Ellen Lewis

There are many lives that are good without access to private land. There are many aspects of permaculture that are not gardening-based. There are even ways to access land that are not ownership based.
Community garden plots - even better, organizing and helping in community gardens. Community gardens don't only grow vegetables, they grow outreach. People engage with the people they see working, and learn what is happening and what is possible.
Care for people - volunteering in libraries, schools, school gardens, senior homes, your own extended family or neighborhood. For some people, even politics. Working on local water quality or land use issues. Learning how to work collectively for goals that are larger than personal.
Gardening on waste land - the parking strip, vacant lots. We have a couple of parks that used to be garbage dumps and are pretty barren. I occasionally go put local acorns and fruit seeds in the ground there. Do any come up? Who knows. Do the ground squirrels eat them all? Maybe. I still find it worthwile. Despite our teminology, nothing is permanent. A tree that lives for five years rather than fifty is still a net benefit.
Education. Both in schools and elsewhere. I'm a docent at the local native plant garden. Lead nature hikes and foraging outings in the city and in parks. The more people know about our natural world, the more they care about the Earth.
Production. We don't have to grow the produce to participate in the production of our sustenance. Brewing, fermentation, fiber arts, cooking, woodworking, natural building, repairs of all sorts, clean transportation; as you can see by the forums these are all part of permaculture and all are important to how we live well.

I have a good life.
I'm on about a tenth of an acre. It's more than I can optimally manage.
It's all the exercise I need besides walking.
It's far from supplying all my food, but it's often more of particular foods than I can use. And I don't think I could supply all my food regardless of garden size.
It's a constant education and an opportunity for research and an ongoing art project.
It's an oasis of beauty that I am happy to return to whenever I go away.
It keeps me attuned to the local weather and flora and fauna and the wheel of the year.
It would be harder for me to be happy with less, but I would probably be overwhelmed by much more.

Plus, how do you deal with the clammy shower curtain blowing over and sticking to you?

It's not exactly cold in my house, I live in a very moderate climate, but I hate taking showers, and I get cold when I get out no matter how hot I run the water. I certainly never run it long enough to bring up my core temperature. That's simply too much water. I have no idea how long that would take, there's always one side getting cold.
I suspect it's just that I'm accustomed to baths.
Yes, prewarmed towels help. I once lived in a house where the water heater was in the bathroom, and whoever was taking a shower hung their towel on the hot water pipe while we were in the shower. A treat.
The real problem for me, though, is how do you get your feet clean in the shower? Even when I stop being afraid I'll fall over standing on one foot in a hard slippery place, probably with my eyes closed, I still have slug slime and poplar buds and whatnot stuck to my feet.

Calling In, by Loretta Ross. About making allies rather than enemies.

Plus I forgot to count rewinding skeins, chopping mushrooms, simmering mushrooms and yarn, drying, washing, untangling. Probably another twenty hours or more of all that.

I think it was about two months of knitting, maybe an hour or so a day.
And a season of mushroom foraging, which is hard to calculate. It has to be the right time of year, and I have to get lucky while taking a walk out in a park somewhere and find mushrooms within reach because I'm old and not very limber.

The purple and green and grayish green are Western Jackolantern, Omphalatos olivascens. The yellow is a variety of rustgills, Gymnopilus species. The rusty orange is old man's beard lichen, Usnea species. No mordants, most mushrooms don't need them.

Our puffballs are white and I don't imagine they give much color. However I have used the Dyer's Puffball or Dead Man's Foot, Pisolithus tinctorius, which isn't an actual puffball, to make a dark chocolate brown.

Colorwork is in some ways easier than socks, though socks are more portable.

This sweater I just finished for my daughter is made of commercial wool dyed with locally foraged mushrooms.

If I were single (and I am both suitable and not suitable in all sorts of other ways) I would be put off by the expectation of failure.
Why expect failure in relationship? Do you want someone who sees you as a challenge, not as a partner? Or as a partner in a doomed venture?
Everything has a lifespan.
Getting to the end can and often is seen as failure. Not a very realistic stance, but one I'm struggling with every time I see my wrinkles or feel how my old body doesn't do what it once did. But really, that's a success, I got this far.
Convincing oneself to accept a certain outcome as final is simply trying to avoid seeing what's further along. One might end up single. One might end up partnered. One might end up grieving. One might end up thinking about dead ends rather than being willing to keep following that little trace that might be a path around the other side of that boulder, just to find out.
But no one in their right mind wants a partner who has his mind set that relationships are not going to work and that he is torturing her with his companionship.