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Comment by iberator | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful.

>I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.

Trust me mate. Being homeless or a homeless traveler is HARD. I am homeless for 3 months now and it's absolutely devastating for my soul and morale.

Having no "safe harbour" takes away all enjoyment from "freedom". I was an avid hiker as well in the past :)

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People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives. You see this with the coder who dreams of the farmer's life, or that of a "rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond", or even that of a soldier.

It's probably the assumption that something that can be a nice hobby on its best days, a short escape, must also be a nice life. But it's the dose that makes the poison. Things are very different when they become your life and there's no safety net. It's why almost anyone can walk a line drawn on the ground where mistakes are totally forgiven, but very few can walk a high rope with no safety net.

The romanticized farmer aspect always gives me pause as well. Farming is a very difficult job that requires many hours of work every single day, every day per year. Even if you had enough money left over from some other job to get to go travel, you could never find the time to do so after becoming a farmer

As a child, I spent about 4-5 years on both a family farm and then followed by about 6-months at a large commercial egg production farm (my father took a job as the farm manager, came with free housing) - it cemented within me the desire never to toil in the fields or take care of animals outside of pets.

Yet of course - my kids and grandkids who were raised in suburban environments ALL romanticize farming...

It’s not even fun in stardew valley to be honest.

Interestingly, one of my ex-girlfriends from my 20s had a dad that did this. He was an engineer and quit to become a farmer, building his own generators and living off the grid powering his operation with waste vegetable oil he obtained for free from the same restaurants he sold artisan vegetables to. He lived in a different state and I only met him once, but it actually did seem like a pretty great life and he was clearly happy with it.

The problem to me when I see this kind of life suggested as something people should try to do is that it isn't universalizable. There are only so many restaurants in any given city that need artisan vegetables. There is only so much land near such cities that can grow it. Even if all people who try are equally able, very few would succeed in doing this.

My grandfather was a farmer. "Out in the fields" or in the workshed practically all day everyday. But he also loved to hunt, had a rental gig on the farm for poor people that wanted to live in shacks "down by the river" (they built the sheds themselves), and would constantly be pointing out to me all the stuff in the house he had built himself (he could have easily gotten them just as cheap and without any additional labor by mail order -- this was post WWII).

Another words, farmers back in that time would pretend they were busy all day. But actually spent a lot of the time "out in fields" bullshitting hunting, hanging with their friends at the river, or having fun building random shit in the workshop out of leisure rather than necessity. I didn't have the heart to tell the women in my family he probably didn't come home sooner because he didn't want to hear nagging or whining children, because it was blatantly obvious to me what the situation was.

As you say, farming is difficult, so if you're going into it with the expectation that it is idyllic, you have another thing coming. There is no "time off" on the farm. Some may enjoy that, but most people dreaming about it wouldn't.

It's much better to examine one's motivations for romanticizing the farm. Is it escapism from reality and the suffering endemic to it (in which case, you are only multiplying it by avoiding it)? Is it pride (too good to work)? Is it an impulse toward "immanentizing the eschaton"? Does your current job suck? Is the environment bad? Is it because you're living your life in a meaningless way?

Worth exploring.

Hard, in this sense, does not necessarily mean negative or bad. And the safety nets are often illusions (see: insurance, for one example).

There's a balance of course, but I believe most people would benefit from harder lives (in the natural/physical sense). Modern life being more comfortable and easier is actually bullshit. If your life is driving through traffic hours a day to go to a place to sit in front of a computer by yourself to send out messages by chat and email, that is a very hard life. You are forsaking nature and an eon of evolution to satisfy what exactly?

> Hard does not mean negative or bad

It does when it applies to your life. (Edit to reply to your edit) A bit of physical activity doesn't make your life harder. A lot of it might. And almost only hard physical activity is pure punishment, even literally used as such in labor camps.

> the safety nets are often illusions

Safety nets are sometimes illusions, they are mostly helping. Like an airbag they only need to work once to prove their worth.

> see: insurance, for one example

Insurance saved the livelihoods of millions of people, sometimes many times over. Rebuilding houses, repairing equipment, covering medical expenses, or critical services. Sometimes they fail you.

Do you know many people who wish for a hard life? For the homeless life? To not have any sort of insurance?

> There's a balance of course [...] You are forsaking nature and an eon of evolution to satisfy what exactly?

The balance.

> Insurance saved the livelihoods of millions of people, sometimes many times over. Rebuilding houses, repairing equipment, covering medical expenses, or critical services. Sometimes they fail you.

This one always gets me. I've had 7 orthopedic surgeries in the past decade. I couldn't walk without a cane or tie my own shoes in 2016 and today I can skateboard, run marathons, and squat double my bodyweight. I've had my house flood from a burst pipe on the top floor, had my HVAC condenser struck by lightning, had a city dump truck crush my parked car. Insurance has saved my ass so many times that I could pay a hundred grand a month in premiums for the rest of my life and still come out ahead.

People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

What a horrific misattribution. Doctors, nurses, the people who built and maintain the facilities they work in, and generations of researchers saved your life.

Insurance is the rent-seeking middleman that exists between you and them for no purpose other than to shave a percentage off forthemselves.

That is ridiculously unfair. We're talking totals in the tens of millions for these procedures. You can make a very good argument it should be paid for by some other public means and I would not necessarily disagree with you, but given that doesn't currently happen, insurance did a lot more than just skim off the top. They paid for the work. And I'm not aware of any society out there right now that publicly provides free to the consumer home and auto repair.

I agree that the providers themselves, along with the basic science and engineering that made their work possible in the first place, deserves the bulk of the credit, but nobody was attacking physicians and scientists here.

For what it's worth, in plenty of other Reddit-style "everthing sucks and I'm pessimistic about technology" threads, I'm out there touting these same stories as examples of science and technology making the world better, as many of these procedures either weren't possible or had far worse success rates as recently as 20 years ago. This just wasn't one of those threads.

I appreciate this backpedaling, but within the context of the thread your first comment credits insurance with your 7 orthopedic surgeries, and to that my response is more than fair.

I'm not sure what to make of the non sequitur to reddit threads though.

Your take is non-sensical and obtuse, and the attitude is not much better so I’d hold off on the celebratory self-pat on the back.

The people who do the job should get a lot of the credit. But none of them do it for free. Insurance is there to make sure you can pay those people for what needs to be done in the aftermath of very unlikely but very high impact events. A lot of people pay very little so a few people don’t have to pay a lot.

The industry has a lot of failings but this doesn’t wipe out the utility of the service.

> People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

I’ve experienced plenty of my own claim denials. In fact, I had to stop treatment of my chronic condition due to the last one. This is certain to cause my knees to fail in a few years.

You think they only exist in headlines? Then get your own head out of the news and talk to real people.

> People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives. You see this with the coder who dreams of the farmer's life, or that of a "rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond", or even that of a soldier.

Some people even go camping for recreation.

Exactly, it's the dose that makes the poison. A week of camping is fun, a lifetime of camping is hell.

And living off the land was much easier (not that it was ever easy) when there was land to live off of.

I don't know about romanticizing a hard life but I'll definitely get hit with a very strong sense of wanting to escape and leave it all behind.

It hits me every summer like clockwork tbh - leaving a nicely typed 2 minutes notice on my VP's desk and just taking my chances as a traveling beach bum. Akin to wanderlust, I'm filled with the urge to just go off into the unknown.

In my heart of hearts I know I'm a soft city boy though. I wouldn't last a week.

You would adapt rapidly.

I was fired from a city job.

Started hitchiking and living outside. Eventually worked on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea, worked the oil fields in the Dakotas, fought in a civil war in another country, hiked state-long parts of the PCT, hung out with tree-dwelling hippies in the doug-fir forests etc.

I would live that life again in a heartbeat if I didn't have a child to support, which was pretty much the end of my adventures. If you're single you can pretty much work day labor 25% of the year and have plenty enough to live inna-woods. The reason why most 'homeless' people seem so miserable is they are too mentally ill or drug ridden to do some fairly basic things to make their lives living outside 100x better; if you are sober and able bodied and able-minded it is a cakewalk.

You have any write ups? Sounds like quite the interesting life

I often think of Thoreau when my mind drifts to romanticizing farming:

> I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

> People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives.

The film Sullivan's Travels from 1941 is a film that explores the concept of this romanticization. It's a good movie whose storytelling and comedy still hold up today. I think more people should be aware of it.

Trivia: This is also where the movie O' Brother Where Art Thou got its name.

> Having no "safe harbour" ...

Yes this is soul destroying - the psychological effects are brutal. Not having any little place as a 'base'.

I was homeless in Europe for a few weeks and it really crushes someone. I can see why so many rough sleepers take alcohol / drugs. Just to numb everything. I used to drink a few cans every night before trying to find a place to sleep.

Another crushing thing: as a commenter below said - on average people look down at you as if you were dirty etc. I found that so hard too.

I wish you the very best wherever you are ... really hope your situation will get better somehow please God...

(edit: oh just realised something - not implying the OP takes any substances or anything... just talking in general how I had to resort to alcohol in my situation)

Thank you mate :)

I can relate to that, having not always been in such fortunate circumstances as I am now. I hope that your situation improves!

thank you

Maybe that's because you're homeless and don't want to be. The Leatherman could have settled down, per the article he "had money", but he just didn't want to.

I was intentionally homeless for 4 months, just riding my bike all around western Europe, just setting up my tent in a random woodland every night. I didn't have a safe harbor, except for the knowledge that I could get a job and rent an apartment if I wanted to.

It was not hard at all. In fact, I loved every minute of it. I lived/worked on a farm and slept on a bed for 2 weeks(WWOOFing), and I could not wait to get back out on the road again.

Camping with money for 4 months is not homelessness! Thats such absurd idea.

I actually had almost no money. And no connection to money(parents, relatives, a boo, etc...).

> Being homeless or a homeless traveler is HARD.

You can have money or food supplies and still be a homeless traveler. While it is common to assume homeless is broke, sometimes adventure and not being strapped to a certain, civilized life is the goal. I'm always amazed how far legs can take you.

What do you mean?!

If you have money it's not homelessness but adventure and hiking.

Homelessness is a forced state without an easy way out.

home· less. having no home or permanent place of residence : unhoused [0]

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homeless

> .. it's absolutely devastating for my soul and morale.

Why? Stay strong my friend.

For one thing, because everyone around you looks at you like you are dirty and the scum of the earth, on average.

And that’s before you get to the fact that each night you need to find a place to sleep and nobody wants it to be near them.

It’s immensely depressing, and hard to stay resilient.

Yeah I hear you. It would be de-stigmatizing if more people with mean were voluntarily "homeless" like the Leatherman. But people just wanna watch Netflix I guess.

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