Field notes: A rustic life is not a slow life

by Clarice, Wizard, Bold At Work

A rustic life is not a slow life and it is certainly not an escape hatch from the city.

I’ve lived through my cheap thrill era. Fifteen years of chasing movement, of flexing getaways in ice-breaker rounds, of signing off Out-of-Office emails with lines like “off chasing sunsets.” It was, in some ways, performative freedom.

In those early years, I earned enough for monthly flights, and enough still for boutique fitness classes with well-heeled strangers sharing tales of burnout, finding solace in yoga and scented retreats.

I wasn’t burnt out though. I loved my first job, the stretch, the late nights, the satisfaction of climbing. But eight years in, I left. Not in defeat, but in a quiet pivot. I moved into a job without the fat paycheck. Started noticing the texture of life back home. The corners of Singapore not glossed over by malls. And around the same time, I got my first home.

No TV. No couch.No built-ins.
Just white walls and an open wardrobe. It was, admittedly, a little extreme.

But you see, to make things to really create you need mental space. And space came only when the noise of hustle quietened. In my new role at an impact startup, I was blessed to begin again. No templates, no playbooks .Just blank pages, blood, sweat and slow carving.

That is why Kulai felt familiar. At our recent 2D1N retreat, we met Thai Soon — a man who built his family’s durian homestay by hand. No Gantt charts. Just vision and stubborn faith.

His wife, a quiet powerhouse, weaves bags, crafts jewellery, bakes magic. I’m convinced she’s hiding an elixir of youth somewhere. But theirs is not a romanticised life. As Thai Soon puts it, “People admire the Li Ziqi kind of life.
aesthetic, slow, serene ,but they forget, in crafting a table,
you sometimes find a scorpion in the wood.”

Later, recounting this to a friend, she sighed, “Sounds like the slow life.” I nodded. But not without caveats. Struggle and stillness can co-exist. Beauty can come with bruises.

At Café Jufei, we met a barista who’s travelled the world and insists:
If you choose coffee, choose it fully.
Don’t hobby your way through a craft.
Precision, finesse, they matter.

And so I learned: There is no “perfect” life. No guaranteed recipe for joy. And happiness? It’s never the whole picture. A good life isn’t the absence of pain or the endless chase of bliss. It’s textured. Layered. Built slowly, sometimes with bruised knuckles, sometimes with open palms.

So the question I’m sitting with and maybe you are too is this:

What kind of life will you choose to experience? What will you walk eagerly into, stay consistently within, and leave gently behind?