What if I just decided to buy some land, build a home, and worked for myself? Times are tough. I’ve been unemployed for the past 5 months and I have been looking and applying for jobs on a daily basis. Had a couple close calls but I’ve never been selected. So, to fill my time during the day, I wanted to brush up on my writing and, as they say, “Practice makes perfect”. I’ve spent a lot of time reading, binged a few shows on Netflix and AppleTV, and started a screenplay which I’ve since deleted because it was shit.

I’ve recently started watching a lot of survival shows like Alone and it got me thinking, what would happen if I went “off-grid”, built a homestead house, and just learned to live off the land. I know that people often get a little kooky when they’ve been away from civilization for a while, which is why I called this blog Insanity On Hold.

Just being home alone during the days gets me a little batty from time to time, and I’ve gotten lost in my imagination of what that would look like on an extended scale. First off, I’d probably spend my days wandering the woods, naming the squirrels and rabbits that I cross paths with. Of course, this is assuming I already had a little cabin with a wood burning stove and some minor comforts like running water and electricity. For the most part, I believe it would be a nice break from the busy world.

I imagine hunting and foraging for my food and eventually planting a decent garden to keep myself fed. I would learn how to make things I needed from the natural resources that were available to me. Trial and error would, most likely, be the method I’d use for the first year or two or three. I would expect to have some setbacks, but for the most part, I believe I could overcome them. At some point, I’m sure I would feel like throwing in the towel, rejoining civilization, and becoming a part of the “machine” again; but it would definitely take some time before the thought crossed my mind.

What if my only job was to survive? No 9-5. No shift work. No nutrition labels. No noise, just the sound of the wind in the trees, squirrels barking, birds singing, crickets chirping, and my own voice. A dog to keep me company and to be my home security system. Wouldn’t it be cool to just work on my own life for my own benefit rather than slaving away at a job where I make next to nothing and I’m barely surviving anyway? Why not just build a house with my own 2 hands? I would see the benefits of my hard work and it would be something I was proud of.

In my free time, I would write. Throw a log in the stove, sit at a desk I built, in a chair I built, with a laptop China built, and get all my crazy out. On the nights I didn’t feel like writing, I’d sit outside by a fire pit with my dog and carve little trinkets out of sticks. I would sit and look up at the stars and be thankful for a life where all my hard work is for me and not some billion dollar corporation where part of my pay goes to a government that funds other countries and says “Fuck you” to the citizens that pay them taxes.

While this is a day-dream and completely hypothetical, as I write this I’m really starting to think it may not be a bad idea. But how to do I fund such a lifestyle? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Subscribers? Followers? I mean, that’s not what I’m about. Oh well, maybe I’ll find a way or maybe it’ll just be a dream. Is it still okay to dream?

Things to think about:

1. Tiny home, log cabin, or adobe?
2. location
   • Weather
   • Wild life
   • Property availability
3. Comforts
   • Running Water
   • Electricity
   • Human waste disposal
   • Internet
4. How far from a town is ideal?
5. Transportation
   • Truck
   • Horse
   • Ox
   • Bike
6. Tools I’ll need
7. Pets & livestock
8. Fire wood availability
9. Companionship or solitude
10. Funding

I have a feeling that the less I have the happier I would be. Stuff only seems to make me happy for a little bit. I don’t have much I can be proud of that I’ve created with my own two hands. I wrote a screenplay but when I updated my screenwriting software it got lost in the upgrade and I can’t seem to get it back. But the honest reason why I would love to become a hermit, a man of the land, or whatever you want to call it, is because I think I would like to let my mind be free. I feel like I’m holding something back and I don’t know what it is. I want to go a little nuts and dance naked around a fire. I want to howl at the moon and bang on a drum. I want to experience nature and become one with it BEFORE I’m put in the ground. I can’t help but feel like a modern life, in a town or a city, with so many people around, keeps the real me confined to an imagination and a longing to be elsewhere. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde sometimes and I want to break away from the “norms” of society and find that primal part of me that it’s in a box locked away. But, for now, I have to keep that insanity on hold.