I live alone at sea. Here's how to be happy in isolation | Hacker News Reader

I live alone at sea. Here's how to be happy in isolation

theguardian.com

28 pointsyonibot6 comments

I live alone in the desert. It's like the sea except you can't drown as easily. And I live with my SO so not exactly alone, but pretty close. No neighbors and it's a very very long way from any major city and no one comes here because it's uninteresting wasteland with few opportunities.

In the past sometimes I have been jealous of city dwellers. They have IKEA and good restaurants and meetups and clever people to talk to and interesting high paying jobs. I've thought about leaving. I didn't always live here, I've lived in major metros.

But not now. I'm so grateful to be here and feel so lucky. It's beautiful this spring with a lot of rain and flowers and nothing about my life has changed. I take long walks and think about life and really hope everything works out and feel very bad for those who felt the need to chase the shiny and now it's turned into a prison. Even in the little town 15 miles away, it's ugly the past few times I've been. But I have what I need for months and won't go back until summer most likely.

I still might leave at some point. Isolation for awhile is healthy but long term I think maybe it isn't. Sometime I feel like I've been lazy and dropped out a bit and could have contributed more to the world if I weren't trying to flee the annoyance and the noise and the politics and the bullshit. Also without the internet I couldn't work and this whole scheme would be untenable.

Everyone should try solitude for a bit. But not forever. We need other people to keep us on keel and help us reach our potential I think.

What do you do when things like appliances break? Are you off grid? Do you get amazon deliveries? I'm curious how off grid are you if you don't mind sharing.

Its always a complete trip to see UPS come banging down the dirt road avoiding potholes to my house. I have a hard time believing we get Amazon deliveries here but ya, we do. 2 day and next day etc. is always delayed by a day or 3 but that's fine.

The dryer broke a few weeks ago, I watched some YouTube videos, pulled it out on the porch, ordered some parts from Amazon and fixed it. I've replaced the hot water heater and a bunch of other things like that.

Except for a well, I'm not off grid. Power was already in the area for transmission towers. Internet is over air wireless to a tower. It's usually about 3MB which probably wouldn't do FPS games but it works fine for low quality streaming, Zoom and work. It's a little flaky and sometimes phone tethering is needed. Phone reception was very hit or miss when I first moved here like 7 years ago but it's improved a bunch.

I've thought about getting off grid with Solar and backup generator but so far there hasn't been compelling reason to do so.

It's really just a regular house. No crazy shipping container water catchment solar setup or anything. Just very remote and isolated.

Would love to know more details about how you manage this. It's something I've thought about a lot over the years but have never felt like I'd be able to get the money together to buy something.

It was not very expensive but I got lucky and got the place during depth of last financial crisis (part of reason I came here, I thought maybe it could get worse). It had a small 1200 foot house which I added to and fixed up pretty nicely.

To be fair I don't make the money here I made before. But I don't really need much except my PCs and food and a few basics. I don't eat out, don't buy expensive things, don't buy things I don't need, don't go on expensive trips and it works more or less fine. I live on here per month around my rent in the city before I think so actually have more left over when all is said and done. I do miss a lot of the amenities of the city sometimes. Good company and food for instance. I do not miss the noise and car fumes and office bullshit.

I kind of feel like people romanticize isolation these days. Human relationships can be challenging but can also provide immense benefits for human development and wellbeing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com