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Should I just quit urban and social life for a rural and lonely life?

I’m majoring in CS related-field, and I used to have tons of passion for it and underlying tech, and worked as full stack dev, but my mind was very different in a good way (better at logical/cognitive demanding tasks, creative, productive, etc). Things happened, and I just can’t stand living in society, experiencing all this materialistic world and feeling sick about it. I’m truly traumatized and I’ve been trying all available means to improve (so I’m not asking what rule 3 is against)… I can’t feel any passion for what I used to do… The meanings I gave for my life and hope are away. I don’t care anymore about digital world, industrialization, I just can’t. So my performance has suffered due to all this.

So, it can sound funny to read this, but I am considering living in a farm I have access to and do my own farming to eat, artesian well for water, constructing just a little home to live… I don’t exactly care about electricity. I would probably be happier just by burning some stuff to have light at night if needed and looking at the stars all alone until death.

What do you all think about this?

malloc ,

Sounds like you are going through burn out.

Use your vacation time and reset - travel, catch up with friends, go camping, visit family, talk with a therapist. Do whatever it is that makes you happy or to find happiness.

Once you reset, then make a decision whether you want to uproot your life to the Styx and pivot to something else.

Orionza ,
@Orionza@lemmy.world avatar

I also had a career in tech. I’m a woman. I’ve been stepped on, harassed, disrespected. I’m just a country girl who tried to fit in the big city. And I did for awhile. But then all the layoffs, and the last company I was at just keeled over from insufficient funding, while the ceos had a ton of money and we had all these luncheons and outside training weekends. So wasteful. Disillusioned, I didn’t want to go back.

I also wanted a farm. If you’re young and strong still, do it. I’m 60 now. We were unable to obtain that farm. I guess it was meant to be. I still hope for a super mini something - some chickens and a coupla goats or a mini cow or something. You get tired after 60 and try to downsize and reduce what you do to just what’s important.

Regarding no electricity etc - be realistic and balanced. Don’t make it hard on yourself. Go get your farm in the country, but do yourself and family a favor and have a proper bathroom, running water and electricity with internet. Nobody really likes pooping in those compost toilets or having to hand pump a well for water or garden 😀 and while you may think it’s okay if you’re strong and young believe me in 20 years which goes by fast you’ll be wanting decent plumbing and electric and will likely be grateful for some internet.

31415926535 ,

That’s my fantasy. Have drawn up plans. Would love to live on plot of wooded land with artists, techies, eccentrics. Privacy respected, no one forced to do anything. But community bulletin board, hey I need this, can offer this in exchange.

There’s a website where, if you already have land, can order tiny home kit for 10 to 20k.

Or, can order pre-assembled tiny home, hitch it to truck, more freedom of movement.

My fantasy. Plot of land, nature. Garden, grow some of my own food. Solar power, sustainable. Local community I can visit to trade food, services. I scour the woods looking for materials, bring them to my self built cabin, and make cat furniture out of found wood. Creative cat furniture, wall habitats, can sell for $700 or more

csolisr ,

Fun fact: I’m actually aiming to do just that someday. My work is mostly remote, so if I can manage to live just close enough to the city and with enough space to get my own plantation, I could feasibly live off the grid with only a subscription to the Internet

Harvey656 ,

Grew up in the rural life, my class only had 53 people. Love nature, love the quiet. Hate the Trump loving people with half a brain cell. If you go to the hills, expect the fools. Just because you leave the fools in the city doesn’t mean you don’t get a whole new set of fools. The people near you are important, including your neighbors and if you can’t stand them it isn’t worth it.

Maybe try a temporary housing in a rural area to see if it’s actually for you.

ccunix ,

Sounds like you need a holiday.

Rent a log cabin with no cell service for 2 weeks and see what you feel like when you get back.

TheDarkKnight ,

Yeah, do it. 100%.

Kage520 ,

I like all the comments about burnout and addressing that. When I was in a similar mindset, I would dream of hiking the pct. 6 months on a trail where all I had to worry about was walking. Or I could take a 0 day and enjoy camp. Slow paced life. I even bought books and learned the equipment I would need. Spent vacations testing that equipment and adjusting to what I actually needed. I remember coming back from five nights out staying in a camping hammock and being amazed at the “palace” I live in comparatively.

I could go at any time I felt work was absolutely too much. I almost did. For some reason, having all that knowledge and feeling like I could go was enough of a mental break for me to carry on.

At least consider doing one of the long trails. It might address your burnout and give you the feeling of closeness to nature you are looking for. Maybe you will want to do a homestead after that. Maybe that hike will be enough. Worth a consideration anyways.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

What you propose is unfortunately just not realistic, it takes way more work and knowledge than you think to be self-sufficient and it’s almost certainly not possible without a rather sizable group of people helping each other out.

I would instead suggest finding a place to live where there’s a sense of community, where amenities and the workplace is within walking/biking distance and you have access to “quaintness” for lack of a better term. Basically the more it looks/feels like a medieval place the better, such places are viscerally enjoyable to be in. Doesn’t have to be rural at all.

A good shorthand indicator of places where you will most likely start enjoying life again is a lack of cars, it’s not necessary but it tends to imply these human-centric features.

laylawashere44 ,

It’s much easier to be a recluse in a city of 20 million than a village of 2000, ironically enough.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Exactly, and when you do choose to interact with others there’s an effectively infinite amount of communities to pick from, whereas in a small town you’re lucky to have a grocery store sometimes…

Bo7a , (edited )

I spent a lot of years moving around as a contractor/consultant devops/sysadmin/IT architect and finally broke when I got stuck in Switzerland on what was supposed to be a 3 week client engagement, and was extended by covid lockdowns for almost a year.

I decided right then that I was done moving/travelling and started looking for where I wanted to settle in.

We chose a small piece of super cheap forest land in the middle of nowhere and started clearing just enough space for a small driveway and a tiny house. We started fully off-grid with just a few kWh of solar to power laptops and a starlink setup, and carrying water from the creek in buckets.

We now have 1000 litres of water storage that I fill with a gas pump instead of buckets, 12v water pump and propane heater that deliver hot and cold water in two taps (bathtub and kitchen sink), and got tied to the grid, so I could run desktops instead of laptops.

I spend my mornings pre-standup hand-feeding chipmunks and squirrels, and watching flocks of Blue Jays eat from the various seed piles we leave lying around. It almost makes the idiocy of every standup bearable.

This all a digression - But the TL;DR is this - Yes, leave the city. Life will be physically more difficult for a while. But once you have the creature comforts out in the country, you will never consider going back to a city.

pugsnroses77 ,

see if you can just quit your job and move to a tiny town where rent is dirt cheap (i live in a 30,000 person college town and paying $500/mo is considered normal if not even a little high, im assuming you can find for even less in an even smaller area). you can live off your savings for a bit in a cheap place with a quieter environment to give your mind a break and re-evaluate what you want to do.

FordBeeblebrox ,

Go as far away from people and traffic noise you can get, but you’re gonna need spark juice if you want to keep posting here. Solar and wind are good options for small off grid power gens, go all out study hard and build your own SMR

jerome ,
@jerome@lemmy.world avatar

Yes.

betwixthewires , (edited )

It’s not lonely. You might think it is but it isn’t. I did a decade in the cities, bar hopping, out with friends, online dating, all that stuff. It was all surface level and dating was like crawling through a desert wasteland eating bugs for survival.

I met my wife and we started a family after I moved to the country. I met her organically, at a pool. I courted her the old fashioned, organic way, no conspicuous spending to impress, none of that bullshit, just good old fashioned being myself, being respectful but persistent, that kind of stuff. She’s an impressive woman in basically any way you can imagine.

To have a rich social life in the country, you need to 1) not move to a tweaker town, 2) move somewhere rich with the kind of people you like to be around (I don’t mean ideology, I mean age, sex, etc) and 3) go to places where people are and talk to them. Don’t judge. Outside of cities you don’t have to pay someone to go outside to do something, you just go outside and do it. Everything doesn’t cost money.

So if you are just sick of the materialism, the traffic, the constant expenses, the needless complexity, I’d say a small town is for you, ofc provided you pick one that isn’t full of 100 year old people or tweakers, and just go outside all the time and don’t be afraid to talk to people. If you like looking at the stars you’ll do just fine.

1111 ,

You should read Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Aracnid ,
@Aracnid@sh.itjust.works avatar

And Call of the Wild by Jack London

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