[halper]

I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful. I had a good stretch of time between jobs (fortunately voluntarily) a while back and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.

During my time unemployed my pace of life was more like it is when you are on a camping/hiking trip with a group of scouts: a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch (beginning with walking to fetch the relevant supplies). Now when I am back to work, I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym, because there is not time to do both.

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.

[iberator]

> 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 :)

[buran77]

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.

[farrelle25]

> 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)

[halper]

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

[IncreasePosts]

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.

[mycall]

> 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.

[theteapot]

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

Why? Stay strong my friend.

[dominicq]

Yeah. The options for lots of leisure are either: a) be homeless, or b) be rich. Those of us inbetween always have to choose and make compromises.

In my life, this has forced me to quit on a bunch of things I would have continued otherwise, and to lean down things like my workouts and so on. This isn't necessarily bad, I like that I can now do 80% with 20% of time/effort, but still, would be nice to have more slack.

[borski]

There is a third option, which is to move to a place with a much lower cost of living. This isn’t always possible, due to family or job, but it’s not exactly uncommon either. Remote work, in particular, has helped with this. Work fewer hours, for less money, but with fewer needs.

Doable, but it’s about what you prioritize and care about.

[theamk]

Or work as contractor / part-time.

I've had two experiences with people like that:

- At one place I've worked at (big corp), the QA department was full of contractors. One of the contractors was only working 9 months per year - they spent all summers in Australia. Everyone knew about that and accepted this. The contractor was great, and no one had problems with that (I am sure not having to pay them anything while they were away helped :) )

- At other place, a small startup, we had a team member who was in a band. He'd work for us for a few months, help us to finish a project and make sure customer is happy.. and then disappear for a few more months to tour the US. Again, he was a great programmer, and we always welcomed him back.

I am sure that not every place is like this (for example my current workplace is pretty bureaucratic and would not be happy with this arrangement), but things like this definitely exist.

[tasuki]

c) The (lean) FIRE (financial independence / early retirement) way. If you do the math and can do without some of the pricier luxuries of "modern life", you really don't need much money at all.

[aa-jv]

I lived a pretty high life in Los Angeles for 15 years, and when the time came for me to move to Europe (I'm Australian), I had two weeks where I was basically homeless before the flight home - lease expired on the apartment, circumstances with couch-surfing were not ideal - so I tried two weeks living hard, to see what it was like, as I was also going to have a 6 month hiatus before Europe, back home in the Australian outback, which is a different definition of rough - so I thought, what the heck, why not see what its like. I'd lived in a bubble in LA for so long, the bubble had burst, so why not just try it for a couple of weeks and see how far I got .. I kitted myself out with a sleeping bag and a tent and all the rudimentary camping basics, and headed out of my cushy Los Feliz neighborhood, onto the streets.

It was the hardest thing I'd ever done to myself. My gear was stolen within days, I got beat up and nearly stuck with dirty heroin needles at least 3 times, almost arrested twice, and yeah .. it just generally sucked. I was not prepared for the hardship.

6 months in the Australian desert after that experience definitely made me appreciate the Australian desert a lot more than I had previously, and I will never, ever try this experiment in an American city again.

Its not the street that'll get to you. Its the street life. If I were the only homeless bum in the area, I would've done better I think - but it was all too easy to filter out to skid row after having been chased out of pretty much every 'sanctity' spot I could find, under bridges and in the Griffith Park area - whether by cops or by other homeless people. It was pretty stupid of me, in hindsight. I really didn't need to do it, I was just trying to push my boundaries before heading into the Kimberley region to eat snakes and lizards. That was, by comparison, a far better experience than the reptiles of LA. Would not recommend.

[noelwelsh]

Where were you living in the Kimberley? I've only ever been to Broome in that region, but eating lizards definitely seemed optional.

[dyauspitr]

Being homeless in a city doesn’t sound like fun at all. Being homeless in a rural buffer outside cities seems much more pleasant.

[ThinkBeat]

It may be romanic because you have not yet understood the real life consequences of the "lifestyle". The problems, health risks, and stress it brings with it.

[uncircle]

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

What sounded wonderful to me was this sentence: 'One store kept a record of an order: "one loaf of bread, a can of sardines, one-pound of fancy crackers, a pie, two quarts of coffee, one gill of brandy and a bottle of beer"'

This was a time when food brands weren't really a thing, the store probably had one type of bread, one type of (local) canned sardines, one type of crackers, etc. Each shop had a different variation and "menu", so to speak, all completely unique to each other. These days there is no difference between grocery stores, they all sell big-brand stuff and only convenience/price is the differentiating factor. No wonder only Walmarts are left.

[munificent]

> a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch

I think about this a lot when it comes to AI automation for coding.

Yes, it's nice if an AI can speed up the sort of semi-mindless parts of programming. But I strongly suspect that I need those spans of time for my mind to do the background processing necessary for the actual intellectually challenging parts of the job.

I've written two books and anyone who has done that will telling that writing is exhausting. It's an act that is almost purely intellectual with very little menial labor. And it is so utterly draining that it's hard to do for more than a couple of hours a day.

I don't relish programming turning into that. I like the easy refactoring and bug fixing tasks because they provide a respite between periods of very deep thinking while still keeping me mostly focused on the overall problem domain. I suspect I would be an overall worse engineer if I lost those.

[stronglikedan]

Surely you're taking a lunch break now that you're back to work, and that is enough time to hit the gym and scarf down some nutrients afterwards, leaving after work for family time. It only takes 15-20 minutes of activity per day to maintain fitness.

[dyauspitr]

This sounds wonderful until the winter. Seems wonderful in temperate or warmer climes.

[TacticalCoder]

> ... and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.

I hear you. For about two years I got to live in a rural area, on the sea side, 45 minutes drive from the closest highway. 5000 people villages was a 15 minutes drive.

Chopping wood to then heat the house, having animals pass in front of me while I'd be reading HN under the porch before going to bed.

Walking just for the sake of walking from the house to the sea and then back.

Heny Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Full quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2690-i-went-to-the-woods-be...

That and the quote about cities being about mystification.

(3 minutes elapsed)

Ah, found it (first read it for someone posted here on HN btw):

Thomas Merton's Raids On The Unspeakable: "I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. I can have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed, where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. It is given a precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor’s daughter. All of this is mystification. The city itself lives on its own myth. Instead of waking up and silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. They have constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it from renewing itself and man."

Thankfully I still go to that place where I used to live, several times a year. Sky is so clear I can many stars.

Once my kid shall turn 18, I plan to go back live there.

I don't think us humans were meant to be stacked in cities and high-rises like ants. It's just like communism: great theory but wrong species.

> I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym

Wife does her gym at home: proper stuff in gym gear. Mostly just simple exercises: no crazy gear besides a few weights. No driving to the gym so twice the time saved. No need to shower at the gym or seat all sweaty in the car.

She does 20 or 30 minutes each day.