Re:Ask HN: Did you get "never have to work again rich" throu...
by jbernier on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @01:57PM
(#7978488)
Where are you if you don't mind me asking?
Re:Ask HN: Did you get "never have to work again rich" throu...
by japhyr on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @02:07PM
(#7978569)
I grew up in New Hampshire, but now I live in southeast Alaska.
I found a third-grade autobiography once: "When I grow up I'm going to live in Arizona, California, or Alaska." I had no idea how far back I had the desire to move west.
Re:Ask HN: Did you get "never have to work again rich" throu...
by jbernier on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @02:49PM
(#7978852)
Interesting. I always pictured Alaska as a beautiful but lonely place.
Re:Ask HN: Did you get "never have to work again rich" throu...
by japhyr on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @03:01PM
(#7978934)
There are definitely some isolated places in Alaska, but how lonely a place feels depends on a number of things. My town is big enough that I don't feel alone at all here.
I live in Sitka. We have ~9000 people here, but you can only get here by boat or plane. It's really nice to be off the road system. If you need to get out, you can take a plane and be in Juneau in an hour or two, in Anchorage in a few hours, and you can get to Seattle in about 4 hours.
That said, you can climb to the top of a mountain, drop down the other side a little bit, and see no sign of humans for hundreds of miles. That's a pretty nice balance. :)
But I found a pretty good approach to making a satisfying life without having to "make it rich". In my twenties, I moved to the part of the world where I most enjoyed vacationing, and built my life there. Now every day on my way to work, I look around and couldn't be happier with where I am. Even on the hard days, I have almost everything I really want in life pretty close by, and that pretty consistently helps me keep things in perspective.
Life isn't perfect here, and I did have to move pretty far from most of my family, but place is as important to me as people. If I lived in the wrong part of the world, I'd be pretty miserable and I wouldn't be very good to be around anyway.
I still hope to make enough money to not have to work, but in the mean time, and if it never happens, I will be plenty happy all my life.