When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming “I wanted to spend more time with my family".

Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term "downshifting" has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of “have it all", preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the pages of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything.

I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build-up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life", and making the alternative move into “downshifting” brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12-hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on “quality time”.

In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well-established trend. Downshifting — also known in America as “voluntary simplicity” — has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anti-consumerism. There are a number of best-selling downshifting self-help books for people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletters, such as The Tightwad Gazette, that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid-’90s equivalent of dropping out.

While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline―after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late’ 80s―and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class downshifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives.

For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the ’80s, downshifting in the mid-’90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life—growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one—as a personal recognition of your limitations.

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当决定辞去自己的全职工作时我绝对没有想到自己竟然变成了一种新的国际性潮流的一部分。一次平行的调动伤了我的自尊，并阻碍了我的事业发展，这促使我放弃自己地位较高的职业，就像颜面丢尽的政府部长那样，我也掩饰自己的离开，说“我想花更多的时间与家人待在一起”。

奇怪的是，在大约两年半我写完两部小说后，我这个被美国人称为“放慢生活节奏”的试验，却使我老掉牙的借口变成了绝对的现实。我曾经是“占有一切”哲学(琳达?凯茜过去七年中在《她》这本杂志所宣扬的)的狂热支持者，现在已经变成了什么都只要一点点的女人。

我已经发现——凯茜由于压力过大已多次公开宣称要辞去《她》杂志编辑的职务，在这之后她也许会有同样发现——放弃“耍弄生活”的生活哲学，转而过一种“放慢生活节奏”的生活所带来的回报，比经济成功和社会地位更有价值。没有什么能够说服我再回到过去那种凯茜所宣扬的、我也很享受的生活中去。那个时候，工作日每天工作12小时，有压力很大的的最后期限，压抑的的办公室的政治，以及连做母亲也得“高效率”。

在美国，摆脱忙碌，转而过一种简单、不再那么物质化的生活已成确定趋势。具有讽刺意味的是，“放慢生活节奏”——在美国也称“自愿简单”——甚至孕育了一个崭新的、可称之为反消费主义的生活方式。对于那些想简单生活的人来说，有许多很畅销的的自助书籍帮你轻松生活；有各种简讯，例如省钱简报，会给美国人提供成千上万条有用的点子去做事，从回收保鲜膜到自制肥皂；甚至还有一些帮助团体，帮人按90年代中期脱离传统社会的人的生活方式去生活。

在美国，这种趋势出现之初是对经济衰落所做出的一种反应——出现于80年代后期缩小经济规模所引起的大量人员冗余之后——在英国，至少在我所认识的中产阶级的简化生活者中，这种趋势仍被认为与节俭政治有关联，虽然如此，然而我们有着不同的缘由去寻求使自己的生活简单化。

对我们这一代女性来说，整个80年代我们曾被迫忙碌地生活，90年代中期的简化生活与其说是寻求神话般的好生活——自己种有机蔬菜以及冒险进入一个仙境——倒不如说我们都认识了自身的局限。