Ned Harr wrote:I do wonder though, whether this is a good way to live in general, or a commendable "phase" or "period" in a "life well lived". For instance, without a significant other and kids, who takes care of you when you're too sick and/or old to care for yourself?
Hopefully it won't be too long before you're back at the library or wherever you're getting your free internet-connected computing so you can enlighten me...
By the way I also have some "how the heck do you do it" questions, stuff I'm just curious about:
- It wasn't clear whether you are unemployed right now, but if you are, you do have several thousand dollars in expenses per year, so how do you earn the money for those? Even a small house will have things that need to be replaced/maintained...plus you gotta eat, etc...And what if your friends want to go out and do something that costs money, do you have to rely on one of them to spot you? Or do you have a big cache of savings to draw on, or...?
- Being unemployed, how do you pass your days, how do you learn and grow? (Not that I doubt you, I just wonder what is your particular means of doing so.) Do you read books? Do you do anything creative?
- How did you acquire the land on which your small house sits, and did you have any trouble building the house itself? (Some places will not let you occupy or in some cases even build a structure if it is below a certain square footage, or if it lacks certain amenities.)
- Lastly, are you familiar with the "Chappy" character from King of the Hill? I'm guessing not, but that's a shame!
There is a thing called friends. Yes, thanks to my childhood, I do think about that now. Most of my life, like since 6th grade in school I have only hung out with people who are 20+ years older than me. Yes, they are dying off, so I do realize what is meant by the term TROUBLE, err, trouble is brewing.
One thing you really learn how to do is to not follow the crowd. I had basically no friends growing up. I never fought back, so everyone took advantage of me and I ended up getting badly bullied as a kid. As a result of that combined with, just last year figured out I was also neglected at home, I come to the simple understanding if I wanted to get along in the life and not get taken advantage of, there was a simple solution, stay the heck away from people. Sure I go out to the libraries to get online, but unless someone talks to me, I don't talk to anyone. So I have few friends and they are all older than me. Actually since the end of 2019 I spent a fair amount of time helping them with health issues, hence why I started coming to understand that I'm not getting any younger.
You learn to be innovative by not following the crowd and having to rely on yourself. Over a decade ago I broke my leg. I only had the bicycle for getting around, plus a couple of friends. They helped out with getting the doctor office but otherwise I come to realize, if an amputee can ride a bicycle, damn it, so can I. I had a homemade rack on the back that I made big enough so I could lay a full size daypack on it without anything overhanging off the rack. After getting fed up with not being sick and more importantly not being tired I knew I had to do something other lay around home all day long. I figured out how I could mount the crutches to the bike and I found I could put the broken leg up on the rack to keep it out of the way. I ended up riding almost 500 miles one legged while still in the cast. You don't have to let the small things stand in your way, you just have to learn how to think outside the box. Again, don't follow the crowd.
I do have some farmland that generates around the same 4000-5000 annually so I can use the money from it to pay my way each year. I had a house I sold in the midwest when I moved up here to NH and bought my place up here for less than I sold the house for back in the midwest. The property already had the house on it(built in the 1950s). I knew when I moved up here I wanted to buy something that not only I could pay cash for but also something that wouldn't leave me paying out massive property tax bill each year. I knew by buying a small house I wouldn't have much in the way property taxes, repairs, or making it look like its being lived in. I just bought smart. People don't need all the garbage they have. If they first got rid of the tell-a-vision, and stopped wasting time on social media, they could easily save themselves massive amounts of money as they wouldn't have any reason to buy all the unnecessary items that clutter up their house. Now by not having all the items, they would quickly find they didn't need such a large house. Now they move into a more reasonable sized house the process can repeat itself again, and again and again. You get down to where you don't need anything any longer. I hardly buy anything other than food anymore. I have no reason for it. I don't want it, I don't have the space for it, so why buy it?
I have come to learn to listen to what interests me. I hop online and download videos to teach myself how to do it. The craziest thing 1.5 years ago was wood turning. I got a freebie lathe from a friend of mine who didn't want it anymore. I downloaded videos and followed along. I taught myself a good chunk of the way through learning how to turn wood. If you want to teach yourself anything, you can teach it to yourself quite easily anymore by hopping on the internet and downloading videos.
Sure I have 24 hours a day of free time, does it mean I tons of FREE time, NO. I typically never have enough time available to get everything done I would like to get accomplished each day. I have no trouble keeping myself busy. I have learnt that if I don't have to follow the crowd, I don't have to do things the way the crowd does them. I don't have to get from point A to point B by automobile. I'm not in a major rush to get there so I don't have to have the car or the car expenses. By not having the car expenses, it cut my annual expenses by close to 50%. It meant I didn't need to have the job which eats up tons of time each day between getting to and from work but also Slaving Nine to Five(what a crummy way to make a living). By not doing things the way everyone else does them I can 'black' rig things instead of doing them the standard way. Most things when I do it is not done using standard tools, standard materials, or standard methods. I make up my own system and try to get it so I can do it for nothing. I try to use what I already have laying around not being used for something else and 'black' rig it up so I can get the items to do what I want them to do. Staying busy isn't difficult, even if you have all the time in the world and don't have someone sitting beside you giving you honey do projects. Everybody wants to make you think that if you had all the time the world you would go crazy. Remember what happens when you retire. You never retire, you only find yourself doing more things, having less time then you had while you were still working. I know of a man who sold both businesses he used to own, a bicycle shop and car dealership. His wife died in between selling both businesses. He has less time now then what he used to have while married and owning both businesses. He is always busy helping other people out. I volunteer a couple of days a week at the local Makerspace(I don't do anything there other than volunteer, got involved due the guy mentioned above, he needed some help in the Makerspace and I was living with him at the time, helping him recover after knee replacement surgery and as he was rehabbing the now vacant bicycle shop, the only way I could go in was to become a member, the offer was there for doing it volunteer style so I jumped on it and have volunteering there for over two years now, it has helped me with bigtime my so called introvertedness).
Doing more with less is quite easy, you just have to want to do it badly enough to make it happen. Sure I'm not permaculture kind of person. In some cases I am, but in the standard sense of things I'm not. Yeah, the property I own limits me quite nicely since it is most junk ground, the only things I can grow are stuff I'm not suppose to even try to grow, like avocados. Anything else and the ground needs massive overhaul. Heck a nice part of the yard is nothing but bog thanks to the high water table around my place.
Biggest bit of advice I can give, don't listen to what everyone tells you. They tell you that crazy stuff to scare you off and make you not even want to try to change. They want to keep you doing the same thing as long as they possibly can. Go out and spend some time in nature, aka go a long hike, two week minimum. Get out in nature and stay out there for a while and see for yourself that you don't need much in the way of anything other than food and water. It will shift the way you think massively. My AT thruhike in the late 90s helped show me how little I really need.
