8 Reflections from an Offline Summer in Finland

Can a simpler life actually make us happier?

I Traded Convenience for Simplicity.

A Summer in Finland

2 Months. No Social Media.

This summer, I spent two months living in our family cottage in the Finnish forest.

No cafés around the corner.

No shopping on a random Tuesday evening.

No social media.

Instead, my days became surprisingly simple.

Painting cottage walls.

Walking my dog.

Working out on the porch.

Reading library books.

Swimming in the lake.

Going to the sauna.

Nature walks.

Construction work.

At first glance, it probably sounds like a boring summer.

But somewhere between painting walls and walking quiet forest paths, something inside me slowly began to change.

I'm not saying everyone should move to a Finnish cottage.

But I do think this summer reminded me of something many of us have forgotten.

Finally, my underlying anxiety and stress has calmed down that has bothered me for so long.

Normally, when I have spent weeks in my home country Finland during the summer, I constantly worry about everything back at our home in Spain. I stress about whether everything is okay.

Ironically, this summer we even had a water leak in our apartment while we were here in another country.

Normally, I would have panicked.

This time, I managed not to.

We figured everything out remotely, and although it wasn't an ideal situation, I noticed something had changed. I wasn't spiraling anymore.

I think this was mostly from the calmness of being able to consciously choose my thoughts. It’s not that I didn’t worry, but I managed to change the thinking from dooms-day into, "oh well, everything will get solved eventually".

And this was helped by having enough space for my own thoughts.

I also feel like my own creativity and ideas are slowly coming back.

When they are no longer constantly distracted by everyone else's ideas online, there is finally space for my own.

This summer I deleted all my social media.

The only platform I kept was YouTube.

Not for endless scrolling, but for long-form videos.

Workouts.

Pilates.

Breathwork.

A few carefully chosen documentaries.

Instead of constantly consuming other people's lives, I had more space to notice my own thoughts.

In the name of digital detox, we actually decided to be offline before 10am, and after 7pm.

Okay, sometimes I still sent whatsapp messages afterwards, but more of a chosen action, not an autopilot grabbing a phone and losing an hour to the scroll.

I feel like this whole post I am writing now wouldn’t be happening without this simple cabin life. It’s impossible to be a creative writer and have something original to say, when you’re constantly feeding other people’s thoughts to your mind.

I actually read a book about connection of boredom and creativity that said that people who we shown interesting videos, tend to have much less creative ideas than people who were bored. It was a test about coming up with vehicles. The group that saw entertaining videos beforehand, said bus, car, bike, etc. whereas the ones that were bored before the test came up with stuff like camel, pedal boat, rollator etc.)

Source: Tylsyyden Ylistys by Juha T. Hakala/ Does being bored make us more creative?

I thought I would miss eating out.

Cute cafés.

Shopping on a random Tuesday evening.

Having fun plans with friends and pilates classes at gym to attend to.

But I didn't.

Instead, something else happened.

My urge to buy new clothes disappeared.

It changed into thinking,

"I really don't even need all the clothes I already have."

Of course at the cottage it doesn’t really matter what I wear, but I still think the lack of supply made me realise how little I need.

The easiest way to get rid off any addiction is to completely remove the supply from your life.

As for activities, I felt like this kind of nothingness was long overdue.

I enjoyed the lack of plans.

I even dropped morning routines like yoga, journaling and walk.

I simply lied down in bed, staring the wooden planks of the wall and got up.

No cool morning routines, simply letting myself be.

Now, after almost two months, I finally feel a little bored.

Not unhappy.

Just ready for a bit more stimulation.

Some new plans.

New adventures.

New conversations.

I don’t need more materia, just more experiences to live.

Until now, I honestly wasn't bored at all.

I was genuinely enjoying the simplicity.

I deleted all social media for the whole summer.

The only exception was YouTube because I use it intentionally for long-form content.

Workouts.

Pilates.

Breathwork.

A few inspiring documentaries.

I still checked emails during weekdays because of work.

But I wasn't constantly reaching for my phone to see what everyone else was doing.

Looking back, I think removing that constant stream of other people's ideas created space for my own.

To be honest, when the Instagram app is not on the phone, I don’t really miss it at all.

I would just play with the dog, or read a few pages instead.

The hardest part about deleting social media for me was that I actually still have some collaborations on my personal instagram account, so I had to log in a few times to post.

But after a month logging in, I felt like an alien there. So fast, entertaining content that everyone seems to take so seriously that they even repost it so that more people can waste their time browsing through it.

It felt madness.

Surprisingly...

Painting a wall.

I have felt incredibly aligned while simply painting our cottage.

With my online work, I constantly feel like there are a thousand things to do.

Like I'm always prioritizing the wrong thing.

Or simply never doing enough.

Painting was different.

There was only one task.

Paint the wall.

At the pace that is normal and possible.

Not too fast.

Not too slow.

It is ready when it's ready.

That simple sentence somehow felt like a lesson for life itself.

What is the point of rushing things?

As Heidegger would say; time is not a resource. Being and time determine each other reciprocally.

(This concept by philosopher Martin Heidegger is explained nicely simply in Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals)

I also loved my one-hour YouTube workouts on the porch.

Nature adventures.

Long walks nearby.

Simple moments that somehow felt enough when they weren’t compared against anything else.

One thought kept coming back.

"Am I boring?"

I don't even miss going out.

I don't miss shopping.

I don't miss constantly having plans.

Sometimes that makes me wonder if I'm becoming boring.

Now, after two months, I realise what I actually miss isn't entertainment.

It's connecting with like-minded people.

Having deep discussions.

Talking about ideas.

Life.

Philosophy.

Curiosity.

What all life can be.

I've loved spending time with my family, their friends and the construction workers helping us expand the cottage.

But no offense...

They're not always my kind of people to have those deeper conversations with.

And that's okay.

It simply reminded me how important it is to have different kinds of people in your life.

Because I think you need this more than you realise.

Not necessarily a Finnish cottage.

But some version of this.

You need space to reconnect with your own ideas.

Your dreams.

Your intuition.

Your inner wisdom.

Most of us live with constant noise.

Notifications.

Algorithms.

Other people's opinions.

Other people's priorities.

When all that becomes quieter, something surprising happens.

You start hearing yourself again.

I feel like I always come back to wanting to do similar things in life that I liked doing as a child, when I take a moment to calm down.

So the inner compass recalibrates when you let the dust settle.

I think it did.

Finnish nature in the summer is amazing.

For me, it's also my home country.

Life feels easier when you're in a place where you speak your native language.

Where everything is familiar.

I think that alone probably calmed down my nervous system.

But I also think there's something special about Finnish simplicity.

The sauna.

The lake.

The forests.

The connection to nature.

It's not branded.

It's not trying to impress anyone.

It's just pure.

Authentic.

Unpretentious.

Maybe that's exactly why it feels so restorative.

It’s all just simpler here. I’ve actually written the 6 Finnish lifestyle ideas what I think the rest of the world could learn from our foresty culture.

Soon I'll return to Spain.

To airports.

Cities.

Deadlines.

Emails.

Projects.

But I'm asking myself one question.

What parts of this slower life deserve to come home with me?

For me, it's:

✓ Living without social media.

✓ Daily movement.

✓ Time in nature.

✓ Buying less.

✓ Trusting that good work is ready when it's ready.

And maybe the biggest lesson of all...

Not to mix convenience with freedom and happiness.

They're not the same thing.

Sometimes less creates a richer experience.

Sometimes the simplest days become the most meaningful ones.

Own story about that here: Stop Mistaking Convenience for Freedom: Having Nothing Is The Ultimate Act of Self-Care

Maybe slowing down isn't about escaping life.

Maybe it's about remembering how you actually want to live it.

If you are ready to take the next step for simpler life, choose what resontes with you most right now:

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