help me move forward without slipping back into old patterns.

What I’m learning about slow living after two years of early retirement

If there is a Victorian thread running through my life now, it’s in the gentle reclaiming of my time. In the willingness to let parts of the day remain spacious and decidedly “unproductive”, at least in the way that is espoused by the overculture. It’s in the choice to engage with life in ways that are slower, more interior, and less visible.

And even that is imperfect.

There are still days of doubt…moments when the old narratives resurface. There are still, sometimes, questions about purpose, direction, and whether I am doing enough with the life I’ve chosen.

But those questions no longer feel as urgent as they once did. Because alongside them, there is something else. A realization that slow living is not the absence of activity. It is the absence of urgency.

With that, has come a growing sense of ease. A deeper comfort with the shape of my days, as I slowly learn how to live this life in a way that feels like my own.

Not by going back in time, to some imagined perfect era when there was no social media and no constant input into what life should look like (though really, even in the Victorian era, there was a pressure for a lady to behave in a certain way). But by allowing a different rhythm to take root, here, in the life I already have. And learning that this small, simple life is enough. That the lie we’ve been sold, of wanting bigger and better, is just that — a lie.