Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

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I've lived like that. I lived in the Mission in San Francisco with four of my closest friends (all from NJ) within walking distance. It was great being able to meet up for lunch or drinks or go out clubbing, it was always a pleasant surprise to run into them randomly on the street or in a park.

I lived in midtown Manhattan and I loved being able to go out at 3am in the middle of the winter and find a fresh produce stand on the corner outside my apartment, get falafel wraps and Ethiopian and Thai and sushi and all the other great food during my lunch break, and have museums and concerts and Broadway shows within walking distance.

I lived in the Cayman Islands and had a roommate, could walk to the beach and to my favorite bars, my house was the primary hangout spot for all my friends. I was socializing daily there, and it was a small community where I knew just about everyone everywhere I went.

I'm old now. I don't drink anymore. I have no interest in parties. Even when I live in or near a city, I don't take advantage of much of anything it has to offer. I'm sick of the noise and filth and crowds, the crime and homelessness, the lack of privacy that comes with urban living. All my friends are older, have kids, live in the suburbs and are scattered all over the country. The eight months of the year that I'm not on the road in my RV, I'm living in a cookie-cutter suburban house and have no local friends at all. I exchange pleasantries with the neighbors.

My entire social life is online now, and when I can, I'm traveling. I want maximum peace and quiet. I'll go visit friends and family every couple months if I want to socialize. If/when I do settle down at my far-from-civilization objective, I may very well start feeling lonely and seek out social clubs or social hobbies. But I'll be glad to have my seclusion to return to.

I've lived in large cities, but I found the more ideal circumstance was a small but urbanized town - after I lived there 8 years or so, I not only had the good friends but an enormous group of casual acquaintances. So I literally ran into people I said hi to every time I walked anywhere. In fact, at various times most of my good friends moved away, but the whole group was there. It was east coast, so like one time someone left a pot of soup on my stove. I don't mind noise, and the neighborhood wasn't too dirty. It did have people of various income levels, and was cheap enough to have artists, who both put up many beautiful things and had a certain tendency to clutter. Also a lot of biologist types, so they had lovely plants planted, which was nice.

I'd rather have people I trust a bit around me than privacy, in general. For sure people there help each other out when help is needed. It just feels to be a more resilient, robust to errors kind of society than me and my stuff out there.

Now I'm living in San Jose, but I've passed the 8 year mark in my current location and in fact am accumulating connections with the people on the block and nearby. I go to stores where the workers stay year after year, so I am familiar to people. I've started going to classes at a local university. It's still not the connected feel of a small East coast town (Californians do seem to like their fences around the backyard and not to appreciate comments on their personal decisions), but pleasant. If only there was a grocery store I could walk to.

There is only a small window when old is just old enough that you shouldn't be afraid of what happens when you need fast, acute medical help. I have seen many a relatively far flung retirement plan get into trouble when the first health scare makes the retiree want a hospital within half an hour.

Not just age but anything unexpected. Having people nearby that you can count on for casual help makes many worse case scenarios much better.

Why are you looking at such cold places for the off grid living?

Lots of remote forested areas in Georgia and Alabama, but I can also understand opposition to the heat.

I would give a lot consideration to TN and NC mountains.

Not the poster, but one practical reason - bugs can really cut into the outdoor enjoyment, and in colder climates ‘bug season’ is generally relatively short (but intense). Usually spring and early summer.

Warmer humid climates, it’s common to only get (at most) a few months of ‘no bugs’.

Chiggers, ticks, noseeums, mosquitos, black flies, etc.

Also, warmer humid environment mosquitos are usually tiny, sneaky, and disease carrying.

Cold area mosquitos tend to be huge, obnoxious, and less disease carrying. Easier to kill, but will bite through thick sweatshirts, type thing. (Yes really!)

Or go southwest US and only have the occasional horsefly to worry about.

Politics and culture play an outsized part. If I could easily move to Canada I would. Barring that, I'm more inclined to stick to blue states than red states. Montana is a bit of an outlier in my list. Cannabis legality is a factor (Wisconsin is the oddball here), but increasingly less so as I expect that problem to go away within a few years nationwide (and certainly in Wisconsin). Climate is a big factor. I grew up in NJ, and while I've lived in tropical places and tend to spend my summer traveling to a lot of hot places, I don't want to live in a hot, humid southern state. There are parts of NC and TN that are more more mountainous and less oppressive, but it's still pretty sticky there.

I still plan to spend much of the year traveling in an RV even after I settle somewhere. I'd be happy to spend the winter holed up in a cabin with a wood stove though.

Underscoring MY personal politics/cultural views, I just returned from a NC trip and was thinking it will take another decade of development for social change to take hold. Just insane amount of economic development is happening there, and hopefully the younger crowd will be more open for changes. I noticed that there was a lot of mobility into NC, not just the northern states that has been well documented, but also from TN, AL, GA, FL and even TX

Coming back to NJ, a neighbor mentioned that they are still fighting the civil war in the south, which the media seems to also resonate well.

Just a based view from a NJ resident

I certainly understand political and cultural considerations when moving to a place. But since you seem to be trying to stay away from anyone wherever you settle, I’m a little surprised the politics and culture of a place would matter much to your circumstances.

Being older you need to factor in healthcare. I didn't when I moved remote, and it was a big mistake. I firmly believe my mother died of cancer because I convinced her to move to a rural local that didn't have the quality of cancer care that she would have had access to if she stayed in Santa Cruz. My advice is pick a touristy area that has enough money/population moving through to have a bit better medical system than your average remote area. Definitely buy a lifeflight.org membership every year if you go the Montana/Rocky Mountain West area.

I also recommend finding a town that caters to rich tech people who want to live this remote fantasy, there are quite a few of them. It's so much more enjoyable than the actual remote living towns that no one wants to be in so they're just an aging population of dead enders and people hooked on drugs. Or at least an area with a University nearby so that you can go somewhere with some energy/vibrance and the latest cool trendy food. The realities of dead end small town/no town america can be pretty soul crushing.

Disney style curated small town america catering to the wealthy can be a pretty great place to live and have energy/vibrancy. Plus you'll have a good revolving supply of new people cycling through thinking they want to live the lifestyle (before the realities set in) bringing in the latest trends, starting food places, etc. Just make sure they aren't the 'escaping from California' types blathering about how great it is to be in a 'free' state and be away from commie land. That toxicity can overload a small community quick. You can get away with 'individualists' in a larger community where their actual freeloading on society is subsidized by normal people, but with too big a ratio basic civilian institutions get paralyzed for years until people remember/relearn society requires a social component.

Dying away from the hustle and bustle can have a lot of appeal, just as living remotely can. I would prefer to die quickly if it meant not handing my entire savings over to some health care scalpers, leaving some for my progeny. Your objections to remote living sound kind of pretentious, honestly.

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