Comment by underlogic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by underlogic | Hacker News Reader

Yes I've done this 3 times in the last 20 years. That is, thrown away all but a small bag of possessions and a bag of clothes and resettle in a remote location cutting off contact with all but a couple of people, and with only a few hundred dollars in my pocket. I abandoned a house, quit a well paying great job and broke up with a fiancé. I could detail these experiences but it would be a long and somewhat personal post. Probably nobody wants to hear my life story. But I moved from a small town in England to Manhattan to San Francisco and later the South Bay and then I just did it again in December, moving to a small town in Oregon. So is it worth the risk? Yes absolutely. Changing everything in your environment is an excellent strategy to get out of a rut. I consider the first time I did this to be the best but also most reckless decision of my life. I lived happily in Manhattan for 11 years through my twenties and just had the most spectacular time. I'm so proud now looking back at the young man I was. That was an incredibly brave move. I think in my old age now I'm just a shadow of that character. "Or hasn't been able to accept that he has". I think you mean what and if so that's the key, dissatisfaction. If what you have simply isn't enough, you should take the risk. Don't settle.

Anyway AMA if you like

Do you ever wonder if you're now trying to solve new problems with an old solution, and that's why it doesn't work anymore?

I did this a couple times too before realizing the problem was that I was afraid of the hard work of staying somewhere and making it work. It was a short-term fix, but led to long-term misery.

I'm sure there's some degree of truth there but it has worked out for me every time. It's not that I'm running from hard work or failure so much as the perception that success in the original location would still not be enough to satisfy me. I wanted new experiences and more potential.

It's complex. When you stay in a place too long it can become a dead end not because the location has nothing left to offer but rather the environment has grown around you. There's obligations and relationships and possessions and habits. Managing all these things steals executive function. You don't have time enough to evaluate what is really in your own best interests and take action because you're too busy doing what is expected of you and caught up micromanaging things that just don't matter. One way to clear it all out of the way is to simply move but this isn't a solution to every problem.

The other benefit of moving I think is that you might not live that long and staying in the same place and running the same routine for a lifetime is a terrible waste. Kind of like reliving the same week over and over again.

It's incredibly refreshing to wake up in a new city with nothing to do but explore.

Hmm. When it comes to "a terrible waste," I seem to have ended up at exactly the opposite conclusion for myself, that I would feel like it had been so much more of a waste to die having only done the work and built the relationships that accompany short stays in a variety of places, and never having done the deep work of belonging anywhere.

But what does belonging translate to in material terms? I genuinely don't understand this it's foreign to me. It seems like one of those fantasy concepts indoctrinated to encourage people "to take one for the team" and accept a lesser deal and status in the tribe. Some locations have less to offer than others and those that choose to stay get a lower quality of life, often for more effort. In a way they're exploited, that's how I see it. Those communities manipulate their populations into staying put at the expense of the individuals, because they need them

Does the only value of something come from what it "translates to in material terms"? What material terms are you trying to measure?

Knowing that when something goes awry in your life, or you want some advice from someone who's done something you hope to do, or believing that you can get enough people together to solve a problem--I don't know how you measure those in "material terms," but knowing you aren't going through life alone, but with people who have your back, and whose backs you have--that's worth vastly more to me than any material thing I can think of.

How do you wind up meeting new people to socialize with? Especially in the small town you just moved to.

So far I haven't there really isn't much here, the town center is maybe 6x6 blocks. There's a library, a tavern, a handful of drive through fast food restaurants and a few large costco like grocery stores. It's not a high priority but sure a problem, I'm used to the urban lifestyle. My bet would be the tavern

Reply on news.ycombinator.com