I also taken up farming in 2013 after 10 years of working on startups (as founder and early engineer, with no success at all). I was about to move back to village I was born at and escaped as fast as I could at the age 15.
I started natural winery at the ripe time when it first started to be popular and managed to miss the wave. It was a great first year after many years of tech grind in big tech hubs. I was waking up late, went for walk where I probably met friend or two who had nothing much to do, so we drink a coffee and talked a bit. Waiting for summer heat to be over, then work in the vineyard till the sun went down and then go to the local pub for beer or four.
I guess it sounds like it was vacation or playing farmer. And that is what it was, really. I did that for couple of years and then moved back to the nearby city and rejoined the startup grind. What I got from this experience is that there are seasons in life and it is great to have an optionality to play with different modes of life. The tech industry will always be there.
I am in my 40s now. Found a wife, got a mortgage and couple of kids. I kept the farm and treated it as a weekend hobby, rented out most of the land and I am slowly building the infrastructure I missed when I started. One day the kids will be old enough and tech will no longer excite me. The season will change, I move back, wake up late, meet with local friends who have nothing much to do during summer heat, work the vineyards and then hit pub when the sun went down.
Reminds me when I was a young consultant and couldn't decide whether to take the long planned vacations or start a new high-urgency project. One of my mentors wisely said to me: "Go, there will be always another exciting project." So I went.
Sometimes it's good to step out and see the bigger picture.
I'm happy this person found a way to live that's meaningful to him, but I grew up as a farmer. You're coming back to something we've known a long time. If a god is what let's you get there, then good, let god keep you whole.
But this is what the classics of stoicism (in the literal sense of both) have been telling us the whole time. We make our own meaning, and money isn't it. Go and grow things. Raise things. Build things.
Civilization is when men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.
It's honestly quite interesting to me how this presents. I mean: Yes, people should ultimately pursue some form of happiness, but for me that happiness is genuinely doing software engineering work, and I do not think we should demonize the 9-5 office-job. In my opinion it gets too much flack, and the "move to a farm"-dream becomes some kinds of utopic ideal, which I really do not believe it is. I have worked much heavier, more manual jobs in my life and they do not provide more happiness. If anything, they provide less comfort.
For some, the benefits for society are not as immediately visible as a farmer producing potatoes or corn which he/she can touch with their own hands, but in my personal view my job positions me as a not insignificant cog in a gigantic machine which has genuine benefits for society (and some negative influences, yes).
Some red flags in the linked article. Spirituality and barefoot running, which I do not believe is very evidence based to recommend. My opinion is that anyone working a software engineering office 9-5 should also always be doing strength resistance training and some cardio every single week. This should provide the health benefits needed to survive in what is a sedentary job.
If I can give you any advice as a likely older man to a younger man, no bias intended, happiness is fleeting. Look for fulfillment. I personally find religious apologies to be empty but if they get you to a good place, fuck it, I can't argue with everyone over methods. If your job is fulfilling, or enables you to do fulfilling things in your other time, there is no shame in that.
There is a visceral spiritualism to working with your hands, but if you can achieve that with coding, great! Live a life you would want if money didn't matter.
I generally do not pursue happiness, I try to pursue purpose. Life is peaks and valleys, the only permanence being that nothing really persists.
Writing code is also working with your hands. It produces real world effects which even if you cannot observe them directly still provide societal benefit: The "impact" of this can in many cases be much larger than a manual job.
I think your leading sentence is a false Dichotomy for many people. Pursuit of happiness doesn't imply being in a state of bliss all the time. Stoics are allowed to be happy too.
I've been a farmer and I've been a software developer, and farming was just a "this is work that puts money on the table", whereas software development is what I really find fulfilling. I entirely agree with you that it's idolized too much (together with carpentry), and yes, do whatever makes you happy, for some people it's one, for some it's the other.
Same I think you can get purpose from other areas with basing your survival on it. It's very easy to have a hands on hobby like knitting, car mechanic's, growing tomatoes if there's a problem of being "disconnected from the world"
"Spirituality and barefoot running, which I do not believe is very evidence based to recommend."
I highly recommend both.
But as just as there are lots of cults and scams in the spirituality world, just starting to run barefeet will likely hurt you very quickly.
No ideas about studies here, but they would need to include a lot of factors to be meaningful for generalisation. For example if you did not do running around barefeet as a kid at all, your bones might not be strong enough if you start as a adult. And then you have to be extra careful to develope more muscles there.
Also where you run matters a lot. Basically, anything soft is nice. Gras, a sandy beach, forest tracks. Running on snow is also nice (for some time). But once your skin is stronger, also gravel roads can be fun. Just not flat asphalt.
I can just say running barefoot gives me immense joy and helps my body be in good shape. Strong flexible feet act like a shock absorbers for all the other joints in your body btw.
If it makes you happy, then by all means go for that. I am glad for you. What is generally recommended and evidence based is a different matter. I will not pretend to be an expert on it: All I have done is a cursory glance on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
For me, my joy has come from strength resistance training and my discovery of the stairmaster. The latter was a very fun find! It's a really strenuous exercise which makes you strong for hiking in the wilderness and I feel like I do not need to do it for as long as the treadmill which I hate.
"What is generally recommended and evidence based is a different matter."
Yeah, but wikipedia for example says this, which matches my experience:
"Scientific research into the practice of running barefoot or with minimalist shoes is increasingly suggesting that it increases intrinsic foot muscle size and strength, but it has been limited to healthy individuals and further research is required to reach definite conclusions."
If you are healthy and do it right, it seems beneficial.
So it is smart to not recommend it in general for everyone as most ain't healthy, nor do take the time to do things right.
And same with spirituality, it is just such a broad term. I believe there are quite some studies that show positive effects of mindful meditation for example. But sure, you won't find positive studies about health benefits of astrology or homeopathy if that is what spirituality means to you.
Interesting. I am certainly very open to my initial broad sweep being incorrect on barefoot running. I would want to dig much deeper into it than Wikipedia alone though, even though its a serviceable source.
But more on the matter, I am not so much a advocate of running barefoot, but doing anything barefeet if possible. Dancing is so much more enjoyable for me like this, but it depends of course on the setting and place.
Now I will go out and do some rock climbing barefeet ..
There's a story about Diocletian, the emperor who guided Rome through one of the most turbulent periods of its history, and later voluntarily abdicated and retired to his villa. When they begged him back to resolve some conflicts that had arisen he stated:
"If you could see the cabbages I have planted here with my own hands, you surely would never have thought to request this."
I tried doing the same thing, happy to see it worked out for somebody! I just didn't have the capital or social safety net to get the farm off the ground, so I eventually had to sell the farm and go back to coding.
Someday though...
> From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.
I thought this was a beautiful statement; something to really help us think about what we're trying to do here on Earth. But personally I would add Artist to this. Painter, sculptor, musician, writer, poet, and so on. We need those too.
Edit: As others have reminded me below, service work like doctor, firefighter, teacher must qualify as well.
I disagree, it is not significant at all if you think about the implications here for more than a couple of seconds.
A poet needs his pen and paper. Someone needs to man the paper-mills and ink-factories, someone needs to work on logistics and planning issues related to that, infrastructure etc.
A pedantic point. Even in a non-industrialized tribal society an oral poet needs a mud house, sandals and various tools. Someone needs to make those, probably the poet themselves.
Now, now, there's some meaning to it. The meaning is that stating it allows the author to feel morally superior to the rest of us "liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers, and cheats".
Yes, I’m so glad this incredible philosopher’s months-long thought experiment let him discover that becoming a gentleman farmer elevated him above the petty moral hazards and trite meaningless existences of fucking doctors, nurses, firefighters, pilots, social workers, journalists, artists, EMTs, school teachers, engineers, scientists, monks, academics, etc. etc. etc.
Bet you ten bucks he spent a few solid months playing Stardew Valley before this grand moral awakening.
Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Fire fighters... I can think of an endless list of service based career paths that involve no evil, and are immensely meaningful.
We do need art but do people need to choose that as their career path? Traditionally perhaps, was an artist part time, was art made communally as leisure?
Some had rich patrons and there were travelling bands of entertainers...
I wonder about what in the software industry causes so many people to have similar "symptoms" from it.
I believe it must be something about dedicating oneself to creating something that "does not exist" in a material sense.
My 'farming' has been woodworking: completing the simplest wooden furniture has given me a satisfaction that I do not remember any app or software product ever getting close to causing, despite the fact that I love the work.
It's that we make enough money to not be trapped in it for life.
Jobs are, by definition, things you get paid to do, because you wouldn't do them for free. Therefore, by definition, everyone hates their job to some degree. We just have the luxury of leaving.
At least for me it was the realization that I didn't really know why I was doing what I was doing.
I wanted to change the world and make it better, and it felt good to pursue a career with a high salary and prestige, but after years of working in software I was not seeing my work actually make the world better. In fact it was making me feel sick, tired, and depressed.
There was a short period of time in the 2000s when it did feel like tech was beginning to transform peoples lives and society for the better, but after the algorithms and rougher edges of our collective human nature took it over, it all seems to have drastically changed course.
What did you do about it? I am asking with sincere interest.
I quit my SWE job more than a year ago and have been trying out a solo/indie thing for a few months. It has been hard, as it really forces me to face how much I really suck at things, but the motivation and the joy of learning are slowly coming back.
I am wondering if indie webdev might become a thing, given how it is going in the game development space, how enshittification is slowly becoming a mainstream term, and how the industry seem to lean right now in terms of jobs.
That's why I realised that I really enjoy embedded systems, as they often include a good level of physical world in their architecture. Using ES in a farming setting is even more satisfying because the code could be extremely simple but still make a huge real impact to people. Love that!
I thought about this a lot, which is why I greatly value doing the occasional electronics project, home renovation or even cooking. There is just something about working with something I can touch.
Is this actually a business that can make money? My family owns around 1000 olive oil trees in Greece that produce eatable olives and extra virgin olive oil.
The thing is that we always sell the product in intermediates that would pack it up and sell it in a much higher price. I don't know of any small producer that sells the product directly to the consumer. This seems like a very big investment and not really sustainable. Are there other people that are doing it?
Could my knowledge as a software engineer help that family business in any way to be more profitable ?
I sell onions on the Internet [0] is a well known example I've seen, whose author sells Vidalia onions direct to consumers. Another one I know are Miami Fruit [1]. There are no doubt countless examples, but more than software engineering, you need good marketing. If you made an ecommerce site via Shopify (do not code this yourself, it's a waste of time) or wrote a similar article, and posted about them, I'm sure people would find you and order. Personally I'd be interested in buying directly from your farm, let me know how that is possible even if it's a low tech solution for now.
Something you might be able to code is plugins for these ecommerce sites, if it makes sense for your business. I also used to run a loose leaf tea ecommerce store via Shopify but I imported from producers like your family as you describe, and I wrote one for dynamic pricing for buying from various countries due to their purchasing power being less. It'd calculate their power as well as my thresholds and figure out optimal prices where more people could buy it but wasn't screwing me over too.
Most likely not, this is more of a way to retire with money earned from software development and spend time "on business" that isn't really financially viable.
Kudos to author for going this path, but it takes a lot of resources to be able to make a move like this, which is not really an option for a large majority of population.
At that point it becomes an exercise in marketing more than anything else, because the whole business model depends on finding rich customers that are willing to pay a suitable markup to make the extra effort feasabile. And then you have to also be constantly trying to retain those customers....etc
I always get my olive oil from a farm in Italy that only sells direct to customer. Or my coffee from a shop that gets the beans directly from the farmer (direct trade > fair trade).
It's possible, the market is kind of small I guess but you need to have a product where the customer is happy to pay a premium.
And being a software developer helps because you might have the money to invest?! :)
I guess, these things are long somewhere in the mind, before people execute.
People change countries, partners, careers not because of one book. This is usually the last drop. They were long-term unhappy, yearning for something else.
And as this guy wrote, he was sick, he was burned out. I suppose, he wasn't able to limit his screen time, it was all or nothing. Sometimes, those big changes work better than incremental steps. 20 years ago, I went from a pack of cigarettes a day to zero. If I went to 19, then 18, then 17, I might still smoke to this day.
It takes courage to step away from what you were known for, and even more to return and explain why. The journey from burnout to renewal resonates deeply with me, and I suspect many of us recognize the slow decay you're describing.
I'm on a similar path myself, hoping to marry open source and open hardware with farming. Heartfelt congrats to Dylan on finding WILD and the clarity to change course.
"Now, one day back at Data General, his weariness focused on the logic analyzer and the small catastrophes that come from trying to build a machine that operates in billionths of a second. On this occasion, he went away from the basement and left this note on his terminal:
I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
— from "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder
This was quite an interesting read. It's good to hear that farming & spirituality have given you a new purpose in life, but I think this pop at Thoreau
> and no, there's no manifesto decrying the system written from a cabin in the woods
Is a bit unjustified considering you've just written an entire blog post decrying your old "meaningless" existence vs the fulfilment you have in your new life. It comes across a bit holier than thou. As if to imply you're "quietly just getting on with it", which is evidently not the case, as you still feel the need to write about it
> All that remained was to decide what to do with my life. From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.
Seems shocking at first, but the more you think about what our SWE works does, for whom, and who benefits the most of it ... IMO it makes sense.
It sounds more like a depression and stress brained reduction to me. Tends to put you in a very binary and extreme thinking mode in my lived experience.
Also I inherently disagree with the idea of meaninglessness the author presents there. Meaning is relative to man, man makes meaning. There is no objective meaning and so you have to choose it for yourself.
For many, software engineering is an artisan endeavor (hence why many are freaking out over AI, it removes their enjoyment of the process even as others, who are solution oriented, like the final output and what problems it can solve without giving a shit about the code, two different types of people).
You can apply software development skills to public good. It's just not the most common path, nor the best-paid one. I should also highlight that SWE has one of the most prolific gift economies out there.
Well, "essentially meaningless" does away with basically anything that isn't water and food, so lets be measured. Working on video games could be done in an ethical, sustainable and non-evil way, but also one can argue is "essentially meaningless" together with everything else too, including "artisan".
> adopting instead, the diet of my great grandparents: Plants; local, seasonal and whole.
I saw some mention of the same on the website for the farm. Care to share any recipes? Or even just names of dishes? I quite enjoy foods from the Mediterranean and I'm interested in trying more!
Sure! My mother is preparing a book detailing recipes, ingredients, foraging,
how to eat, when to eat and so on which will be released this year. Basically,
we follow the seasons and there are 4-5 "dishes" each season with some overlap.
The "dishes" are templates filled in with whatever is available at the time.
For instance, when chestnuts are in season they enter soups, casseroles, roasts,
salads and on their own drizzled with olive oil and salt. When they finish,
something else is in season and the dishes change again.
There's a very brief period of overlap where the staple summer vegetables
(tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, zucchini) and chestnuts are available at the
same time. These vegetables stuffed with a mix of brown rice and chestnuts and
baked in the oven is heavenly.
Instead of thinking about recipes and then obtaining ingredients to make them,
start with the ingredients and make it up as you go. Things that are in season
together typically go together. We base everything on olive oil, alliums, some
sort of legume or grain and seasonal greens, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
My great grandparents didn't follow recipes per se. When they made a soup they
used what they had and due to lack of refrigeration and ultra-processing
everything they ate was local, seasonal and fresh.
Thank you for sharing your struggles so openly for us to learn from. It's good to hear you've found your self-worth from within instead of without now.
This is my path, 4 years in the making, which should peak this year when I finally buy a property I have been saving for.
Remarkably similar to the author's, following a massive burnout from work in mid 2020 from which I became a new^Wdifferent person, with a new perspective on life. Three years of therapy later, jailbroken Kindle filled not with the Bible but philosophers and other role models [1]
The eyes of friends and family gloss over when I describe my new goal in life, of finding the tight path between being a computer wiz and finding a life as close to Nature as possible; of finding a community of like-minded people that exist in real life, for someone that grew up and lived all his adult life on the Internet. An Internet of people that keep telling me that urban living and modern technology isn't so bad, that I should stop complaining and schedule another interview that modern tech is "so much fun and comfortable, look at all this money." I do believe we have gone wrong somewhere, I do believe there is a third path between totalitarian techno-optimism and complete rejection of modernity, and perhaps this is the best time in history to explore it, by returning to our roots. Remembering our natural ecosystem which is our home and sustenance. We earn our living in front of a square piece of glass connected to the ether, why the hell would one live packed like a sardine in impersonal and smelly cities? I truly, desperately need to believe in a return to the countryside; to more humane rhythms of living.
My favourite quote is from George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man"
We don't have to abandon all our comforts. And for once the technologists like us can use their brains for the good of humanity and their neighbours, rather than making people click on ads. Go wire solar panels. Build hydroponic farms. Fix and refurbish electronics. Make art. Share your labour with your neighbour. Invite them over to talk about life. Leave the modern Internet behind.
---
1: Martijn Doolaard, and the Emacs philosopher Protesilaos Stavrou have had the greatest influence on me.
> Everything I read made reference to the Bible, something I had never read nor was in any way acquainted with. The references kept appearing and eventually I decided to dive in head first and read it. Putting the King James Version of the Bible on my kindle, over many months I read it cover to cover.
> At the time, I wouldn't have called myself an Atheist. Agnostic is not the right word to use either. Not that I believed or didn't believe in the existence of God, in truth, I had simply never thought about it. In place of an answer was lack of the preceding question.
> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before. A mirror was put in front of me and I saw myself clearly for the first time. Finding God, I realized how far I had drifted from the straight and narrow. Weak of mind, steeped in sin, ruled by bodily desires and whims of fancy, the life I led could only lead to one place: the broad road alongside the liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers and cheats, for I was one of them.
I'd like to see this person write in detail about specifically what about the Bible they found resonant, and specifically resonant in a way that lead them towards something like a Judeo-Christian understanding of God and sinfulness. I note that they do not mention Jesus Christ, who is the most important figure in the second part of the Bible, and (arguably) entirely absent from the first half - and indeed the schism between Jews who only take the first half of the Bible seriously and Christians who take the second half seriously as well is a pretty important one!
This isn't a troll post on my part, although I admit that I'm somewhat skeptical that this person read the King James Version of the Bible and was specifically convinced by the various writings in that long and complex text that some kind of Judeo-Christian understanding of the nature of God is the correct one. I think it's more likely that they were in some kind of personal spiritual crisis, read the foundational scripture of one of the major world religions, and were moved in a kind of a general way. I suspect that if they were reading books that made more references to the Quran or to Buddhist sutras, they might've found themselves reading the Quran or Buddhist sutras and ended up in a similar mental state. But I'm not sure of that, which is why I'm genuinely curious to hear more about what specifically in the text of the Bible they found meaningful.
I usually am the anti-religion type, pointing out the abuses happening in churches, and the general bigotry that leads to more violence rather than fewer. So reaching that part of the article made me cringe. The sentence about him being a sinner especially sounded like bad puritanism.
But then it goes on, the guy is mostly healthier from quitting bad and not-so-bad habits, doing eco-friendly stuff in Greece with his family. It sounds like it worked for him.
This dont-do-evil kind of Christianity is all right.
It's not completely obvious from the post though whether this man embraces the love-thy-neighbor aspect of Christianity. He seems to have this idealistic good-vs-bad view of the world that's typically protestant. And his condescending tone make it sound like whoever doesn't do like he does can rot in hell, cause they deserve it.
I didn't read the article, but a quick Ctrl+F confirmed my suspicions.
I was raised Roman Catholic and to me it was always a head scratcher why would someone insist on a certain translation which is at least two languages away from the original.
It's a whole field of study and there's broad agreement that as language evolves translations need to be updated, otherwise you'd have to become an expert in that old language the work was written in on top of everything else.
AIUI this was basically deliberate; the KJV was written in language that was a little archaic/faux-archaic even at the time it was written, to sound impressive.
It’s probably not a great thing for a modern English speaker to read if they want to actually understand it; in particular the meaning of certain English words has changed enough that they can give a false impression.
> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before.
Having been raised in a Christian tradition as well, I don't get this. I don't get how you can, as an educated, rational, thinking adult, go from 0 religion to learning about Christianity and saying, "yeah, that sounds plausible."
The only reason I stuck to it so long was familial fear mongering and cultural momentum. Once I deprogrammed myself far enough to start being able to ask questions, I realized Christianity's construction is indistinguishable from a scam. If you don't start with the cult programming, how do you get far enough down the religion rabbit hole without first running head-first into the obvious self-protective indoctrination designed specifically to avoid scrutiny?
He loves you and only he can truly love you. And if you don't love him first, you're the problem and you're going to end up in a place of eternal torment. Don't make him do this to you. He doesn't want to send you to hell. Oh wait, no, he's not the one sending you to hell, he's just not going to save you from hell. Yeah, that's it. Only his love can save you from yourself, see.
It's a cult. If God were real, he'd be a sociopath.
If you start to believe that the Earth is flat, or in aliens, people will judge you harshly. Meanwhile, getting into big name religion satisfies similar urges, but people will either applaud you, or at least stay quiet.
Still couldn’t resist making a digital trophy and self important landmark eh?
I’ve had some relatable discoveries about the meaning of life but it’s very different than this back-to-primitive-existence as utopia. Mostly because I have creative talents. I can write and play music. I write a fuck ton better than this guy. He belongs in a field…as do most people on social media, or otherwise “influencing” discourse.
That’s why I muted my socials for quite a while. Doing is better than posting. I’m posting here at 3 am because my sleep cycle is still fuckdd up from jail this is when they woke us in solitary for breakfast. I only was in for a year and not quite out yet for a year. I wonder if this guy will still be of the same perspective 10 years from now. Might want a smoke just for the sake of it…
I mean, if it makes you happy. The few other I've seen that have made this same radical change, have eventually tumbled down the rabbit hole of cults, anti-vax, and all that. Hopefully that will not be the case here.
I also taken up farming in 2013 after 10 years of working on startups (as founder and early engineer, with no success at all). I was about to move back to village I was born at and escaped as fast as I could at the age 15.
I started natural winery at the ripe time when it first started to be popular and managed to miss the wave. It was a great first year after many years of tech grind in big tech hubs. I was waking up late, went for walk where I probably met friend or two who had nothing much to do, so we drink a coffee and talked a bit. Waiting for summer heat to be over, then work in the vineyard till the sun went down and then go to the local pub for beer or four.
I guess it sounds like it was vacation or playing farmer. And that is what it was, really. I did that for couple of years and then moved back to the nearby city and rejoined the startup grind. What I got from this experience is that there are seasons in life and it is great to have an optionality to play with different modes of life. The tech industry will always be there.
I am in my 40s now. Found a wife, got a mortgage and couple of kids. I kept the farm and treated it as a weekend hobby, rented out most of the land and I am slowly building the infrastructure I missed when I started. One day the kids will be old enough and tech will no longer excite me. The season will change, I move back, wake up late, meet with local friends who have nothing much to do during summer heat, work the vineyards and then hit pub when the sun went down.
>The tech industry will always be there.
Reminds me when I was a young consultant and couldn't decide whether to take the long planned vacations or start a new high-urgency project. One of my mentors wisely said to me: "Go, there will be always another exciting project." So I went.
Sometimes it's good to step out and see the bigger picture.
I'm happy this person found a way to live that's meaningful to him, but I grew up as a farmer. You're coming back to something we've known a long time. If a god is what let's you get there, then good, let god keep you whole.
But this is what the classics of stoicism (in the literal sense of both) have been telling us the whole time. We make our own meaning, and money isn't it. Go and grow things. Raise things. Build things.
Civilization is when men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.
It's honestly quite interesting to me how this presents. I mean: Yes, people should ultimately pursue some form of happiness, but for me that happiness is genuinely doing software engineering work, and I do not think we should demonize the 9-5 office-job. In my opinion it gets too much flack, and the "move to a farm"-dream becomes some kinds of utopic ideal, which I really do not believe it is. I have worked much heavier, more manual jobs in my life and they do not provide more happiness. If anything, they provide less comfort.
For some, the benefits for society are not as immediately visible as a farmer producing potatoes or corn which he/she can touch with their own hands, but in my personal view my job positions me as a not insignificant cog in a gigantic machine which has genuine benefits for society (and some negative influences, yes).
Some red flags in the linked article. Spirituality and barefoot running, which I do not believe is very evidence based to recommend. My opinion is that anyone working a software engineering office 9-5 should also always be doing strength resistance training and some cardio every single week. This should provide the health benefits needed to survive in what is a sedentary job.
If I can give you any advice as a likely older man to a younger man, no bias intended, happiness is fleeting. Look for fulfillment. I personally find religious apologies to be empty but if they get you to a good place, fuck it, I can't argue with everyone over methods. If your job is fulfilling, or enables you to do fulfilling things in your other time, there is no shame in that.
There is a visceral spiritualism to working with your hands, but if you can achieve that with coding, great! Live a life you would want if money didn't matter.
I generally do not pursue happiness, I try to pursue purpose. Life is peaks and valleys, the only permanence being that nothing really persists.
Writing code is also working with your hands. It produces real world effects which even if you cannot observe them directly still provide societal benefit: The "impact" of this can in many cases be much larger than a manual job.
I think your leading sentence is a false Dichotomy for many people. Pursuit of happiness doesn't imply being in a state of bliss all the time. Stoics are allowed to be happy too.
I've been a farmer and I've been a software developer, and farming was just a "this is work that puts money on the table", whereas software development is what I really find fulfilling. I entirely agree with you that it's idolized too much (together with carpentry), and yes, do whatever makes you happy, for some people it's one, for some it's the other.
The "move to a farm" dream seems like it would be nice if one didn't have any financial stress. So, more like retire to a farm.
Same I think you can get purpose from other areas with basing your survival on it. It's very easy to have a hands on hobby like knitting, car mechanic's, growing tomatoes if there's a problem of being "disconnected from the world"
"Spirituality and barefoot running, which I do not believe is very evidence based to recommend."
I highly recommend both.
But as just as there are lots of cults and scams in the spirituality world, just starting to run barefeet will likely hurt you very quickly.
No ideas about studies here, but they would need to include a lot of factors to be meaningful for generalisation. For example if you did not do running around barefeet as a kid at all, your bones might not be strong enough if you start as a adult. And then you have to be extra careful to develope more muscles there.
Also where you run matters a lot. Basically, anything soft is nice. Gras, a sandy beach, forest tracks. Running on snow is also nice (for some time). But once your skin is stronger, also gravel roads can be fun. Just not flat asphalt.
I can just say running barefoot gives me immense joy and helps my body be in good shape. Strong flexible feet act like a shock absorbers for all the other joints in your body btw.
If it makes you happy, then by all means go for that. I am glad for you. What is generally recommended and evidence based is a different matter. I will not pretend to be an expert on it: All I have done is a cursory glance on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
For me, my joy has come from strength resistance training and my discovery of the stairmaster. The latter was a very fun find! It's a really strenuous exercise which makes you strong for hiking in the wilderness and I feel like I do not need to do it for as long as the treadmill which I hate.
"What is generally recommended and evidence based is a different matter."
Yeah, but wikipedia for example says this, which matches my experience:
"Scientific research into the practice of running barefoot or with minimalist shoes is increasingly suggesting that it increases intrinsic foot muscle size and strength, but it has been limited to healthy individuals and further research is required to reach definite conclusions."
If you are healthy and do it right, it seems beneficial.
So it is smart to not recommend it in general for everyone as most ain't healthy, nor do take the time to do things right.
And same with spirituality, it is just such a broad term. I believe there are quite some studies that show positive effects of mindful meditation for example. But sure, you won't find positive studies about health benefits of astrology or homeopathy if that is what spirituality means to you.
Interesting. I am certainly very open to my initial broad sweep being incorrect on barefoot running. I would want to dig much deeper into it than Wikipedia alone though, even though its a serviceable source.
Sure, Wikipedia alone ain't trustable.
But more on the matter, I am not so much a advocate of running barefoot, but doing anything barefeet if possible. Dancing is so much more enjoyable for me like this, but it depends of course on the setting and place.
Now I will go out and do some rock climbing barefeet ..
There's a story about Diocletian, the emperor who guided Rome through one of the most turbulent periods of its history, and later voluntarily abdicated and retired to his villa. When they begged him back to resolve some conflicts that had arisen he stated:
"If you could see the cabbages I have planted here with my own hands, you surely would never have thought to request this."
Farming could very well be trading one solo activity for another. With Building community and social groups seems the better option to have grown.
I tried doing the same thing, happy to see it worked out for somebody! I just didn't have the capital or social safety net to get the farm off the ground, so I eventually had to sell the farm and go back to coding. Someday though...
I have the feeling, they do not make a profit out of it.
This blogpost might generate more profits, but I doubt they are even close to being profitable and have other income/savings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman_farmer
> From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.
I thought this was a beautiful statement; something to really help us think about what we're trying to do here on Earth. But personally I would add Artist to this. Painter, sculptor, musician, writer, poet, and so on. We need those too.
Edit: As others have reminded me below, service work like doctor, firefighter, teacher must qualify as well.
I disagree, it is not significant at all if you think about the implications here for more than a couple of seconds.
A poet needs his pen and paper. Someone needs to man the paper-mills and ink-factories, someone needs to work on logistics and planning issues related to that, infrastructure etc.
It's a completely meaningless statement.
> A poet needs his pen and paper
They doesn't. People did poetry for a long time.
A pedantic point. Even in a non-industrialized tribal society an oral poet needs a mud house, sandals and various tools. Someone needs to make those, probably the poet themselves.
Now, now, there's some meaning to it. The meaning is that stating it allows the author to feel morally superior to the rest of us "liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers, and cheats".
Yes, I’m so glad this incredible philosopher’s months-long thought experiment let him discover that becoming a gentleman farmer elevated him above the petty moral hazards and trite meaningless existences of fucking doctors, nurses, firefighters, pilots, social workers, journalists, artists, EMTs, school teachers, engineers, scientists, monks, academics, etc. etc. etc.
Bet you ten bucks he spent a few solid months playing Stardew Valley before this grand moral awakening.
Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Fire fighters... I can think of an endless list of service based career paths that involve no evil, and are immensely meaningful.
It strikes me as an over-simplification. What about doctors, therapists, firefighters, teachers, bricklayers, scientists etc... ?
We do need art but do people need to choose that as their career path? Traditionally perhaps, was an artist part time, was art made communally as leisure?
Some had rich patrons and there were travelling bands of entertainers...
True, I'm thinking of it more like, these are some things that are positive and will benefit yourself and the world. Certainly you can mix multiple.
What about the people that developed and maintained the tech needed to deliver this message?
i take artisan to mean the same as your meaning
I wondered that, but many definitions of Artisan have a utilitarian slant.
indeed, an artist is just a middle class artisan!
I wonder about what in the software industry causes so many people to have similar "symptoms" from it.
I believe it must be something about dedicating oneself to creating something that "does not exist" in a material sense.
My 'farming' has been woodworking: completing the simplest wooden furniture has given me a satisfaction that I do not remember any app or software product ever getting close to causing, despite the fact that I love the work.
It's that we make enough money to not be trapped in it for life.
Jobs are, by definition, things you get paid to do, because you wouldn't do them for free. Therefore, by definition, everyone hates their job to some degree. We just have the luxury of leaving.
At least for me it was the realization that I didn't really know why I was doing what I was doing.
I wanted to change the world and make it better, and it felt good to pursue a career with a high salary and prestige, but after years of working in software I was not seeing my work actually make the world better. In fact it was making me feel sick, tired, and depressed.
There was a short period of time in the 2000s when it did feel like tech was beginning to transform peoples lives and society for the better, but after the algorithms and rougher edges of our collective human nature took it over, it all seems to have drastically changed course.
What did you do about it? I am asking with sincere interest.
I quit my SWE job more than a year ago and have been trying out a solo/indie thing for a few months. It has been hard, as it really forces me to face how much I really suck at things, but the motivation and the joy of learning are slowly coming back.
I am wondering if indie webdev might become a thing, given how it is going in the game development space, how enshittification is slowly becoming a mainstream term, and how the industry seem to lean right now in terms of jobs.
Yep, I think that's it for me too.
That's why I realised that I really enjoy embedded systems, as they often include a good level of physical world in their architecture. Using ES in a farming setting is even more satisfying because the code could be extremely simple but still make a huge real impact to people. Love that!
I thought about this a lot, which is why I greatly value doing the occasional electronics project, home renovation or even cooking. There is just something about working with something I can touch.
I wonder if writers feel the same.
Is this actually a business that can make money? My family owns around 1000 olive oil trees in Greece that produce eatable olives and extra virgin olive oil.
The thing is that we always sell the product in intermediates that would pack it up and sell it in a much higher price. I don't know of any small producer that sells the product directly to the consumer. This seems like a very big investment and not really sustainable. Are there other people that are doing it?
Could my knowledge as a software engineer help that family business in any way to be more profitable ?
I sell onions on the Internet [0] is a well known example I've seen, whose author sells Vidalia onions direct to consumers. Another one I know are Miami Fruit [1]. There are no doubt countless examples, but more than software engineering, you need good marketing. If you made an ecommerce site via Shopify (do not code this yourself, it's a waste of time) or wrote a similar article, and posted about them, I'm sure people would find you and order. Personally I'd be interested in buying directly from your farm, let me know how that is possible even if it's a low tech solution for now.
Something you might be able to code is plugins for these ecommerce sites, if it makes sense for your business. I also used to run a loose leaf tea ecommerce store via Shopify but I imported from producers like your family as you describe, and I wrote one for dynamic pricing for buying from various countries due to their purchasing power being less. It'd calculate their power as well as my thresholds and figure out optimal prices where more people could buy it but wasn't screwing me over too.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46385308, https://www.vidaliaonions.com/
[1] https://miamifruit.org/
Most likely not, this is more of a way to retire with money earned from software development and spend time "on business" that isn't really financially viable.
Kudos to author for going this path, but it takes a lot of resources to be able to make a move like this, which is not really an option for a large majority of population.
At that point it becomes an exercise in marketing more than anything else, because the whole business model depends on finding rich customers that are willing to pay a suitable markup to make the extra effort feasabile. And then you have to also be constantly trying to retain those customers....etc
I always get my olive oil from a farm in Italy that only sells direct to customer. Or my coffee from a shop that gets the beans directly from the farmer (direct trade > fair trade).
It's possible, the market is kind of small I guess but you need to have a product where the customer is happy to pay a premium.
And being a software developer helps because you might have the money to invest?! :)
Would love link to olive oil farm…
Yea csa are boring and normal
So they hit a mid-life crisis, and rather then take small steps they read the bible and move to an island to start farming, I wish them luck.
I guess, these things are long somewhere in the mind, before people execute.
People change countries, partners, careers not because of one book. This is usually the last drop. They were long-term unhappy, yearning for something else.
And as this guy wrote, he was sick, he was burned out. I suppose, he wasn't able to limit his screen time, it was all or nothing. Sometimes, those big changes work better than incremental steps. 20 years ago, I went from a pack of cigarettes a day to zero. If I went to 19, then 18, then 17, I might still smoke to this day.
I know a guy with mental illness and without therapy, their a frog hopeing the next Lilly pad doesn't give way.
It takes courage to step away from what you were known for, and even more to return and explain why. The journey from burnout to renewal resonates deeply with me, and I suspect many of us recognize the slow decay you're describing.
I'm on a similar path myself, hoping to marry open source and open hardware with farming. Heartfelt congrats to Dylan on finding WILD and the clarity to change course.
"Now, one day back at Data General, his weariness focused on the logic analyzer and the small catastrophes that come from trying to build a machine that operates in billionths of a second. On this occasion, he went away from the basement and left this note on his terminal:
I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
— from "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder
This was quite an interesting read. It's good to hear that farming & spirituality have given you a new purpose in life, but I think this pop at Thoreau
> and no, there's no manifesto decrying the system written from a cabin in the woods
Is a bit unjustified considering you've just written an entire blog post decrying your old "meaningless" existence vs the fulfilment you have in your new life. It comes across a bit holier than thou. As if to imply you're "quietly just getting on with it", which is evidently not the case, as you still feel the need to write about it
I think he was referencing Ted Kaszinski (sp?).
Ah fair enough, yes that makes sense! Well either way...
> All that remained was to decide what to do with my life. From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.
Seems shocking at first, but the more you think about what our SWE works does, for whom, and who benefits the most of it ... IMO it makes sense.
It sounds more like a depression and stress brained reduction to me. Tends to put you in a very binary and extreme thinking mode in my lived experience.
Also I inherently disagree with the idea of meaninglessness the author presents there. Meaning is relative to man, man makes meaning. There is no objective meaning and so you have to choose it for yourself.
For many, software engineering is an artisan endeavor (hence why many are freaking out over AI, it removes their enjoyment of the process even as others, who are solution oriented, like the final output and what problems it can solve without giving a shit about the code, two different types of people).
You can apply software development skills to public good. It's just not the most common path, nor the best-paid one. I should also highlight that SWE has one of the most prolific gift economies out there.
The author also forgot another path: teacher.
Well, "essentially meaningless" does away with basically anything that isn't water and food, so lets be measured. Working on video games could be done in an ethical, sustainable and non-evil way, but also one can argue is "essentially meaningless" together with everything else too, including "artisan".
> adopting instead, the diet of my great grandparents: Plants; local, seasonal and whole.
I saw some mention of the same on the website for the farm. Care to share any recipes? Or even just names of dishes? I quite enjoy foods from the Mediterranean and I'm interested in trying more!
Sure! My mother is preparing a book detailing recipes, ingredients, foraging, how to eat, when to eat and so on which will be released this year. Basically, we follow the seasons and there are 4-5 "dishes" each season with some overlap.
The "dishes" are templates filled in with whatever is available at the time. For instance, when chestnuts are in season they enter soups, casseroles, roasts, salads and on their own drizzled with olive oil and salt. When they finish, something else is in season and the dishes change again.
There's a very brief period of overlap where the staple summer vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, zucchini) and chestnuts are available at the same time. These vegetables stuffed with a mix of brown rice and chestnuts and baked in the oven is heavenly.
Instead of thinking about recipes and then obtaining ingredients to make them, start with the ingredients and make it up as you go. Things that are in season together typically go together. We base everything on olive oil, alliums, some sort of legume or grain and seasonal greens, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
My great grandparents didn't follow recipes per se. When they made a soup they used what they had and due to lack of refrigeration and ultra-processing everything they ate was local, seasonal and fresh.
Thank you for sharing your struggles so openly for us to learn from. It's good to hear you've found your self-worth from within instead of without now.
Wishing you good luck!
This is my path, 4 years in the making, which should peak this year when I finally buy a property I have been saving for.
Remarkably similar to the author's, following a massive burnout from work in mid 2020 from which I became a new^Wdifferent person, with a new perspective on life. Three years of therapy later, jailbroken Kindle filled not with the Bible but philosophers and other role models [1]
The eyes of friends and family gloss over when I describe my new goal in life, of finding the tight path between being a computer wiz and finding a life as close to Nature as possible; of finding a community of like-minded people that exist in real life, for someone that grew up and lived all his adult life on the Internet. An Internet of people that keep telling me that urban living and modern technology isn't so bad, that I should stop complaining and schedule another interview that modern tech is "so much fun and comfortable, look at all this money." I do believe we have gone wrong somewhere, I do believe there is a third path between totalitarian techno-optimism and complete rejection of modernity, and perhaps this is the best time in history to explore it, by returning to our roots. Remembering our natural ecosystem which is our home and sustenance. We earn our living in front of a square piece of glass connected to the ether, why the hell would one live packed like a sardine in impersonal and smelly cities? I truly, desperately need to believe in a return to the countryside; to more humane rhythms of living.
My favourite quote is from George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man"
We don't have to abandon all our comforts. And for once the technologists like us can use their brains for the good of humanity and their neighbours, rather than making people click on ads. Go wire solar panels. Build hydroponic farms. Fix and refurbish electronics. Make art. Share your labour with your neighbour. Invite them over to talk about life. Leave the modern Internet behind.
---
1: Martijn Doolaard, and the Emacs philosopher Protesilaos Stavrou have had the greatest influence on me.
> Everything I read made reference to the Bible, something I had never read nor was in any way acquainted with. The references kept appearing and eventually I decided to dive in head first and read it. Putting the King James Version of the Bible on my kindle, over many months I read it cover to cover.
> At the time, I wouldn't have called myself an Atheist. Agnostic is not the right word to use either. Not that I believed or didn't believe in the existence of God, in truth, I had simply never thought about it. In place of an answer was lack of the preceding question.
> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before. A mirror was put in front of me and I saw myself clearly for the first time. Finding God, I realized how far I had drifted from the straight and narrow. Weak of mind, steeped in sin, ruled by bodily desires and whims of fancy, the life I led could only lead to one place: the broad road alongside the liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers and cheats, for I was one of them.
I'd like to see this person write in detail about specifically what about the Bible they found resonant, and specifically resonant in a way that lead them towards something like a Judeo-Christian understanding of God and sinfulness. I note that they do not mention Jesus Christ, who is the most important figure in the second part of the Bible, and (arguably) entirely absent from the first half - and indeed the schism between Jews who only take the first half of the Bible seriously and Christians who take the second half seriously as well is a pretty important one!
This isn't a troll post on my part, although I admit that I'm somewhat skeptical that this person read the King James Version of the Bible and was specifically convinced by the various writings in that long and complex text that some kind of Judeo-Christian understanding of the nature of God is the correct one. I think it's more likely that they were in some kind of personal spiritual crisis, read the foundational scripture of one of the major world religions, and were moved in a kind of a general way. I suspect that if they were reading books that made more references to the Quran or to Buddhist sutras, they might've found themselves reading the Quran or Buddhist sutras and ended up in a similar mental state. But I'm not sure of that, which is why I'm genuinely curious to hear more about what specifically in the text of the Bible they found meaningful.
You could have committed to the meme and not mentioned this connection on the Internet again.
I usually am the anti-religion type, pointing out the abuses happening in churches, and the general bigotry that leads to more violence rather than fewer. So reaching that part of the article made me cringe. The sentence about him being a sinner especially sounded like bad puritanism.
But then it goes on, the guy is mostly healthier from quitting bad and not-so-bad habits, doing eco-friendly stuff in Greece with his family. It sounds like it worked for him.
This dont-do-evil kind of Christianity is all right.
It's not completely obvious from the post though whether this man embraces the love-thy-neighbor aspect of Christianity. He seems to have this idealistic good-vs-bad view of the world that's typically protestant. And his condescending tone make it sound like whoever doesn't do like he does can rot in hell, cause they deserve it.
from one extreme to another, notice the pattern.
Maybe if he had read a better bible translation he would've reached a more moderate spiritual enlightenment =P
I didn't read the article, but a quick Ctrl+F confirmed my suspicions.
I was raised Roman Catholic and to me it was always a head scratcher why would someone insist on a certain translation which is at least two languages away from the original.
It's a whole field of study and there's broad agreement that as language evolves translations need to be updated, otherwise you'd have to become an expert in that old language the work was written in on top of everything else.
AIUI this was basically deliberate; the KJV was written in language that was a little archaic/faux-archaic even at the time it was written, to sound impressive.
It’s probably not a great thing for a modern English speaker to read if they want to actually understand it; in particular the meaning of certain English words has changed enough that they can give a false impression.
From the article:
> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before.
Having been raised in a Christian tradition as well, I don't get this. I don't get how you can, as an educated, rational, thinking adult, go from 0 religion to learning about Christianity and saying, "yeah, that sounds plausible."
The only reason I stuck to it so long was familial fear mongering and cultural momentum. Once I deprogrammed myself far enough to start being able to ask questions, I realized Christianity's construction is indistinguishable from a scam. If you don't start with the cult programming, how do you get far enough down the religion rabbit hole without first running head-first into the obvious self-protective indoctrination designed specifically to avoid scrutiny?
I think therapy was the first step here.. but some people have to find the "answer" even if it's the man in the sky saying he loves you very much xD
He loves you and only he can truly love you. And if you don't love him first, you're the problem and you're going to end up in a place of eternal torment. Don't make him do this to you. He doesn't want to send you to hell. Oh wait, no, he's not the one sending you to hell, he's just not going to save you from hell. Yeah, that's it. Only his love can save you from yourself, see.
It's a cult. If God were real, he'd be a sociopath.
If you start to believe that the Earth is flat, or in aliens, people will judge you harshly. Meanwhile, getting into big name religion satisfies similar urges, but people will either applaud you, or at least stay quiet.
Still couldn’t resist making a digital trophy and self important landmark eh?
I’ve had some relatable discoveries about the meaning of life but it’s very different than this back-to-primitive-existence as utopia. Mostly because I have creative talents. I can write and play music. I write a fuck ton better than this guy. He belongs in a field…as do most people on social media, or otherwise “influencing” discourse.
That’s why I muted my socials for quite a while. Doing is better than posting. I’m posting here at 3 am because my sleep cycle is still fuckdd up from jail this is when they woke us in solitary for breakfast. I only was in for a year and not quite out yet for a year. I wonder if this guy will still be of the same perspective 10 years from now. Might want a smoke just for the sake of it…
I mean, if it makes you happy. The few other I've seen that have made this same radical change, have eventually tumbled down the rabbit hole of cults, anti-vax, and all that. Hopefully that will not be the case here.