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Comment by pontifier | Hacker News Reader

I've had a strange year in which I've been living a very acetic lifestyle... Basically camping while I struggle toward getting permits... Long story.

The lack of comfort became too much. I felt like the "pleasures of the body" were a secondary priority and I didn't want to spend the money. It just wasn't possible for me to go on like that though. I had to find an actual house to live in.

I feel like I lost the mind over matter game, and didn't live up to the ideal that I had about myself. On the other hand, it's very nice to be out of the wind and rain and heat and bugs, even if I don't feel I earned it yet.

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It's not good manners to point out spelling mistakes, but it took me a while to go from "acetic" (vinegar-like?) to "ascetic".

I kinda like the typo, it gives a very poetic / double meaning to the sentence :)

If someone makes the same spelling mistake repeatedly, it's not a typo, and IMO it's better to point it out, because they're probably carrying it over into more professional contexts and it affects how they're perceived.

Obviously in a personal context you'd try and do something like that in private, not in a group, but that's not really an option here.

If I repeatedly misspell something, or repeatedly use a validly spelled word in place of a homonym, I want to know.

At some point, prescription is required for a language to be preserved.

If we're all online, then that's where it has to be.

It's a word I use so infrequently that I was unaware that I misspelled it. Thank you.

The more interesting question is would you feel it if you didn't know any one who lived differently? Because I believe that comfort is very relative to others. If you don't know anyone living better -- you're happy.

If you are as comfortable as your peers, then you are not at a disadvantage when competing for mates, and neither are your own offspring, so yeah, it's a big deal. We have evolved with the understanding that we need to compete with peers in order to be able to pass our genes on. We are not competing against trees or even our former selves, just against peers.

Yeah but sometimes when the pain in my arm causes me to wake at night I don't really give a darn what anybody else is feeling. I just want the pain in my arm to stop.

I feel I'm naturally a problem solver, and I noticed that I wasted a good amount of brain power thinking about things like unconventional air conditioning and bug control because I couldn't use power or use my building. Unconventional bathing because I had no running water(look up strigil),etc.

It wasn't productive, because I can't sit around re-inventing things that work good enough in modern society.

This is an interesting thought. I sometimes wonder about those who live in squalor, how can they be happy knowing there are people like me living in nice middle class homes? But then I think that I am happy, despite knowing that in my same city there are people living in absolute mansions. So, I know that there are people nearby that live better than I do, but for some reason I don’t take them into consideration when it comes to my own happiness.

I feel it's way more relative to my own recent experiences, rather than what I see others having. I'm normally an absolute baby when it comes to even minor things because I'm usually quite comfortable. But for a short while after a major struggle, nothing minor bothers me.

We are in a very similar situation. We've given up so many niceties of modern housing to be able to build. Currently we live in a trailer that was in disrepair years ago. It's a stepping stone to our eventual home.

I feel you on the losing the mind over matter aspect. I simply cannot let that happen to myself though, since for some reason it's deeply ingrained in me.

Often I do exercises to try and extend my ability to overcome the internal desire for creature comforts. Things like swimming through the ice in frozen lakes, staying in the sauna beyond my pain threshold, fasting, picking a particularly difficult physical exercise and pushing my limit (common in weightlifting, pushing past the burn), things like that.

I try to make sure I'm not finding pleasure in the pain, however, since that is in the realm of masochism and I feel that is the path to self-destruction.

Does anybody else do this? What else do you do?

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