Christine: despite being male, I relate alot to your post. Part of why I like living in Frederick is that we avoid lots of the pressures that make our lives complex. I think that we all do a pretty good job of making things simple. One of the biggest elements, in fact, is how compact our lives our here. I think that time spent driving around is one of the great time drains in America, and we are all quite fortunate to avoid that.
I think that business is also generated through isolation. There is so much that we do individually that we could accomplish much more efficiently if done collectively. Again, I think that our community does a better than average job with this, but we could do better. Co-housing is the next step. 
At the end of the day the challenge is entirely inside ourselves to weed out the distractions. It is all about prioritization. But it is a great challenge for everyone.
Toby,
I agree that living compactly in a smaller town cuts out loads of driving time. I also like the fact that there are fewer choices of things to do here than in a huge city, so there is that much less distraction. I still think modern expectations of what’s possible to accomplish create an environment that thrives on stress and busy-ness. It’s worse elsewhere, but I’m still trying to figure out how to make my life here a little slower-paced!