Comment by brainless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brainless | Hacker News Reader

Giving you a big hug.

I have been through really rough periods and as my health took a big toll, the only means I had to recovery was to move away from crazy startup life. Gradually I understood that, maybe, there is a better balance. I still want to learn, grow, solve problems, dream big.

Instead of making 3 year plans, I started making 10 year plans. I started taking care of my health, like it is the most important thing. I unplugged for a couple years, lived in cheap places to lower my financial burden.

Now I live in a small village, have built a work routine that has no deadlines and I am happy, very happy. I have a hostel I run here, I write software I love, I am planning a product. I just setup a camping spot, it is lush green around here, a slow and simple life (all shops close at 20:00 for example).

I sacrificed those magazine cover dreams but in return I got a wonderful life and I am building again, just at 0.5x speed. I hesitate to think about accelerators like YC. I know I will panic so much when it comes to all those metrics, money and everything else I cannot process anymore. But that is OK.

I did roughly the same thing; I live in a small village in protected nature. I still run startups, but I sit at my stream in my forest working for them. Life is cheap here so I was able to buy a house and the land; when I feel overwhelmed, I can just throw my laptop and phone out and live out my life tinkering in the house, the land and on hardware. But since I moved (long ago) I haven't had that feeling again.

Same thing here. I bought a little piece of land with an old farm to renovate 7 years ago. The house is right next to a large forest, it was built 175 years ago when this area was cleared, and now I'm letting the forest come back to the parts I'm not using. I watch the small trees grow up, it's peaceful. I charge my laptop with a solar panel and got just enough mobile connectivity to be able to work efficiently.

I still got burn out at my last job because I let the pressure got me. Now I'm recovering while coding small projects and I hope that I'll find a better balance in the next job, or maybe one of my projects will take off.

Also curious how your transition to working from a farm went.

I spent two years as a digital nomad before that, working from some of the last wilderness areas of the planet so transitioning to a rural area in Western Europe wasn't too hard!

They key was finding my first remote job that allowed everything else, that wasn't easy years before covid. It's largely democratized now but there's also more competition.

Did you already run startups when you initially moved? curious to hear how the transition went because I moved to the countryside but still have a corporate job and find it hard to let go of that safety net even though it is taxing my mental health.

Definitely better since i can hand our in a forest or work in my garden though...

Keep your safety net but try to set clear boundaries and make room for side projects that could transition to a startup if one get enough traction. Don't jump on it until it's profitable if you can. Sometimes it's hard to find the time for everything, but just a little bit every week, week after week, is much better than nothing at all!

what cheap place did you move to?

your life is pretty good.

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