Interesting reading

Can't remember exactly where I ran across this, but I've been reading this site by a fellow named Dmitry who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and wrote about the experience (and what Americans can learn from it) in 2006. This little passage made me think of what I wrote earlier today:

If the economy, and your place within it, is really important to you, you will be really hurt when it goes away. You can cultivate an attitude of studied indifference, but it has to be more than just a conceit. You have to develop the lifestyle and the habits and the physical stamina to back it up. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live.

This is a pretty good description of the way I've been trying to design my life for about the last eight years: trying to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. It's such a relief to hear it put into words like that, and to realize, upon thinking of it in those terms, that the reasons I've sort of withdrawn from "society" still feel right to me. My indifference to certain social conventions is not just a conceit, and I really have developed the lifestyle, habits and physical stamina to live outside the mainstream in some powerful though not always very visible ways. It does take a lot of creativity and effort. Also courage and sacrifice.

"After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live." In fact, these are ALREADY some of the best places to live. I'm not saying I want to be a subsistence farmer or give up my iPod (or my glucometer). But I'm glad I'm already comfortable and competent at living a fairly low-impact life. A lot of people may soon be needing to learn to live this way, whether they want to or not.

So yeah. Mostly I still feel pretty good about the choices I've made. I'm not immune to the terror tactics being used by the media though, or to the knowledge that to a lot of people the way I live might seem kind of ... disappointing. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that it's disappointing to me too, in my weaker moments. But when it comes right down to it I've just never had the inclination to spend a lot of time or money to get things that need to be taken care of, owned, washed, dried, stored, repaired, worried over, paid taxes on, etc. etc. I love the idea of living in a gorgeous mansion like the one that's being built on a $2M oak-studded lot just down our road, but the reality is, being responsible for a house like that would make me sick with anxiety and stress. The life I have, somewhat on the margins, is a life I'm generally pretty OK with, at least in terms of material possessions and lack thereof. I like to travel light.

The main thing I want to change in my life right now is to bring more people into it. There have been times in the past when I've had a lot more friends, felt much more connected with neighbors and community. I want to continue moving back in that direction again.