I would move the family to my true home back in the NJ Pine Barrens. We would have a a small log cabin on a remote dirt road and I would work as a forest ranger in Belleplain State Forest. We would have enough land to grow some of our food and few unwelcome intrusions into our life.
During the day, I’d be the steward of an amazing place that holds the vast majority of my few good childhood memories and at night, relax in the light and warmth of a campfire, then sleep with only the sounds of crickets and the odd whippoorwill. I would hike, explore abandoned towns, fish, shoot my bow, make my arrows and maybe even a bow one day, canoe, and camp.
When I think about this, usually it’s not such a clear plan. It comes to me a flashes of feelings, images, sounds and scents. Contentment, the smell of a bed of pine needles after a rain, the white sand tainted grey with the remnants of old forest fires, the snap of picking a fresh blueberry or the taste of a teaberry leaf.
I guess my best life is one out of the main world and inside my own, smaller one.
Making scary choices and taking some risk.
I left a job of twelve years in 2017 and ended up in a place where I love working and my efforts are well-rewarded both culturally and monetarily, but it was scary as hell at the time.
From death or something else?
I’d have to find a way to “find myself.” I never figured that out and am essentially an uneducated schmuck stuck in a factory.
All of my interests are surface level, I’m incapable of doing the actual work associated with those interests. Lord knows I’m no scientist. I’m too dumb to even handle myself most days, let alone actually do anything in the field of particle physics or something lol
The only way to build towards a dream like that is two things, imho
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Save money. Take high paying jobs you may not like much to just save up.
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Learn. Read books on gardening, on simple living, on maintaining and restoring a home, and watch YouTubers who live the life you want to live and see the downsides of it too. (For the latter, Tyler and Todd might be a good fit, they are building a container home in the middle of the woods and they do show the setbacks as well as the triumphs)
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I don’t understand the question.
In a perfect world, I would be independently employed from home (a writer, or something similar), living on a small acreage just outside a small city. Not too far away that I can’t go in for supplies or things on a regular basis, but not too close that I’m bothered by the city lights on the horizon. Maybe 10 kilometres or so outside of a medium sized city.
On that acreage, I’d strive to be as self-sufficient as possible. Have a garden, for example. Solar Panels, Geothermal, etc… I’d develop relationships with my local neighbours. purchase a half a side of beef from a rancher to my left. Some eggs and fryers from a farmer to my right. Spend my evenings in my woodworking shop making furniture and other things that strike my fancy.
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I’d have to find the seed phrase
Getting sober is boring. You can’t look forward to easy fun, celebrations, parties, hangouts, bar life. No more spontanaety.
Self-sufficiency and living isolated in a forest is the only way
