For over a decade, Dominique Browning was the editor-in-chief of House & Garden. She currently writes a column for the Environmental Defense Fund and blogs at SlowLoveLife.com. She is the author of Around the House and In the Garden and lives in New York City and Rhode Island.

How did you get to where you are now?

Rhode Island is what I consider to be home. After losing my job I decided I had to sell my house because my children had grown up and moved out and I was rattling around and I didn't need a house that was a commuting distance to a job in New York I didn't have any longer. I had a summer house in Rhode Island that I had just needed to rebuild and Rhode Island has always been a healing place to me - so I thought I would go back up there and spend a lot of time there.

I've been coming here for more than 25 years. I have friends here and my sister is here. And a lot of us have those healing places we return to. It's much more outdoor-oriented than life in the city. I have a life of gardening and visiting farms for food, and being in touch with the ocean. It's a really nice life for a writer. I have enough friends that I can go in and around of solitude and engagement with people, and a very beautiful place, and very soul-stirring for me.

My blog
Blogging was totally new to me.  I had resisted doing it when I was at Conde Nast and afterwards, I was too flattened to even think about it.  I am glad I didn’t do it until I was ready to do it.  Free of the corporate umbrella, I can write about whatever I want to write about.

Slow Love happened out of necessity.  I wrote the first chapter of the book last.  I didn’t really understand what the book was about in a way until after I turned it in.  In writing that chapter I found the title.  After I found that I was groping toward this idea of “slow love” I realized I wasn’t done with the idea, I had only started.  So I asked, “How can I keep this going?  What does it mean to live this way?” That’s how I came up with the idea of the blog. 

The book is not called “Slow Life.”  I kept drifting towards that title and kept resisting it.  I don’t want a slow life.  My life is full of activity, productive and engaged.  I wanted to go to something deeper.  It has to do with slow love within our busy, productive, active lies.  That ‘s what I’m trying to explore.

How do you see yourself differently now than you did 10 years ago?

There's almost nothing the same.  That's how different it is, starting with my work.  I am a company of one and I work for myself and organize my own schedule.   I do have a never-say-no motto because I think it's good to take whatever work comes your way.  I'm incredibly busy but I organize my time and don't worry about managing other people in the way I used to.  I'm much more thrown back on my own resources and in a much more creative place.  Blogging also is a wonderful creative outlet - being able to write whatever I want whenever I want and not have to ask an editor for permission.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I don't know.  I really have no idea.  I think I'm still in for big changes.  I don't want to predict.  I hope I feel as busy and productive and grounded as I feel now.