> It's the same with van life. It sounds great in practice, but simple things like showering, defecating and preserving food become very difficult.

I have to both agree and disagree. I've been living in my converted bus for about 3.5 years. It's harder and more complex than living in a fixed location but it depends a lot on the setup of your vehicle and how you use it.

If you have a low end conversion with no shower or toilet it's a lot more complex, especially in COVID times with limited access to public facilities.

If you have an RV or something like my bus with a full conversion it's not bad. I have to refill my fresh water every 2-3 weeks, that's it.

The hardest part is dealing with repairs. Typically when something in your home needs repair you don't have to move out.

Are mobile mechanics not a thing for RV?

They are an option but I've never used one. I've been fortunate to only have my bus need overnight service once. I got a hotel room.

> Woodworking or motorcycle repair are hard, and the initial setbacks are extremely demotivating. You won't hit the ground running, so you better prepare for disappointment.

This mirrors my experience as well - also there is a dollar cost to each try, and no undo button, which puts more pressure on each attempt.

I still enjoy doing hobby woodworking, but it's not quite as zen in the beginning as I imagined.

The joy of construction comes from the difficulty of combining design thinking with entrepreneurial financial prudence and first principles engineering to overcome obstacles that (often) arise. And then of course, translating these ideas into tangible functional art. It is very much like software engineering, but as you say ; the stakes much higher.

> you forego things like financial safety and the ability to take vacations.

This sounds like there's a need for some kind of part-time deal.

* farm work share - maybe also called a kibbutz or commune - you can take vacations and share the ownership, work, and benefit

* farm-b-and-b - there's a regular owner keeping things on the rails but you can stay a week, eat fresh eggs and clean the barns, and then go home at the end

As labor markets reduce financial safety through job instability and push for hypercompetitiveness, I'm not sure farming is any different than most peoples' jobs in terms of leisure time or financial stability.

My grandparents and relatives farmed quite a bit and I helped during summers. It's not glamorous but its less stressful than most positions I've recently worked in and has more opportunity to take necessary breaks.

> Woodworking or motorcycle repair are hard, and the initial setbacks are extremely demotivating.

Out of curiosity, then how did you become a good software engineer? Doesn't programming follow that exact trajectory?

Excellent comment btw.

In wood working and software time is used by doing it. If you program software wrong you lose time by having to do it again. In woodworking you lose both time and materials.

Also, I suspect many of us here "spent" time learning programming as children/teenagers and honed it as early twenty-somethings.

At those stages of life time is essentially free and unlimited. You can easily pull allnighters and 40 hour hacking weekends and 80 hour weeks - and you do it because it's exciting and fun, and it has only very minor opportunity costs - you might miss a school or college assignment deadline, or a few shifts at your minimum wage part time job. Your bedroom at your parents house or you college dorm is paid for already (even if just by usurious student loans).

Once you get to the "disillusioned with the damned tech industry" stage of your life though, you have responsibilities and rent/loans/bills to pay and probably family you need/want to spend time with and a circle of friends who're in the same stage of life who can't on zero notice order in pizza and mountain dew and hack from 6pm on Friday thru to midnight Sunday catching only naps on the couch as needed.

I reckon there's almost as much of a hill to climb for a "woodworker since junior high" looking at programming as a way out of a woodworking career they've become jaded with - as there is for a thirty-something software engineer dreaming of building timber boats for a living instead of being part of "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." -- Jeff Hammerbacher

(But yeah, you don't need to buy new timber when you accidentally "move fast and break things" as a programmer. On the other hand, at least the tools you buy as a woodworker will still work and be useful in a decade or century's time...)

Thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Thanks pal.

I have one simple secret: start 15 years ago

Isn't that kind of lifestyle more luck than anything? You stumble onto something people want. Nothing you can plan for or take direct steps towards.

Vacations. My father once said that a distant relative in Europe should come and visit the US. His remark was "Who will feed the cows?"

Every read Matthew Crawford? If you haven't you might enjoy his work. In particular, Shop Class as Soulcraft.