[halper]

I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful. I had a good stretch of time between jobs (fortunately voluntarily) a while back and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.

During my time unemployed my pace of life was more like it is when you are on a camping/hiking trip with a group of scouts: a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch (beginning with walking to fetch the relevant supplies). Now when I am back to work, I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym, because there is not time to do both.

I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.

[iberator]

> I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful.

>I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.

Trust me mate. Being homeless or a homeless traveler is HARD. I am homeless for 3 months now and it's absolutely devastating for my soul and morale.

Having no "safe harbour" takes away all enjoyment from "freedom". I was an avid hiker as well in the past :)

[buran77]

People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives. You see this with the coder who dreams of the farmer's life, or that of a "rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond", or even that of a soldier.

It's probably the assumption that something that can be a nice hobby on its best days, a short escape, must also be a nice life. But it's the dose that makes the poison. Things are very different when they become your life and there's no safety net. It's why almost anyone can walk a line drawn on the ground where mistakes are totally forgiven, but very few can walk a high rope with no safety net.

[tbrake]

I don't know about romanticizing a hard life but I'll definitely get hit with a very strong sense of wanting to escape and leave it all behind.

It hits me every summer like clockwork tbh - leaving a nicely typed 2 minutes notice on my VP's desk and just taking my chances as a traveling beach bum. Akin to wanderlust, I'm filled with the urge to just go off into the unknown.

In my heart of hearts I know I'm a soft city boy though. I wouldn't last a week.

[mothballed]

You would adapt rapidly.

I was fired from a city job.

Started hitchiking and living outside. Eventually worked on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea, worked the oil fields in the Dakotas, fought in a civil war in another country, hiked state-long parts of the PCT, hung out with tree-dwelling hippies in the doug-fir forests etc.

I would live that life again in a heartbeat if I didn't have a child to support, which was pretty much the end of my adventures. If you're single you can pretty much work day labor 25% of the year and have plenty enough to live inna-woods. The reason why most 'homeless' people seem so miserable is they are too mentally ill or drug ridden to do some fairly basic things to make their lives living outside 100x better; if you are sober and able bodied and able-minded it is a cakewalk.

[mrbombastic]

You have any write ups? Sounds like quite the interesting life

[throwaway894345]

> People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives. You see this with the coder who dreams of the farmer's life, or that of a "rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond", or even that of a soldier.

Some people even go camping for recreation.

[buran77]

Exactly, it's the dose that makes the poison. A week of camping is fun, a lifetime of camping is hell.

[macintux]

And living off the land was much easier (not that it was ever easy) when there was land to live off of.

[adregan]

I often think of Thoreau when my mind drifts to romanticizing farming:

> I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

[theoreticalmal]

The romanticized farmer aspect always gives me pause as well. Farming is a very difficult job that requires many hours of work every single day, every day per year. Even if you had enough money left over from some other job to get to go travel, you could never find the time to do so after becoming a farmer

[jjkaczor]

As a child, I spent about 4-5 years on both a family farm and then followed by about 6-months at a large commercial egg production farm (my father took a job as the farm manager, came with free housing) - it cemented within me the desire never to toil in the fields or take care of animals outside of pets.

Yet of course - my kids and grandkids who were raised in suburban environments ALL romanticize farming...

[10729287]

It’s not even fun in stardew valley to be honest.

[nonameiguess]

Interestingly, one of my ex-girlfriends from my 20s had a dad that did this. He was an engineer and quit to become a farmer, building his own generators and living off the grid powering his operation with waste vegetable oil he obtained for free from the same restaurants he sold artisan vegetables to. He lived in a different state and I only met him once, but it actually did seem like a pretty great life and he was clearly happy with it.

The problem to me when I see this kind of life suggested as something people should try to do is that it isn't universalizable. There are only so many restaurants in any given city that need artisan vegetables. There is only so much land near such cities that can grow it. Even if all people who try are equally able, very few would succeed in doing this.

[mothballed]

My grandfather was a farmer. "Out in the fields" or in the workshed practically all day everyday. But he also loved to hunt, had a rental gig on the farm for poor people that wanted to live in shacks "down by the river" (they built the sheds themselves), and would constantly be pointing out to me all the stuff in the house he had built himself (he could have easily gotten them just as cheap and without any additional labor by mail order -- this was post WWII).

Another words, farmers back in that time would pretend they were busy all day. But actually spent a lot of the time "out in fields" bullshitting hunting, hanging with their friends at the river, or having fun building random shit in the workshop out of leisure rather than necessity. I didn't have the heart to tell the women in my family he probably didn't come home sooner because he didn't want to hear nagging or whining children, because it was blatantly obvious to me what the situation was.

[lo_zamoyski]

As you say, farming is difficult, so if you're going into it with the expectation that it is idyllic, you have another thing coming. There is no "time off" on the farm. Some may enjoy that, but most people dreaming about it wouldn't.

It's much better to examine one's motivations for romanticizing the farm. Is it escapism from reality and the suffering endemic to it (in which case, you are only multiplying it by avoiding it)? Is it pride (too good to work)? Is it an impulse toward "immanentizing the eschaton"? Does your current job suck? Is the environment bad? Is it because you're living your life in a meaningless way?

Worth exploring.

[HanClinto]

> People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives.

The film Sullivan's Travels from 1941 is a film that explores the concept of this romanticization. It's a good movie whose storytelling and comedy still hold up today. I think more people should be aware of it.

Trivia: This is also where the movie O' Brother Where Art Thou got its name.

[64d032fe]

Hard, in this sense, does not necessarily mean negative or bad. And the safety nets are often illusions (see: insurance, for one example).

There's a balance of course, but I believe most people would benefit from harder lives (in the natural/physical sense). Modern life being more comfortable and easier is actually bullshit. If your life is driving through traffic hours a day to go to a place to sit in front of a computer by yourself to send out messages by chat and email, that is a very hard life. You are forsaking nature and an eon of evolution to satisfy what exactly?

[buran77]

> Hard does not mean negative or bad

It does when it applies to your life. (Edit to reply to your edit) A bit of physical activity doesn't make your life harder. A lot of it might. And almost only hard physical activity is pure punishment, even literally used as such in labor camps.

> the safety nets are often illusions

Safety nets are sometimes illusions, they are mostly helping. Like an airbag they only need to work once to prove their worth.

> see: insurance, for one example

Insurance saved the livelihoods of millions of people, sometimes many times over. Rebuilding houses, repairing equipment, covering medical expenses, or critical services. Sometimes they fail you.

Do you know many people who wish for a hard life? For the homeless life? To not have any sort of insurance?

> There's a balance of course [...] You are forsaking nature and an eon of evolution to satisfy what exactly?

The balance.

[nonameiguess]

> Insurance saved the livelihoods of millions of people, sometimes many times over. Rebuilding houses, repairing equipment, covering medical expenses, or critical services. Sometimes they fail you.

This one always gets me. I've had 7 orthopedic surgeries in the past decade. I couldn't walk without a cane or tie my own shoes in 2016 and today I can skateboard, run marathons, and squat double my bodyweight. I've had my house flood from a burst pipe on the top floor, had my HVAC condenser struck by lightning, had a city dump truck crush my parked car. Insurance has saved my ass so many times that I could pay a hundred grand a month in premiums for the rest of my life and still come out ahead.

People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

[thoroughburro]

> People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

I’ve experienced plenty of my own claim denials. In fact, I had to stop treatment of my chronic condition due to the last one. This is certain to cause my knees to fail in a few years.

You think they only exist in headlines? Then get your own head out of the news and talk to real people.

[hamdingers]

What a horrific misattribution. Doctors, nurses, the people who built and maintain the facilities they work in, and generations of researchers saved your life.

Insurance is the rent-seeking middleman that exists between you and them for no purpose other than to shave a percentage off forthemselves.

[farrelle25]

> Having no "safe harbour" ...

Yes this is soul destroying - the psychological effects are brutal. Not having any little place as a 'base'.

I was homeless in Europe for a few weeks and it really crushes someone. I can see why so many rough sleepers take alcohol / drugs. Just to numb everything. I used to drink a few cans every night before trying to find a place to sleep.

Another crushing thing: as a commenter below said - on average people look down at you as if you were dirty etc. I found that so hard too.

I wish you the very best wherever you are ... really hope your situation will get better somehow please God...

(edit: oh just realised something - not implying the OP takes any substances or anything... just talking in general how I had to resort to alcohol in my situation)

[iberator]

Thank you mate :)

[halper]

I can relate to that, having not always been in such fortunate circumstances as I am now. I hope that your situation improves!

[iberator]

thank you

[IncreasePosts]

Maybe that's because you're homeless and don't want to be. The Leatherman could have settled down, per the article he "had money", but he just didn't want to.

I was intentionally homeless for 4 months, just riding my bike all around western Europe, just setting up my tent in a random woodland every night. I didn't have a safe harbor, except for the knowledge that I could get a job and rent an apartment if I wanted to.

It was not hard at all. In fact, I loved every minute of it. I lived/worked on a farm and slept on a bed for 2 weeks(WWOOFing), and I could not wait to get back out on the road again.

[iberator]

Camping with money for 4 months is not homelessness! Thats such absurd idea.

[IncreasePosts]

I actually had almost no money. And no connection to money(parents, relatives, a boo, etc...).

[mycall]

> Being homeless or a homeless traveler is HARD.

You can have money or food supplies and still be a homeless traveler. While it is common to assume homeless is broke, sometimes adventure and not being strapped to a certain, civilized life is the goal. I'm always amazed how far legs can take you.

[iberator]

What do you mean?!

If you have money it's not homelessness but adventure and hiking.

Homelessness is a forced state without an easy way out.

[mycall]

home· less. having no home or permanent place of residence : unhoused [0]

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homeless

[theteapot]

> .. it's absolutely devastating for my soul and morale.

Why? Stay strong my friend.

[borski]

For one thing, because everyone around you looks at you like you are dirty and the scum of the earth, on average.

And that’s before you get to the fact that each night you need to find a place to sleep and nobody wants it to be near them.

It’s immensely depressing, and hard to stay resilient.

[theteapot]

Yeah I hear you. It would be de-stigmatizing if more people with mean were voluntarily "homeless" like the Leatherman. But people just wanna watch Netflix I guess.

[dominicq]

Yeah. The options for lots of leisure are either: a) be homeless, or b) be rich. Those of us inbetween always have to choose and make compromises.

In my life, this has forced me to quit on a bunch of things I would have continued otherwise, and to lean down things like my workouts and so on. This isn't necessarily bad, I like that I can now do 80% with 20% of time/effort, but still, would be nice to have more slack.

[borski]

There is a third option, which is to move to a place with a much lower cost of living. This isn’t always possible, due to family or job, but it’s not exactly uncommon either. Remote work, in particular, has helped with this. Work fewer hours, for less money, but with fewer needs.

Doable, but it’s about what you prioritize and care about.

[apt-apt-apt-apt]

> Remote work, in particular, has helped with this. Work fewer hours, for less money

Honestly, this sounds like an armchair fantasy.

It sounds great on paper– tech jobs pay $150K, so just find a remote job and work half-time. Boom, less taxes and you still have $5K/mo plus tons of time!

IME though, 99% of jobs want to own you full-time. There are almost no roles where you can be part-time. The other alternative, independent contractor or Upwork, is also very difficult to start, even if you have good experience and skills.

[borski]

I didn’t say you could do it working for Amazon. There are plenty of law firms, medical offices, etc., that need software and IT help and are happy to have it part-time or provide flexibility. Sure, it won’t be FAANG, but that wasn’t what we were talking about here.

[apt-apt-apt-apt]

What kind of software development would law/medical/other offices need on a flexible basis? I'm having trouble envisioning a scenario where someone could realistically be a dev part-time.

[borski]

There is always a ton of work; off-the-shelf tools are rarely off the shelf and require set up, maintenance, etc.

A lot of writing glue code to build dashboards and things.

Nowadays, a lot of AI work to improve attorney and paralegal efficiency, etc.

Law firms have software devs and/or IT on staff, or they contract it out. Contracting rather than a W2 is also an option.

It’s not “fun.” But it pays well and is often doable remotely / part-time.

[OJFord]

Almost nothing is advertised as part time, but way more than 1% would be happily accomodating if you asked to reduce to x days/week, I think. Especially for people coming to that decision while in the job, vs. negotiating for it in an offer.

[theamk]

Or work as contractor / part-time.

I've had two experiences with people like that:

- At one place I've worked at (big corp), the QA department was full of contractors. One of the contractors was only working 9 months per year - they spent all summers in Australia. Everyone knew about that and accepted this. The contractor was great, and no one had problems with that (I am sure not having to pay them anything while they were away helped :) )

- At other place, a small startup, we had a team member who was in a band. He'd work for us for a few months, help us to finish a project and make sure customer is happy.. and then disappear for a few more months to tour the US. Again, he was a great programmer, and we always welcomed him back.

I am sure that not every place is like this (for example my current workplace is pretty bureaucratic and would not be happy with this arrangement), but things like this definitely exist.

[tasuki]

c) The (lean) FIRE (financial independence / early retirement) way. If you do the math and can do without some of the pricier luxuries of "modern life", you really don't need much money at all.

[aa-jv]

I lived a pretty high life in Los Angeles for 15 years, and when the time came for me to move to Europe (I'm Australian), I had two weeks where I was basically homeless before the flight home - lease expired on the apartment, circumstances with couch-surfing were not ideal - so I tried two weeks living hard, to see what it was like, as I was also going to have a 6 month hiatus before Europe, back home in the Australian outback, which is a different definition of rough - so I thought, what the heck, why not see what its like. I'd lived in a bubble in LA for so long, the bubble had burst, so why not just try it for a couple of weeks and see how far I got .. I kitted myself out with a sleeping bag and a tent and all the rudimentary camping basics, and headed out of my cushy Los Feliz neighborhood, onto the streets.

It was the hardest thing I'd ever done to myself. My gear was stolen within days, I got beat up and nearly stuck with dirty heroin needles at least 3 times, almost arrested twice, and yeah .. it just generally sucked. I was not prepared for the hardship.

6 months in the Australian desert after that experience definitely made me appreciate the Australian desert a lot more than I had previously, and I will never, ever try this experiment in an American city again.

Its not the street that'll get to you. Its the street life. If I were the only homeless bum in the area, I would've done better I think - but it was all too easy to filter out to skid row after having been chased out of pretty much every 'sanctity' spot I could find, under bridges and in the Griffith Park area - whether by cops or by other homeless people. It was pretty stupid of me, in hindsight. I really didn't need to do it, I was just trying to push my boundaries before heading into the Kimberley region to eat snakes and lizards. That was, by comparison, a far better experience than the reptiles of LA. Would not recommend.

[noelwelsh]

Where were you living in the Kimberley? I've only ever been to Broome in that region, but eating lizards definitely seemed optional.

[aa-jv]

Broome for a few days with family, then into the deep desert with Aborigine family members for a few months of walkabout and general western-society detox. I was very lucky to have been invited to see things most whiteys have absolutely no clue about. There are parts of the Kimberley/Pilbarra that are, quite simply, among the most spiritually rewarding places on the planet.

I would spend my days in serious anticipation of the night sky, a glorious spectacle which majesty is yet to be matched by any human thing I've seen since then.

It was awesome and something I do hope to do again before I perish. Probably the most impactful event in my life was waking up on a dry creek bed surrounded by camels, who had come in the night to sleep at my side, sharing the warm creek stone bed.

Catching snakes for tucker was fun too. ;)

[dyauspitr]

Being homeless in a city doesn’t sound like fun at all. Being homeless in a rural buffer outside cities seems much more pleasant.

[aa-jv]

It was. The distinct contrast between the hell of street life in LA and the wild, uninhabited, yet entirely less hostile, wild outback, definitely gave me context for a life lived, since then, in awe of the folly of humanity.

[throwaway173738]

Nature can be cruel, unrewarding, and ambivalent but she is never spiteful and nothing she does is ever personal.

[aa-jv]

Very true. And in the Australian outback, it can be absolutely beautiful too.

I found it quite rewarding, personally. Stripping all the material world of 15 years of life in California took me just a few days, semi-naked, thirsty and hungry, walking barefoot among the spinifex and wattles. Definitely a life-changing experience I would do again and again.

[ThinkBeat]

It may be romanic because you have not yet understood the real life consequences of the "lifestyle". The problems, health risks, and stress it brings with it.

[uncircle]

> I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful.

What sounded wonderful to me was this sentence: 'One store kept a record of an order: "one loaf of bread, a can of sardines, one-pound of fancy crackers, a pie, two quarts of coffee, one gill of brandy and a bottle of beer"'

This was a time when food brands weren't really a thing, the store probably had one type of bread, one type of (local) canned sardines, one type of crackers, etc. Each shop had a different variation and "menu", so to speak, all completely unique to each other. These days there is no difference between grocery stores, they all sell big-brand stuff and only convenience/price is the differentiating factor. No wonder only Walmarts are left.

[munificent]

> a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch

I think about this a lot when it comes to AI automation for coding.

Yes, it's nice if an AI can speed up the sort of semi-mindless parts of programming. But I strongly suspect that I need those spans of time for my mind to do the background processing necessary for the actual intellectually challenging parts of the job.

I've written two books and anyone who has done that will telling that writing is exhausting. It's an act that is almost purely intellectual with very little menial labor. And it is so utterly draining that it's hard to do for more than a couple of hours a day.

I don't relish programming turning into that. I like the easy refactoring and bug fixing tasks because they provide a respite between periods of very deep thinking while still keeping me mostly focused on the overall problem domain. I suspect I would be an overall worse engineer if I lost those.

[stronglikedan]

Surely you're taking a lunch break now that you're back to work, and that is enough time to hit the gym and scarf down some nutrients afterwards, leaving after work for family time. It only takes 15-20 minutes of activity per day to maintain fitness.

[dyauspitr]

This sounds wonderful until the winter. Seems wonderful in temperate or warmer climes.

[TacticalCoder]

> ... and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.

I hear you. For about two years I got to live in a rural area, on the sea side, 45 minutes drive from the closest highway. 5000 people villages was a 15 minutes drive.

Chopping wood to then heat the house, having animals pass in front of me while I'd be reading HN under the porch before going to bed.

Walking just for the sake of walking from the house to the sea and then back.

Heny Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Full quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2690-i-went-to-the-woods-be...

That and the quote about cities being about mystification.

(3 minutes elapsed)

Ah, found it (first read it for someone posted here on HN btw):

Thomas Merton's Raids On The Unspeakable: "I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. I can have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed, where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. It is given a precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor’s daughter. All of this is mystification. The city itself lives on its own myth. Instead of waking up and silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. They have constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it from renewing itself and man."

Thankfully I still go to that place where I used to live, several times a year. Sky is so clear I can many stars.

Once my kid shall turn 18, I plan to go back live there.

I don't think us humans were meant to be stacked in cities and high-rises like ants. It's just like communism: great theory but wrong species.

> I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym

Wife does her gym at home: proper stuff in gym gear. Mostly just simple exercises: no crazy gear besides a few weights. No driving to the gym so twice the time saved. No need to shower at the gym or seat all sweaty in the car.

She does 20 or 30 minutes each day.