#112 A Sea Change in Life?

58 years of it

In the last few weeks I have experienced a sea change in the way that I am looking at my life ahead. I’m kind of surprised that it happened so quickly. As you all know I travel extensively, frequently, and often, not to be redundant. 😊

As recently as two months ago if you had asked me, I would’ve said that I could see staying in Asia for the foreseeable future. For the rest of my life in fact. I have not made it a secret that I think owning property is not something that I want to do, and that I would be perfectly happy being a digital nomad who rented all the time as he floated from country to country.

In mid-December, just as I was about to go to Thailand for a medical checkup for my wrist surgery, I suddenly realized that I did not want to GO anywhere. I would be perfectly happy staying at home in my oasis, being cozy and reading and puttering. And after I came back from the hospital even though I had the freedom to travel, I seized almost gratefully upon the opportunity to just stay at home.

Somewhere in there, I started to listen to a podcast called “Practically zero waste”. It is by a woman in Canada who has extremely hard job of staying at home and looking after children in the house, who talks in an extremely non-stressful way about the concept of trying to minimize one’s impact on the planet. I think she had close to 60 episodes of this and I’ve listened to most of them. There is some really excellent information that was brought to my attention through listening to those podcasts.

The thing that really struck me was how impossible it was to try to do the things that she was talking about in Asia. Asia is not environmentally minded, the 800 kg gorilla being China of course. They’re trying, but their sheer size means that it will take years before you will see the effect of the changes that they are making. Interestingly enough China just passed some draconian laws about single use plastic last week. I have to go research that or maybe one of you guys can go look it up.

She speaks about neighborhood composting, and ride sharing, and ways to recycle, and ways to bulk buy products so that you are not using plastic. There is not a single one of those things that I think it would be possible to do in Thailand or the Philippines that I’m aware of. Yes, yes. Granted. I have not spent any time really looking for it, I am just relying on my institutional knowledge to date of that environment in those countries.

That was a long digression leading to ... I have always thought, for decades, that I would really like to live in British Columbia. And so, I thought, goaded by having listen to this podcast, that I would revisit the idea of doing that.

My general thought, which I will blog about from time to time, is to buy a large plot of land, maybe somewhere in the vicinity of 1 – 4 acres (maybe 1 ha), and then put a micro house on it. I’m not sure that micro is the exact term to use, since micro appears to mean 50 m² or less and I was really looking at something that would be more like around 100 m², including a porch and possibly a sauna, and then just leave the rest of the land as is. I would try to make the house completely off the grid and sustainable. Straw bale and log construction, geothermal for heating and cooling, solar panels, maybe put a wind turbine and a vanadium flow battery container into the property, buy an electric vehicle, and I even toyed with the idea of putting in a hydroponics greenhouse.

As a complete aside, I found it quite amusing that while I was looking at property prices in British Columbia, that metric though Canada is supposed to be, it appears that all of their property dealings are under the old imperial system of feet, inches, and acres. I thought that was quite funny.

Is British Columbia beautiful or what? :-)

A nice simple design

No. I’m not thinking about turning into one of those creepy people that holes himself up with a bunch of weapons and years of supplies, not at all. But, if I had good Internet service, maybe within 5 km or so of a small urban center, say 10 to 20,000 people or so, and access to either an airport or a sea ferry that could get me to an airport relatively quickly, I’m starting to think that that might not really be a bad way to go.

As I mentioned to a close friend of mine, when I think about it, I have been traveling since before I could walk. And suddenly just a few weeks ago, I realized I was really tired of it. Unfortunately, I cannot stop quite yet. I still have this Argentina thing going on, and my businesses are still in Asia. But it has been 180° turn in my outlook about how I want to live.

I still want to be an essentialist, and live with a fairly minimal footprint, but this might be a way, a better way, of being able to do that.

And having a goal, rather than just drifting aimlessly around the world, would be a good thing for me.

To expand just a little bit on my theme here. The reason I thought about buying the amount of land that I did is that I thought it might be a nice thing to create a small community of 6 to 12 people, like-minded people, who could support each other. I am toying with various ideas. Put up a nice yurt or micro cabin for each different couple or individual. Perhaps helping an immigrant couple to have a place to live and get settled and in return for free housing and a decent wage, they have a place to live look after the property, me, and possibly even the garden. Maybe find a location close to a university town where I might be able to house a few college students that otherwise would have a hard time finding a place to live. Something along those lines. But it has only been a few weeks and of course life is happening as we speak. So, I may have to put this on hold for a few years, but that will give me time to research and plan what could be a fairly large endeavor.

A drawing I did to scale of what a few small houses look like relative to a 2 acre lot. Imagine 4 acres :-)

Well, I will explore what it would take to be able to do this, and I will update you from time to time. Listening to that podcast, and doing some research of my own, made me realize that there really are a wealth of possibilities out there for living a far less environmentally damaging lifestyle, and I would like to explore them.