We wanted somewhere in the mountains with no neighbours and that was about it. Soil can always be improved although ours is very good luckily. We beagn learning Spanish before we came but are still learning now, which needs to be sorted out.

Never been tempted to move back, urgh.

We use Iberbanda which seems to be everywhere now. We get 512kbs which is more than good enough, and you are right it is important.

But honestly we just jumped in and did it, life is too short to put it off if you want to make a change. I say just go for it.

Hope you do decide to go for it if that is what you want.

Let me know how it goes.

All the best.

We’re on the cusp of making the kinds of change you already have. Any help appreciated. It’s pretty daunting.

T&Z

We live in an interdependent world. Since our beginning, coming down out of the trees and beginning to walk across the savanna, to survive, we lived in groups.

Today we can live alone and be completely isolated in a giant metropolis.

Many decades have gone by for me. More than six. In that time I have done what my family, peers, government said I should do. I worked hard, too hard. I had over forty different jobs putting myself through advanced education. Eight Universities, twelve years, culminating in a Ph.D.

Along the way I worked for the government behind the iron curtain. I spied, I was shot at. I became a Child Protection Officer for the state, I saw mans inhumanity to man. The arrogance and failure of government. Worked with mean lazy arrogant doctors in emergency rooms, with police, and judges who did not care, and in many ways were more threatening and harmful than the abusive parents. And the social administration was a cold harsh uncaring bureaucracy, that did little to help people in need.

I got sick. Took my heart out and put it back. I finally retired. I bought a big sailboat and sailed long distances and learned that large ships on computer auto-pilot will run you down. That ports, docking, and food cost way too much money, and that storms can sink a sailboat, even if it is 45 feet long.

I lived on a 1500 acre ranch in the Colorado mountains for two years. I packed in supplies up onto the mountain, and with limited electricity, I lived alone and did not speak to another human being in two years.

Being alone and isolated and totally self sufficient isn’t what one dreams it could be. Not for me. I finally screamed out loud at my own constant thoughts, and climbed back down off the mountain.

Always eccentric, always a loner, always independent, always following the beat of my own drum, in this life, when able and free from other peoples orders, I have always done what I wanted to do.

I traveled the world. I met people of many languages. I lived in Germany for five years. I worked, worked, worked, at many jobs, and now I eke out an existence in sin city. Packed in crowded rooms and surrounded with 40 years of writing. Manuscripts completed, work already performed, now being edited and published for the world to read.

Am I self sufficient? Do I raise my own vegetables, own my own land mortgage free? Yes and no. I have several places I could go to live, but most have a mortgage. Some do not. On the ranch I could live totally isolated and self sufficient. I tried that, and my thoughts brought me back to people.

Does one need companionship to survive? The answer is yes. No one I know can live without a friend or companion. To sustain ones mental health, one must have at least one good friend. I found that out.

How many people do you talk to or really have? So impersonal to use the internet for an added companion. I have one.

We put on a persona, an image, but is it a real one? I speak to no one in person, live completely isolated except for my friend. Yet the name I go under and the stories that are published are read by many.

As an artist, a part of me will live on. The rest of me will soon disappear.

To be self sufficient, truely self sufficient is an impossibility.

charles

Too true, we all need to live within our means. The thing is when people spend what they do not have for items that are superfluous. Trying to live within whatever means you have is key.Reminds me of a tv program we saw on satellite recently where they were talking about families that were classed as living beneath the poverty line in the UK. They all had big flat screen tv’s! And here we are with a small portable.

If you think you are self sufficient, then you are. For example, I may live on $20,000 dollars a year and my neighbor lives on $2000. We can both consider ourselves self sufficient and both be right. It’s about your own perception and personal goals.

Another great post that gets us all thinking, thanks