[SeaGypsy]

Ok, so we have all thought about it, some of us have done it.

Personally, I grew up thinking I would be dead long ago; thus I 'retired' age 20 and took 12 years 'off'. I am now 45 and pretty fully in the mainstream/ 13 years of mostly full time employment/ marriage/ 2 kids/ stressed out about money a lot/ stressed about the future a fair bit (for one who is at acceptance of the ramifications of peak oil).

During those years of 'early retirement anticipating early demise', I am looking back, thinking what a wonderful time.

I had a premonition of sorts, when I was still a child, that the world as we know it would end in my natural lifetime. Probably this had something to do with my father being both ex-military and becoming a teacher with very socially driven motive and outlook. Also perhaps with some of the more switched on teachers I had in primary school, talking about re-living the fall of Rome, mostly based on demographics vs resource economics. Later on I got suckered into Oija board type hippy b/s and 'did a reading' which came up with me being dead at 28. This was when I was 15. 28 is 'Saturn Return' probably the most significant point in the maturation of a human being in 'astrology'; being based on the rotation of Saturn being 28 years 164 days (or something like that)/ and Saturn representing 'Authority' (I did not know this when I was 15).

By the time I was 28 (+164 days) I was sitting in a teepee, in a swamp out back of Byron Bay, Australia's most famous 'hippy' town. I was truly ready to die. I wasn't at all depressed or suicidal, I just believed I was going to die. I had long ago conceived a living son to an Orthodox Levite (I am not kidding). I had done every drug, tried every religious, sexual, mountaineering, sailing, surfing adventure, I was sitting there waiting to die.

'It' didn't happen. Something else did. Another series of visions (which you will have to read the book to find out about). Life went on, and got more and more and more complex. I knew it was about oil. Knew.

So cut to the present. It's all about oil.

So What To Do?

Commitments galore (keeping wife and kids alive).

Adaptability/ employability (I have been very busy).

Knowledge (I do know how to live very close to nature with very little).

Ordinary friends and colleagues (nobody I know in person is as aware).

So what to do now?

I can see the writing on the wall and am not stupid.
Assuming I live another 45 years as did all my naturally living ancestors.
I am going to be continually watching the demise of what we have come to know as 'The World'. It is going down the tubes as we speak. My kids, my wife and anyone else I care about is also going to be having the same news thrown at us (BS) for the rest of our lives.

So, here I am again, thinking about those things nobody wants to: death, responsibility, decision making, absolutes.

What is it I want to reach back to that 'retirement' for? A friend described 'it' as timelessness. The sense of no time.

I am scarily ruled by the clock. I wake 2 minutes before my 5am alarm every day (even on days off/ I have to remind myself).

My life is not 'mine' (Not sailing, not surfing, not traveling, not getting to know more and more people, not going to new places every few months).

So now what?

As per the heading, I am seriously thinking about ditching the entire money game, in stages, step by step, determinedly.

Is anyone else here?

[careinke]

I have been working on that for the last 6 years. My current retirement is almost exactly 1/10 of my high year salary. My goal was always to retire before the age of 50 and I finally did at age 49 because the program I was working on ended, and I had no bills and some nice property fully paid off.

In 2004, I discovered Peak Oil, and a new mission. I was determined to make this place as self sufficient as possible, reduce my footprint on the earth, and permanently cut my spending.

Now when I spend money, one of the primary considerations is will I get a return on my investment greater than I will pay into it. If not, I usually will not buy it. My wife and I are great cooks so we eat out very rarely. Usually only when we are off the compound for more than a day.

In 2010 I discovered Permaculture and had another epiphany.

I now have over 80 different types of perennial/self seeding edible plants growing on the property. And that is counting apples as one type even though I have six varieties and ten trees growing. Same with pears, peaches, Kiwi and many others. We are starting to put stakes with the plant names just so we can remember what they all are.

Just today, I went to this awesome little permaculture nursery and bought a Black Locust, a Heart Nut, Roman Chamomile, two Black Elderberry, two Service Berry (Canadensis), Lovage, Garden Sorrel, Salad Burnett, and a Angelica plant.

I've built a rocket mass heater in my greenhouse for a total of $37. Now I have a heated seed starting pad, powered by coppiced Big Leaf Maple, turning a problem of eternal maple sprouts into an asset, and the charcoal that is left goes into the garden as biochar, making the whole system a carbon negative experience.

I no longer: Till the soil, fertilize, apply herbicides, or apply pesticides. I am starting to apply measures so I will significantly cut down on weeding, and ideally become self mulching. This should leave me with the job of transplanting and harvesting, the rest of the work, through good design is done by nature.

It sounds zen, but if it's hard, your not doing it right. I spend a LOT more time observing now. I am learning to tell if a plant will grow well in a certain area by what is already growing there. For example; if Scotch Broom (an awesome nitrogen fixer) is growing there, it is a well drained soil. I've had lots of failures, and I cherish them more than the successes because I savor and learn from them. It's hard to describe this knowledge you gain by just observing. The closest I can think of is I am starting to "Grok" as described in Heinlein's book "Stranger in a Strange Land" (My all time favorite science fiction book).

I built a pond and used pigs to seal it. The pigs loved it, I now have a pond that fills with algae, which a wild Mallard pair have found who eat the algae and mosquito larvae. Watching it evolve and nature balancing it out was fascinating.

I'm actually planting nut trees so my grandchildren will have something to eat. How cool is that? To be honest, for us, things are coming together, and we are right where we want to be. The coming collapse could be relatively pleasant, you just need to have a small paradigm shift.

So now that the mumbo jumbo is done. I say GO FOR IT! What do you have to lose but some expenses?

[SeaGypsy]

My last permie garden was in the tropic mountains, too high for mangoes but we grew avocados and pears and apples next to papaya, along with piles of year round greens + squash. Only time it was 'work' was when we got more than a couple of dry days; in a very high rainfall area we were on hoses and buckets when dry. This was where I learned that water and rain are not the same thing.

I spent years living on the edge of aboriginal and micro-permie, a lot of wild food. I find that place kind of fascinating, wild bush gardens and associated hunting opportunities. In Australia, with so much desert, it's very hard to find the ideal balance of agrible/ nearby wilderness/ ner enough to other humans without being too near too many.

Then there is the open air asylum of intentional communities; which are the main reason I went back to mainstream.

[KingM]

The first thing that is clear is that your spiritual feelings (knowing the world will end, following a ouija board, etc.) are not reliable. If you drop out a second time in anticipation of the end of the world you'll likely be wrong again. This is my advice.

1. Take care of your kids. Keep them fed, housed, and educated. Anything else is secondary.
2. Do no harm. So long as you're not imposing on other people/becoming a leech to society, I see no problem in dropping out of the rat race. Be aware that the most likely result of this is you will reach your late sixties and facing twenty years of poverty and declining health.

[Pops]

It's been decades since I punched the proverbial time card but there are times even now I miss the imagined security of a steady paycheck. But missing something imagined can get you into trouble.

I'm not much of a tree sitter under-er, sometimes I wish I were better at it. Don't take that the wrong way, it isn't that I am all that productive, its just that doing the next thing I want to do sometimes (most times) takes precedence over what the chore that probably should be done. Ask my wife, I mostly finished remodeling the bathroom last year but the outlet for the hair dryer still isn't connected (and easily dozens of other examples including doors and drawer fronts on the kitchen cabinets, oh, and no floor in the downstairs bedroom, etc.). I guess it is a trade off - I do a lot of different stuff, more than the typical weekend warrior maybe but I'm also not the best at crossing all the T's and dotting the I's.

I can relate to burn out, I do it all the time. I'm ADD I'm sure (in my day it was just another personality type, not a profit center) so when I'm into something I'm really into it but when I've learned all I care to, developed my skill as much as I need to, well then it is just a chore and I'm pretty well finished and off to the next thing. Sometimes (like the business of window restoring) I get lucky and burn out before I start!

Way back when I was a kid I read a book called the Three Boxes of Life, it said: instead of school, then work, then retirement, a person should mix it up and not confine themselves to a rigid plan and timeline. That's what I've done, not that I would have done anything differently had I not read the book. It sounds like you are similar. So I'm lucky in that I had a little talent and intelligence that allowed me to make enough when I was "into" making money to at least buy a place because I'll be working from no on. LOL!

Kids and the expectations of a spouse obviously mean a person isn't free to do whatever strikes their fancy but neither do those obligations mean one has no obligation to themselves.

[seahorse3]

I agree with KingM. You have made your choice. You have kids. You have to take care of them, safeguard them, and prepare them for the world we live in. Everything else is secondary. I also agree with King not to do any harm.

I also agree that you have been wrong before about the end (we are all wrong about most things) and will likely be wrong again as we all will.

An old movie quote I like is "It's easy to be a wise man in a cave." But we don't live in a cave, certainly not when we have children. They have a right to the a world with endless possibilities.

[Plantagenet]

I agree with POPS. Listen to your heart. Don't get trapped crawling from box to box through the three boxes of life just because you've got kids now. Your whole life sounds like its been an incredible journey/adventure already. No reason to stop now---just take the kids along.

Work when you want to work, take a break and surf and hike and travel if you get to a good spot for that, then work again, then retire, then work and retire at the same time, etc. etc. and then go back to school. Then Find a job where you can hike and surf. Find a job that makes good money. Spend the money. Work again. Retire again. And so on.

Grinding through a job you don't like for 40 years to have a "good" retirement is a big mistake. Taking your kids camping at the beach and teaching your kids how to surf is more important than earning money to buy them expensive video games.


Buddha sitting under the Mahabodha Tree

[kublikhan]

I agree with KingM and seahorse3. Take off your end of the world hat. Doomsday predictions are as old as mankind. Yet somehow we keep chuggin' along. Perhaps it's not your friends who are oblivious and wearing rose colored glasses but you who is wearing a doomsday hat. It is quite chaffing isn't it? Take it off and live a little. I just got back from a cruise.

Stop thinking of your wife and children as burdensome responsibilities and think of them instead as your partners in life. Life's journey is more fun if you have someone to share it with.

Don't get worked up about the media/government throwing BS at you. One of my favorite lines from the movie Falling Down:
"You're mad because they lied to you? Listen, pal, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today."

You need to provide for your family, but that doesn't mean you should burn yourself out in the rat race. My brother has a high paying job but doesn't have enough time to wipe his ass. Constantly working, he is burning himself out. He recently took stock of the situation and looked at his wife and asked "Is this worth it?" They both agreed it was not.

So just to sum up: if you are planning any major changes in your life, don't do anything rash without a plan. As someone wise once said: "Make a plan and work it"

[Timo]

Sites such as these have a knack for gathering the forlorn, looking to refuel their own jets to keep going. I'm a perfect example of that type, and i easily recognize that i'm not alone. And neither are you! I honestly wish i has some sage advice to pass along, but, alas, i can only tell you how i manage dealing with the bs that the world hurls our way. To start with, one of the outs i've found is simply writing, and reading your original post on this thread, i can tell you have quite the talent for words, yourself. Combine that talent for prose with a sound mind and you can create all kinds of worthwhile reading, both for yourself, and for others, as well. The requisite caveat for this escape, however, is that as with anything, you musn't take it too seriously. It's not my day job. Use it as an escape, not as the generator of your reality. Next, in keeping with the aim to minimize the importance of reality, or at least its overwhelming grandeur, don't set out to change the world. You can't. Right out of college, i sure wanted to, and that immense naivete that is the predominant ingredient of youth. A few decades later, reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Instead of setting your sight out on the world at large, i've changed the scope of my endeavors to only seeking to improve what i see around me. In this regard, you could say that i've minimized my world, and you'd be partially right. I still pay attention to what goes on across the planet, but as far as my place in it, i tend to stay close to home. By the time i die, i'll be only one of 9 billion people on this earth, and one of the ingredients of age is the understanding that while youth does have its unrealistic 'sky is the limits' mentality, that age also comes with a whole lot of energy. Alas, older age brings a clearer understanding of reality coincident with the lack of any energy to do anything about it. (Stupid reality!) Anyway, the place i've ended up at in my own head is the aim to lead by example, and not by some grand inspirational movement. Leading by example will be good for your your kids, btw. Leave your world, as big, or as small as you let it become, a little better than when you found it.

[Pops]

And above all, don't succumb to the pressure to use paragraphs!

:^D

[Quinny]

One thing I like about Peak Oil is there are so many kindred spirits

[autonomous]

Opt out of this rat race, absolutely! Opt out of mortgages, cars, useless gadgets, junk media, facebook, and all the other irrrelevant ego-centric nonsense in this society.

[SeaGypsy]

(Chuckle)
Thanks for so much feedback!

Without quoting;
I didn't mention that my wife has been dealing with depression the last year and more. I often find myself coming home from a 12 hour day to a pig sty with nary a clean rag in the house and nappies all over the place. That doesn't make it feel like a partnership, more like another job. She is also from a culture where I am as the man responsible for primary decision making (like where we live/ where I work etc. and I am responsible for all consequences thereof.

I am past predicting the end of the world, that kind of misses the point.
It's not that it's about to end, more that it's becoming a downhill run to oblivion. I am hearing those suggesting educating my children should be the priority, but educating them to do what is a bigger question. I think Planty gets where I am at. I don't yet have a real answer.

I have known it will end up being about writing, since I was a young kid. I also knew that nobody under 30/ 35 or having a serious lived experience, has anything worthwhile to say/ write. So much of my living has become about this development of experience. My being here on peakoil.com is a way of keeping writing without having to focus on myself or my life story. This thread is a break from that pattern for me, an invitation to those who have been sharing here to show some more personal perceptions, which I much appreciate.

The point Pops makes about age bringing both wisdom and ineptitude is spot on and brings up the core paradox I both struggle with and try to avoid. Getting to take the time to delve inward long enough to stop the noise changing the context perpetually is what makes productive volumous writing most difficult. This is one central reason I feel like getting off the treadmill.

Also when I talk about 'sitting under a tree'; alongside my mattock, my axe, my shovel, my bag of chicken shit. It's still work. I am not naive enough to believe it is really possible to do nothing; it's also not in my make up. More about simplicity and having thoughtspace.

[kublikhan]

Sorry to hear about your wife's depression. My wife too has been battling with it. If you have not already done so, I would suggest therapy and anti-depressants. I had always been opposed to our pill popping culture and touchy feeling sessions but I must admit they have helped my wife. I was in the same situation as you dealing with my wife's lack of motivation to do anything, even having to cook meals for her after I get home from a long day of work. The pills helped. Although we had to experiment for awhile to find the right pill/combination that works well for her.

[SeaGypsy]

She has been on Zoloft for about 10 months; it has helped a lot, but the side effects are shocking. Irrational aggression, forgetfulness, wanting to shop all the time even when we don't have money. Considering that Community Mental Health called me at work 6 months back and told me to come immediately from work to look after the kids while the wife was hospitalized for talking about jumping out the 3rd story window with them in her arms; I should count myself lucky.

Had I not been through depression myself, I think the marriage would have failed. Many times I have to block my ears and pretend I can't hear her. Being nice to someone who is being horrible to you is never easy.

[Hawkcreek]

It is kind of a reality smack to see that even the posters that seem to have it pretty well together have problems that may be hard to solve.
Hope things work out well for you and your family, SG. I learned a long time ago that just keeping on keeping on usually works to solve most problems - or at least to make them seem less important from a viewpoint several years down the road.
I seem to have been blessed with bounties equal to my problems through the years. Now that I am older (nearly 65) my major problem seems to be loneliness (can't seem to keep a wife around), but even that burns away when I see a pretty sunset and I have an alcoholic beverage in my hands.
I have a job, but it is only for 2 weeks out of each month. That leaves me plenty of time to work on projects that I enjoy, travel, and take pictures. Thats about as good as it gets when you get my age.
I often think that all the talking that people do on the internet is just a poor substitute for spending time with neighbors and friends over a drink - like we use to do so much more of. It may be a poor substitute, but it will have to do for now.

[SeaGypsy]

Yeah that's a weird one. Funnily addictive. To my way of thinking though, the addiction is logical, in that the ability to 'zoom in' on a community is unparalleled elsewhere. I don't think any of the handful of active Aussies here have met in person, I know some of the Americans here have had the privilege of real time together. There are some posters here would be on my top ten of people to visit were I to go around the globe again.

[Corella]

My admiration enduring so much! For the "life is not mine" part, i could establish 2 to 3 evenings off per week, spending with good friends. Keeping in mind, kids will grow up, time will change again. For the TEOTWAWKI part, i´d like to argue that all nebula balls remain cloudy, even being aware of club of rome and economic system malfunction. I´m deeply convinced all models and scenario-devices work with figures which have enormous error probability!
We´ve been optimistic enough to have children, now we have to go through (personally not sure i actually had a choice ).

[SeaGypsy]

I am a cup half full kind of person, plus thanks to many 20 years odd my senior here on this site, have been converted to a slow crasher (from a doomsdayer). Having children feels hard wired into me, like my life wouldn't be complete without, as cruel and twisted as life is. One of my favorite artists wrote about the human need to face the future with a child on a stick, kind of a sickly truth. There is no warmer place to be than cuddling ones own offspring, as temporary as it is and temporal as it may be.

[Corella]

...and also temporary are midlife-crises (coming lately nowadays) and winter-times in higher (sorry lower in this case) latitudes
I´m so jealous thinking of Wilsons Prom and all the spots between it and Melbourne, Grampians, Desert National Parks... (would you probably know whether the
big one is still inhabited by (invasive) "wild" bees?). Else good luck mate, hope you can cheer up quick!