Bluegrass in the Basement

Designing a Life Around Less - week 3 book club

Let me tell you about my basement.

It’s unfinished. The walls are that peeling concrete color that always feels damp. The lighting is bad. The acoustics are worse. And yet, it’s where I go to play music no one hears.

Banjo on weekdays. Harp on weekends. Sometimes both, just to see what happens.

I’ve been asked what my ideal life looks like. The question always sounds like a trap. Like I’m supposed to name a cabin in the woods or a Mediterranean villa or some minimalist farmhouse with curated bookshelves and linen curtains.

Here’s the truth: I don’t want a new life. I want this one—just less of what steals it from me.

Less apology for not being “the nice doctor.”

Less guilt for needing quiet.

Less pretending I’m okay when I’m not.

More room to chart at midnight because I choose to, not because I have to. More mornings folding laundry with my mother while arguing about nothing important. More music that makes no sense but soothes something I can’t name.

Designing a simpler life isn’t about stripping things down until you’re bored. It’s about creating space for what feeds you—without waiting for permission. It’s about reworking your time and tasks like a stubborn old banjo tune until it finally fits your fingers.

It means knowing the difference between essential and expected. Between obligation and calling.

I’m still figuring it out. Some days I overbook myself out of habit. Some days I forget to eat because the clinic swallowed me whole. But then I come home, descend into that dingy basement, and play Bach on a banjo while my bearded dragon nods along like I’m doing something sacred.

Maybe I am.

This is what a simpler, intentional life looks like—for me: dissonant chords, unfinished ceilings, too many pets, one aging mother, and the soft defiance of choosing what matters.

It’s not clean. But it’s mine.

- Doctor Gwen