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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?

bartolomeo ,
@bartolomeo@suppo.fi avatar

Do you have children?

chicken ,

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

This sounds kinda like bargaining. Ultimately you can’t make something difficult work just by being willing to make sacrifices, when those sacrifices don’t necessarily influence the real bottlenecks in a significant way. That’s going to be money and laws, not food and electricity. Building a rough shack and an outhouse is illegal in various ways. You don’t save a lot of money having a garden, can’t realistically get all your food that way, and it’s a huge amount of work, same with firewood heating.

You can find ways to live cheaply but there’s going to be a minimum cost. Don’t start by committing to huge challenges you aren’t ready for.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Watch the PBS series Frontier House before you try it. Because multiple families- families, not just individuals- tried it for just one summer, spending the whole summer preparing for winter, and it was determined at the end that none of them would have survived the winter.

Kit ,

Take a vacation.

ShittyRedditWasBetter ,

I think you probably don’t have any concept how difficult that is going to be and will likely hate your decision a few weeks into it.

It’s one thing to live like a hermit. It’s another to be a small farmer with zero experience or help.

darcy ,
@darcy@sh.itjust.works avatar

it at least sounds like a dream

zombie_kong ,

This is exactly what we’re planning.

I am done done done with the pressure, the incessant need for connection, only to reach out and find that people on the whole are just fucked up.

Where are the relatively normal people?

The measured people, the people who do not have a insane opinion about guns or politics or how people should live their lives?

Where are the people who know right from wrong? Good from evil?

It’s tiresome. I want to be friends with a donkey, stare at some landscape and see my days out in peace.

nbafantest ,

I hate to tell you this, my friend, but the rural people have way more problems usually than the people that you’re probably used to. Generally, it’s just easier to hide out there.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

This as fuck

Blapoo ,

I’m a remote, veteran software developer who went slowly more rural throughout my career. I’ve also seen others do the same. Mixed results. Personally, I love connecting with nature, so right up my alley. But others love the urban scene.

Do some soul searching and make gradual changes towards ideal for YOU

paysrenttobirds ,

Consider working in another country. You could be proud of your CS skills again if employed in a more meaningful way, or maybe just because they are the key to more exciting life experiences. What I’m thinking of is when my family was traveling five or six years ago, we spent a little time on the island of Niue, which is somehow associated with New Zealand. People there told us it would be easy to get a visa and stay as long as we liked because we had tech skills. We arrived with very little–a kind of hippy adventure–and kids with health needs, so we were not ideal immigrants, but the skills were so valued that they went out of their way to offer this though we were just there for a visit. Anyway, just anecdotal, and we didn’t take them up so I don’t know how it would have worked out, but there are opportunities like this worth looking into.

sin_free_for_00_days ,

Your college/university should have a mental health office/help. It might feel awkward, but make the call. It might help, it might not. You may go in expecting nothing and gain incredible clarity.

Don’t drop out, but take a sabbatical for a semester or year. Check with your school to make sure you can just jump back in when/if you want to. If you graduate first and then take time off, it will be hard to stay sharp and relevant for the job market.

If you end up living in Bumfuck, Nowhere, look into setting up a 12v battery system, with a couple solar panels and charge controller. Easy to store enough energy for days of 12v lighting. I do it on my sailboat quite often.

Binge Primitive Technologies on youtube.

metaStatic ,

Primitive pottery is actually a woodworking channel, he just hasn't got enough iron to make a hammer yet.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Primitive…pottery? LOL!

I love the channel, but the guy is in the wrong part of the world for primitive iron-working.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

He’s still tryin! Check out his last video (IIRC)

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Oh! Did he just post a new one? Off to YT to check…

FarceMultiplier ,
@FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca avatar

I don’t understand where you are on that point. He’s in Australia, and their biggest export is iron ore concentrates. He’s got all the things he needs for primitive iron.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Huh, TIL. I thought Australia was relatively iron-poor, but you’re right about its exports.

Looking up Australia’s mineral resources, it looks like iron mining mostly happens in Western Australia. But Primitive Tech is filmed in Queensland, IIRC.

Regardless of where you find iron ore, he’s harvesting iron bacteria from a creek with limited success. It’s interesting to watch, but it sort of feels like “Here’s 56 ways not to start the Iron Age.”

KombatWombat , (edited )

Without knowing more about your life, this kinda sounds like burnout to me. It is very common is tech fields especially. I would recommend trying to dial back on work if it’s killing your soul like this.

I worked at a high-paying dev job right out of college that consumed my life and put me in a very bad place mentally. I could not sustainably output what I needed to, and evetually I got fired. But walking out of the meeting I could not stop smiling from the tremendous relief I felt (this was when Covid was big so I had a mask on fortunately). It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was unemployed for a few months afterwards which is probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I didn’t travel or do anything noteworthy besides starting a small passion project. Finances weren’t an issue since I had a lot saved up and low expenses covered by unemployment.

After applying to places in no rush whatsoever and stressing my newfound appreciation for work-life balance in interviews, I ended up getting a job at a nonprofit government-adjacent company with full work-from-home and basically no time tracking. I make less but I can go through things at a pace I can handle and it makes a world of difference.

So if you have felt this way for a while I would recommend taking a break before committing to abandoning civilization. People with tech jobs like us tend to have options so don’t feel like it has to be misery or the wilderness. Because I can promise you there are places that will allow you to live as a human being. And it may just reignite your passion too. If you still feel like it after stepping away for a time, you can always escape society more dramatically later instead.

Also, I don’t want to diagnose you or anything when I don’t even know you but there could be some overlap with depression here when you lose passion for life and just generally become jaded at the world like this. Make sure you are communicating how you feel with people you feel comfortable around. Remember that things can always get better, although it sounds like you have been thinking about how to achieve that plenty already. But if things aren’t getting better, you might need to be the instigator for that change so I wouldn’t be afraid to go for it after exploring easier stuff first. Maybe just give camping a shot while you figure this out.

I didn’t mean for this to get so long, but your post resonated with me a lot I guess!

milkjug ,
@milkjug@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you for sharing this. I felt this abit as I walked out on a job that paid handsomely but I had to deal with unrealistic expectations and a passive aggressive boss. I put in my two months’ notice and all my colleagues remarked that I looked like the happiest guy on earth.

I’m privileged to be able to call it a day and take a break, and I’m enjoying applying to various outlets with no particular rush to land something. I spend my days doing things I enjoy, going to the gym, spending time tinkering with my PCs, enjoying games as a patient gamer, etc.

Someday I also wish to follow in OP’s footsteps and retire to a rural community where I can see out my days in peace, without dealing with all the doom and gloom in the world right now. I’ve long mentally checked out of Earth and looking forward to sweet sweet forever-sleep.

KombatWombat ,

Congratulations on escaping a bad situation! Stories like this have become all too common, but I think sharing how it gets better does some good. I honestly haven’t given much thought about where I want to spend my golden years, but financial independence is a big goal of mine.

And as for that last part, we’ll have eternity to appreciate the simplicity of death. I wouldn’t be too eager to be done with the world of the living when there’s a lot of cool stuff out there to explore and not much time to do it.

Creddit ,

Just reframe this as a temporary trip/challenge to live off the land and regroup!

If you can genuinely view it that way, tell people about it and they’ll think it’s a really cool experience.

Then do it. Make it a project you can complete and then actually finish and come back to tell people what you accomplished and what you learned.

ultrahamster64 ,
@ultrahamster64@lemmy.world avatar

Agreed. You don’t need to make it a “to the end of life” thing. Go there for a year, look at how it influence your headspace, have a change of pace from industrial environment.

cerement ,
@cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

there’s also the intersections of CS and rural – there’s all sorts of little projects and things to fiddle with in the self-hosting communities across the Fediverse – rather than focusing on one big project, a lot of times it tends to be a more organic process of growing several small projects – a website run off solar power, cover your back 40 with wifi mesh, discover the smolnet

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever ,

So you are still in college? Where are you going to get the money to buy a few acres of land and all the supplies to do this?

Aside from that: I strongly encourage doing some day laboring at a nearby farm. Because unless you have even more expensive equipment and machinery, that is what you are going to be doing as a farmer.

Similarly, go camping for a week on one of your breaks. And bring a much thinner sleeping bag than you need for the climate. Obviously have a backup in the car, but that is what you are going to deal with if you are relying on cutting your own firewood (also, where are you getting that from?) and burning it. Same with food and supplies.

Look, we’ve all played Stardew Valley. Farming is a LOT harder than holding the X button down while hitting on the Hopefully Legal Trailer Park Girl. And it is a LOT more expensive than you would expect.

Rhynoplaz ,

I’m more of a quirky barmaid type myself.

stevedidWHAT , (edited )
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

I wanna pose this very kindly and politely because I know a lot of people are against it sadly but

By the way you’re wording things it sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate right now and you’re losing your grip/stable footing and you should take that very seriously. Stopping a mental breakdown when it finally happens isn’t going to be possible on your own.

There’s a few options for online if you’d prefer but therapy really isn’t that bad of an idea to try. It’s nice having someone you can get along with and be vulnerable with and have help you out with “shit that’s stuck in your teeth” as mine says.

Some stuff is too tough and is way too bitter to chew on our own and this world is infinitely bigger than you and will swallow you whole if you don’t fight for a life you want.

Stay healthy bro. Fight for yourself. We’re all rooting for your best health mentally and physically 💜

Edit: reworded the beginning of paragraph 2, I’m not a psychologist nor do I have the training to be calling out “textbook antisocial behavior” considering how long it takes to go to school to become a psychiatrist/psychologist

PostmodernPythia ,

Therapy? As someone who’s benefited from years of therapy, therapy isn’t supposed to end rational responses when the world’s gone mad. I’m afraid far too many people confuse therapy with magic.

Entropywins ,
@Entropywins@kbin.social avatar

Even if the world goes to complete and total shit...I'm still gonna talk about it and process it with someone.

PostmodernPythia ,

That’s good and healthy. All I’m saying is that therapy won’t fix the problems underlying this. It can be useful in processing, but I’m tired of people acting like therapy will solve structural problems.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Considering you know nothing about the severity of this situation or validity of the situation outside of OPs current head space and know fuck all about therapy apparently, just stop. You’re possibly hurting someone.

PostmodernPythia ,

Clearly, you didn’t read my post. Hard to spend years in therapy and not know fuck-all about it. I never said don’t go to therapy. I said don’t expect miracles. Therapy is good, but it’s not a solution to structural issues.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

You’re making that assumption though. You are assuming that it’s only structural and nothing else. There is 0 harm in talking with a therapist.

I did read what you said, you just didn’t understand what I was getting at. I’ve got a feeling we’re on the same page here believe it or not

PostmodernPythia ,

You said I know “fuck all” about therapy after reading and comprehending a comment where I said I’d spent years in therapy, and I’m the one with a reading comprehension problem? Sure, buddy.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Going to therapy doesn’t necessarily mean you understand. Bring it up with you therapist.

Show ‘em the post, what I said, and what you said with 0 changed and I bet we’d both stand to learn something from it.

Domille ,

wanting to be alone is not an anti-social behavior… aggression and wanting to hurt people is… which the op is not expressing. Don’t know where you got this “text book antisocial behavior” definition from.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

While I disagree with you about this being antisocial behavior or at least the precursor, I’m not a psychologist so I should refrain from using language like this as it’s misleading as “fact” when it’s just lazy vocab usage.

Appreciate the call out

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