Back

Slow down | Day 95 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Apr 5, 2023· 2 minutes

Our third day in Rome was dedicated to work.

Work could (and should) be understood as anything we do in order to make a change. Any effort to move pieces, organize, change, grow, improve, understand, and care for.

Work is when we engage and take part. But the concept has become hollow, focused only on the monetary outcome.

This is part of the suppression of women, of artists, and of freedom.

When work became measurable by money and with the invention of the concept of BNP, the understanding of value changed and we lost the awe of the very important work done by especially women.

There is no common good without breastfeeding, without cooking, without someone to nurse the sick, someone to make the homes, someone to compose the music and write the books. Without this, we will all be insane.

The epidemic of childhood mental diagnoses and adult stress reactions is no coincidence. It is the result of a backward value system and of ripping apart everything that is important to hold together.

Why do we confuse the value of work with the amount of money someone is willing to pay for it?

The value of a meal cooked with love and served to someone old and sick is unmeasurable.

Let me be clear. A day for work, to me, is a day to engage with the element of my life that is not directly connected to my children and my personal life. To lift above and write the stories, cookbooks, and blog posts. Some of it, but only a tiny bit, makes me money. Most of it is just me responding to a call from my existence, a call to action, an urge to do something about the wrongs in the world.

We try to carve out a day or two a week for this kind of engagement. But there is so much life to live, it can sometimes be hard to stand our ground. On this particular workday, I went for firstly a walk with one child, then a walk with another child. Good conversations arise from these walks and are more important than most. I cooked lunch and made sure everyone was happy before I sat down in the afternoon to work on the blog, the podcast, and the coaching.

Love and light

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

# 95 of my 2023 writing challenge - Read them all here

Isla Magdalena was our Christmas walk. We like to go for a walk at a beautiful place on the 24th of December. We walked over the dunes to the pacific…Read more
I have been asked if I am looking forward to completing my 365 challenge so I am off the hook of writing a story every day. It is a good question, an…Read more
“Where the Crawdads Sing” is a great novel; I greatly enjoyed it. Here, in Puerto Aldolfo Lopez Mateo, the landscape takes me right there, to the mar…Read more
A long, dusty road. We literally saw a Roadrunner. Like in the cartoons! It must be one of the highlights of the day. Such a great comment on the des…Read more
Just get out there. On the water. In the water. That is the recommendation from everyone we met living on boats for everyone else. And it is very tru…Read more
Sometimes, these peaceful days, even with all the adventure, are hard to describe. It all seems a bit banal when jotting it down in my journal. But r…Read more
In La Ventana, it made a lot of sense to get up at five in the morning to enjoy the sunrise from pitch dark over extreme beauty to bright daylight. E…Read more
Dive into our podcast as we discuss Christmas' deeper layers and explore the complexities of Christmas. We are focusing on personal values, family dy…Read more
What does it mean to be happy? Often, we don’t stop to understand it while it is ongoing; we trot along and live, only to realize how much we had the…Read more