Love this post! I’ve been ranting on this topic lately too.

As I’m not quite financially able to ‘permanently retire.’ I’m looking simply to cut my expenses so drastically that I can afford to do any kind of work I want — I’ve achieved that. Now I have to pick a new job field. Well, ok, I don’t HAVE to. But I worked in education before. It feels great when you see the actual product of your work: RELEVANT and VALUABLE learning in students. But too often there is interference. Either you are prevented from doing what you need to do teach (by funding, stupid, stupid hoops to jump through or just the flaws in society) or you are forced to teach things that are either irrelevant or harmful. Or worse, you are put in the position of saying only 20% can get an A and, therefore acting as some kind of a sorting system for 4-year colleges. I’ve had students under so much stress that they are already medicated, suffering from nervous breakdowns and panic attacks. I just can’t keep going in that system–no matter how much I love actually teaching someone something useful.

So, I’ve considered skilled trades, plumbing seems interesting (I just took apart the pipes in my kitchen sink and LOVED it.) Also, I’ve considered cooking, housework and care for the home-bound elderly or perhaps agriculture. I do love sticking my hands in the dirt and watching plants grow. Whenever I mention this people look shocked and horrified. What if I come in contact with feces? That is their first concern. All of the fields I’m interested seem to involve doing something with my hands and seeing a concrete result and the immediate response is–oh, you’ll get dirty or oh, but you’re overqualified.

I’m certainly getting dirty when I contribute to the very sick system of pressuring children into thinking they need to succeed and attend THE 4-year college and pumping them full of meds if they don’t. I’d rather handle actual feces in real life. I mean, I can think of more pleasant things than say shoveling manure for fertilizer, but really, it’s not that bad–been there, done that. I can live with it.

Anyway, now I’m ranting again. But I really enjoyed this post. Reading through this blog helps me keep my head straight in a world where very few people think like me. I’m used to just not saying what I think or just accepting the fact that people are going to look at me funny. I try not to take that personally or let it dissuade me.

It reminds me of this scene I have in my mind from my travels. I was walking through a village in an African country with a large backpack (and I probably looked a little dirty and scary and white) and I crossed this small boy squatting on top of a trash heap in the middle of town and taking a dump. I thought that was an unusual sight, but he tapped his friend (who was squatting next to him) on the shoulder and they started cracking up at me–apparently I was stranger than he was in that context. So I guess weird is just a question of habit. I try to remember that.

Corner office: what I said above is no more than my personal impression. At my previous job I had to divide a floor into offices for the management team and get everyone’s consent. Turns out they mostly cared about the number of windows, and some pointed out that the corner office had more windows. (This is Europe btw.)

Um, 5% raises? I wish. I admit I have gotten a couple, but the standard where I work is 3% (except this year when it’s 0%).

Corner offices are rare (only four per floor) and therefore easy to tie to status. It’s all about status. I have a cube with a window with a beautiful view and a hyperactive air conditioning vent. I practically begged to move to an interior cube that wasn’t so cold, but that would have made me and my boss look bad. Some kind of politics thing. Finally I quit banging my head against the wall and got fingerless gloves, put an sweater in my file cabinet, and learned to take walking breaks to thaw out.

tlblack, have you thought about tutoring? Or offering classes in “difficult” subjects (math! science! fine arts!) for students being home schooled?

Corner office has twice as many opportunity for windows as any other. And it has < 1/2 the noisy neighbors as an interior office.

"I want to wake people up to fact that there is an alternative to the mainstream life-advice of careerism and consumerism."

And you're doing admirably well with that, by being an example.

Jacob,

At one point you were being all mysterious about your job so as to keep your identity secret. Now that you are no longer working (or being anonymous), can you actually describe for us what it is that you did in your ‘former life’?

PS: I know what a proton is:)

While I understand the disdain for this status quo set of expectations, you have also admit that just because something falls into that set doesn’t mean it’s not desirable or fun or interesting. A new j/105 costs somewhere around $150,000. It’s as much a status symbol for most people as it is a race boat. Sure *you* don’t need to buy one to sail on it, but you have to condone it’s purchase if you’re going racing on someone else’s boat.

What are your thoughts on that? Does a big house, big car, big boat, or lots of stuff count differently if you’re attracted to it for it’s own sake rather than because society says it’s attractive? Is it even possible to objectively determine why you might be attracted to one of these things?

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to convey with the word “reality” in this post. It seems to mean something like “lack of social construct”, but I find it a bit unclear. If that is your intention, then yes — the conflicts of man vs. sea or man vs. bicycle clearly lie outside that realm and are therefore more “real”, but I don’t know what that buys you. If you’re unhappy with the society in which you live, you can try to change it, which will involve a *lot* of politics, or you can avoid it, which is easily done on a 35ft sailboat.

I’m not sure that, for people whom are satisfied with the status quo, trying to change or avoid society’s expectations is even going to be beneficial. Certainly this doesn’t apply to a lot of people, yourself included, but many people are perfectly happy to pursue their fancy car and 5 bedroom house.

Debbie–the homeschooling supplement would be perfect for me (I used to teach swimming to kids largely in the homeschooling population–yes, random, but very motivating because I was teaching a real life skill and most people wanted or needed to learn). But the country I live in does not allow homeschooling.

Jacob, yeah, you have to avoid those tutoring for the ‘A’ kids. As for the ones who don’t want to me there–I’m actually ok with that if it’s helping someone who is reluctant to learn a relevant skill (reading, writing–something major) how to face the task of learning it. Sometimes people are just freaking out about some weird psychological aspect of learning (swimming is a great example!) and if you can help them with that, you can teach them even though they are reluctant to learn and may not want to be there. It’s very challenging and rewarding work!

Anyway, thanks to both of you. Your comments have my mind working on promising new angles.

As for the Tyler-Jacob discussion as to whether buying something expensive is allowed, I see no reason why not. The purchase of even an expensive sailboat makes sense to me: it’s a means of locomotion that does not use fuel (or just as a backup) and it is also a dwelling! I mean, you have to live somewhere and you usually have to pay in some way to do that. If I understand correctly, Jacob, you own an RV and rent a space to put it–you could easily switch for owning a boat instead of keeping your capital in the RV and paying rent on your site. . .

Now this is the Jacob I love to read. Your “manifesto” of self-sufficiency and de-coupling from the “social-social” oligarchy is what resonates in me.

Re: corner office. All business is a heirarchy, even the ones with so-called teams and “flat management architecture.” If my office is bigger or has more amenitities than yours, it shows that I am higher on the pyramid in a way that titles cannot convey. Indeed, my own title expresses almost nothing of my work responsibilities. It is all so tedious and unnecessary; but until they make me CEO, I cannot change the culture. And they’re not going to make ME the CEO because I’d have everybody wearing jeans and tending vegetable gardens on the break.