HOW FAR OUT?

While repetitively building things to sell lately I was supposed to 
be thinking about what business project I want to tackle next - 
more electronics gizmos, more planning towards my big website idea, 
or stuff making money and get around to some of the side projects 
which I've never started or are progressing at glacial pace on 
occasional weekends?

The last one is by far the most attractive, but even last month I 
couldn't actually do it. Business-wise I need to be working on 
finding new products to replace things that have all mysteriously 
stopped selling on Ebay. On the other hand if everything is selling 
well I haven't got a chance to do anything but focus on ordering, 
building, packaging, and communicating. I'm built into the same 
corner as everone else: not finding time for my life's ambitions 
until retirement. By which time, if I even make it, I'll quite 
likely be too old to enjoy it anyway, and quite possibly to broken 
to even attempt to.

So instead of reaching a conclusive plan, I've been enjoying 
comparatively rosy contemplation of global thermonuclear war. If I 
actually got around to building a nuclear bunker, excessively 
eqipped with all the supplies, space, and luxuries I could want, 
would I be happier in there sheltering from the appocalypse 
unconcerned about obligations to pay people in the outside world. 
What if I were to build a hidden bunker and just disappear in 
there? Live for some years just off supplies, while outside it no 
longer mattered about paying bills, travelling to buy and sell 
things, prevailing politics, and legal changes. I'd just live away 
separately from the world.

I've talked before about a certain appeal of riding out an 
appocalypse (2023-04-10The_Observers_Utopia.txt), and also a 
facination with people who live completely off grid in nature. 
They're two sides of the same coin really. Socially I've already 
well and truely dropped out. Not so much consciously as just by 
lack of interest in much besides finding a girlfriend, and being 
hopeless at the latter as well. Much of my engaged daily social 
interaction (if any) is really via Usenet and that's really dead 
now, and in a way I don't care - was it ever a net benefit 
emotionally/intellectually or just an instinctual pull to talk? 
Here I talk a lot more, but like when Aussies.space died for a few 
months it'd be much the same whether I publish my writings or not. 
Reading other phlogs can be done now, or similar content could be 
scraped now and read back years later offline.

In economic aspects and my living environment I'm less of a 
drop-out already. I rather consciously don't get much into 
self-sufficiency projects like growing food because they require a 
routine commitment which will either subtract from my business 
time, or my recreation. I do repairs and things myself, but at some 
point I can consider them done and move on. I like to travel and 
experience nature. Camping out in the desert I might be able to 
avoid commitments like council rates, but it would be a harder 
environment to be self-sufficient by growing things, and without 
paying for fuel and car license+registration I'd be stuck in that 
one isolated place much like inside a bunker. For food I could get 
enough preserved food supplies to last me some years by which time 
I either manage to grow enough to sustain myself going on, or give 
up and try to re-enter the wider economomy to make enough money to 
try again. For travel I'd be stuck in the environment I picked, but 
at least if nobody else wants to live there (hence cheap 
property/rates, eg. in a desert ghost town) I could wander around 
freely.

Ideally I'd drop half-way out, which I sort-of have already. But 
any commitment to spending money means maintaining a way to make 
it, and though being self employed gives me some leverage for doing 
that within a less conventional lifestyle, it also means a large 
degree of effort is demanded in order to keep any money coming in 
at all. Half-way just doesn't work. You either drop out or you're 
stuck in. Neither path looks like it leads to true happiness, 
unless I make enough money with that big website idea to pay any 
modest personal expense I can imagine for the rest of my life - the 
intangible dream of early retirement.

Anyway writing that has dug half an hour into my work time so I'm a 
naughty boy and better get onto profitable tasks or I'll give 
myself the sack and have to move out to the desert/bunker.

 - The Free Thinker