Somewhere in the last few years, something snapped inside all of us. One minute we were buying overpriced candles at Anthropologie and stress-eating protein bars in minivans, and the next minute we were Googling how to keep a sourdough starter alive and where to buy baby chicks.
Work stress? Make bread.
Parenting teens? Get a chicken.
Existential dread? Start a garden.
Midlife crisis? Try canning.
Feeling emotionally unhinged? Order heirloom seeds and pretend everything is fine.
We are coping. But in an adorable aesthetic totally Xennial way.
This is the era of cozy chaos, where the world feels like it is on fire and we respond by… baking. Or sneaking chickens into suburban backyards against city regulations. Or shopping for linen aprons we absolutely do not need but feel spiritually connected to.
And honestly, I support us…because I am us.
I started a flower farm in my late thirties, got 4 alpacas and 5 goats in my mid-forties and just ordered another packet of heirloom tomato seeds for next spring. I have not jumped on the sourdough bullet train but I did look for a bread machine at Target the other day.
If you’ve ever flirted with sourdough and realized it’s basically a hobby, a science experiment, and a personality trait, having a simple sourdough starter kit makes the whole thing way less intimidating.
We Are Craving Something Slower Because Everything Is Loud
The world sped up, technology sped up, expectations sped up, and our poor nervous systems sat there whispering please stop. Xennials built our entire adult lives in hustle mode. Jobs. Babies. Mortgages. Soccer tournaments. Constant multitasking. All while living through a recession, a pandemic, and whatever else the universe threw at us.
So now, in midlife, our brains are tapping slamming the brakes. Hard.
We do not want to optimize anymore. We want to knead dough like our grandmothers. We want to watch chickens putter around like confused little dinosaurs. We want to grow tomatoes to prove something to ourselves that we cannot articulate.
We want slow. Quiet. Tangible. Nourishing. Real. It is not a phase nor a crisis. It is a midlife nervous system intervention.
Because We Grew Up Analog and We Miss It
We are the very last generation who knew life before the internet stormed in and rearranged our entire existence. We grew up playing outside until the streetlights came on, drinking hose water like it was an artisan sparkling spring, and staring at clouds simply because we were bored and literally had nothing else to do. Our childhoods were undocumented, unmonitored, and gloriously uncurated. No one live-streamed our tantrums. No one commented on our outfits. No one recorded every single moment for later analysis. We were feral and free.
And now here we are, raising teens who need WiFi the way we needed pumped up tires on our banana seat bikes. They treat internet access like a basic human right, and honestly, some days I get it. Meanwhile, we are on our own phones more than we like to admit, doom scrolling while telling our kids to go outside and touch grass. The irony is thick.
So these cozy, hands-on hobbies… they feel like a return. A recalibration. A tiny doorway back to a version of ourselves who was not overstimulated, overwhelmed, or answering messages at 10 p.m. because someone at work “just had a quick question.” They take us back to a simpler brain space, where we could focus on one thing at a time without the world pinging us every three minutes.
Bread rising on the counter feels like childhood, back when time moved slowly enough for dough to matter.
A backyard flock feels like safety, like waking up early on weekends for cartoons and cereal.
Growing basil feels like hope, like maybe we can still nurture something without it needing a login or a software update.
We are not trying to become full homesteaders, despite whatever our Pinterest boards imply. We are trying to remember who we were before life got so loud. We are trying to reconnect with the girl who lived in our bodies before careers and kids and the constant buzzing of adulthood. We are trying to come home to ourselves, one loaf of bread and one backyard chicken at a time.
Let’s Be Honest… We Just Want Something That Makes Sense
Work does not always make sense. Parenting definitely does not make sense. The economy is confusing. The news is unhinged. Our hips hurt from simply sitting. Our phones are constantly poking us. Half the time we are just trying to remember how many exclamation points we used for our last password reset.
Meanwhile, bread makes sense.
Plants make sense.
Chickens, shockingly, make sense.
If you feed it, it grows.
If you nurture it, it thrives.
If you ignore it, it dies.
Straightforward. Clear. Predictable.
Homesteading-adjacent hobbies give us control in a world where we have very little. They give us something to care for that is not emotionally draining. They give us a tiny slice of stability.
Plus they give us content for Instagram. Let’s not pretend it doesn’t feel great to post a loaf of bread you handcrafted like a pioneer woman while wearing $90 yoga pants.
We Are All Secretly Dreaming of Running Away Somewhere Quiet
Not literally. Just emotionally.
We are fantasizing about disappearing to some peaceful little patch of land where no one needs us, no one emails us, and the only thing on our to do list is “water tomatoes.” We picture small acre living like it is the promised land. A little weedless garden. A tiny dirt-free greenhouse. Fresh chicken-shitless eggs waiting in a cute ceramic bowl that looks perfect in morning light. A kitchen that smells like cinnamon, warm calorie-free carbs, and the kind of peace we have been trying to buy at HomeGoods for years.
In our minds, this imaginary life is slow and soft and aesthetically pleasing. We wear linen. We walk barefoot. We put things in jars. We wake up with purpose and clear skin.
But in reality, we are Xennials. We still very much need Target and DoorDash and the ability to get Starbucks in under seven minutes or the day is simply not going to happen. We want rustic, but we also want two-day shipping. Overnight between 4-8am is better. We want a garden, but we also want central air. We want chickens, but we want someone else to watch them when we go on vacation. It is a delicate balance.
So what do we do?
We create a hybrid lifestyle, a soft launch of homesteading that does not require us to actually homestead. We grow herbs on the windowsill, we bake bread when the anxiety spikes, we buy a plant we swear we will not kill. We keep one toe in the soil and one toe in Amazon Prime because we are not trying to be pioneers. We are trying to be cozy without suffering.
This is the Xennial dream. A little bit farm. A little bit suburb. A little bit feral. A little bit bougie. It is the perfect mash up of “I want a simpler life” and “I need my mobile order to be ready when I pull up.” And honestly, it works for us.
If this post made you want to bake bread, raise chickens, or at least romanticize doing both, a few of the tools that make the lifestyle easier are a sourdough starter kit, a good proofing basket, and a dependable chicken feeder and waterer. No pressure. Just options for leaning all the way in.
👉 sourdough starter kit
👉 proofing basket
👉 chicken feeder and waterer
