To think I'm not made for modern life?

[thesoftlife]

And in fact, none of us are. It's so miserable.

Dragging myself out of bed when it's pitch black and freezing, putting the light on to get ready at 6:30am, scoffing down some microwave porridge and instant coffee to then sit in traffic. Get to work for 8am, sitting on uncomfortable seats under fluorescent light with strangers, being made to sit in one spot inside all day. Drive home in the dark, eat dinner, watch TV and go on social media as it's too cold and dark to want to do anything else.

I just find myself longing for a quieter, softer life where my time is spent with family and a local community, and instead of the clock and deadlines my time is marked by the sun rises and sunsets and season changes. As I got ready this morning I just felt like this isn't what we're made for. Lighthearted, kinda.

Yes yes yes! I felt like this all the time.

We moved, live in a village, I WFH four days and get to walk in the woods and be outside more.

It’s definitely preferable to what I was doing before. I feel more connected to real life. I think it was the drive for my commute that was so horrid.

Yup! I live in a city which I absolutely love but feel increasingly out of touch with the natural rhythms of things. I long to swim in the sea or walk in a forest on a winters’ day. Instead I tap on my laptop (I actually love my job tbh!) and feel tired and sort of fried all the time. Scroll Vinted, check the news, absently clock an email etc So unfulfilling

No I totally understand you OP...this time of year makes me want to hibernate and just slow down. I love Autumn but it's so unnatural to get up in the dark and come home in the dark, and the constant stream of (depressing) news just makes me want to hide away.

My dream life is not in a huge mansion somewhere, but a little cabin living off grid near a forest or something - chopping wood, keeping hens, growing food, living more according to the seasons and not having to work to meetings or schedules.

But alas I need money to buy the land, so I work for the moment and keep dreaming. But someday...

Yep. Modern life is designed to be soul-sucking, estrange us from family and community, rob us of faith and spirituality, whilst at the same time being packaged as desirable and progressive.

I wish I had enough money for a small holding.

You are defin not BU - https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/how-not-to-let-work-explode-your-life/ this may help

One thing that might make life better would be to have slightly better breakfasts? Oat isn't bad, but fresh fruit salad or homemade granola or a smoothie might be better. I start the day three days a week with green juice, and it has made a big difference to my overall quality of life. Instant coffee is barely worth drinking IMO, I limit myself to one or at the most two coffees per day and I make sure they are good ones.

I sold up my big house and live in a tiny cottage by the sea.

I was able to drastically cut back my working hours and live a very simple life.

Having said that, I always hate this time of year, just treading water waiting for Christmas.

I wouldn't want to be working outdoors in winter though!

It's lack of daylight that's the stinger for me. That's not modern, it's geographic. The UK is miserable in winter but it always has been.

Yes, modern life can suck but we have sanitation and running water and electric light. However the commuting, early starts, late nights are awful in the winter. We're not made for this sort of life. Wouldn't it be nice to have shorter work hours in winter linked in with daylight.

A smallholding sounds lovely, I hope you get there 7Worfs.

I'd rather live now than at any other time in human history.

Just look how women were routinely treated only a few decades ago.

Move to the highlands!

I think this about children and childhood, my kids have spent so much time stuck indoors, stressing about school things, learning things that that will not be relevant. Leaving in the dark, coming home in the dark. My DD wanted to see her poorly Grandad this week, but she can't miss school as it's hard to catch up etc. She said this shouldn't be what life is about, and all she wants to do is have a family and look after them and that she has wasted her childhood at school.
We are just breeding wage slaves.
I just want to live a simpler life too.

I love my job and don't mind working hard because of it. I agree life can be tough but I'm happy to take my current life over any other.

One day after the clocks went back, I started a new job (with all the attendant stress that brings anyway) with a slightly worse commute and one more day in the office the day than I was used to. This thread REALLY resonates. I seem to have entered a long, dark tunnel.

I switched from an office job 15 years ago to working outside in the town I live in. But my hands are ruined by arthritis to the extent that I have to give up work at 55.
It's no fun in the rain wind or snow. You don't earn as much in the winter because of the lack of daylight.

But I wouldn't change a thing

@thesoftlife OP while I feel for you, our ancestors had to wake up even earlier (unless very wealthy or nobility) and work the land (which they didn't own as most people were serfs). they lived bleak, dirty, cold lives and were often hungry. clothes had to be washed by hand in freezing water and except for very few, people had very few rights. and they had no actual medical treatments and mostly died very young. for women things were even worse.

yeah being a mill worker/ landless peasant/ conscripted soldier armed with a pitchfork/ woman birthing a breach baby would have been soooo much better. Fuck modern life 🤣🤣

As bad as it is now, imagine getting up in the dark in a bit of candle light instead of electric light, and no central heating.

I'm not so bad about getting up in the dark.

But i do think part of why a lot of people struggle with mental health is so many occupations these days are contrived, sitting in offices project managing supply chain reorganisations or running analytics on a marketing campaign.... i think we sort of know inside that if we just didn't bother doing it, it doesn't fucking matter. It lacks meaning and we need to feel we are meaningfully occupied. We arent growing food, or producing useful life sustaining tools & equipment, or building homes, or caring for others, and we know its a bit bloody pointless - too far removed from things the human race actually needs.

I think some people can rationalise the idea that all this economic activity leads to things that enrich our lives, and can find the meaning they need, but most of us struggle to and feel like its all just a lot of stress over paperwork.

Agree. I walk around all day with this deep sadness settled into my bones like a mist.

But in all honesty I'd be fucked in a society where I had to be sociable or outdoors! I think I'd like to work less hours, look at screens less and have more leisure time outside.

What an incredibly bleak view for a child to have of education. I hope you push strongly back on the view that school is irrelevant.

and “wage slaves” is also a pretty cynical view of the world.

For women being educated and able to earn their own wage has been probably one of the most important avenues to happiness and prosperity in human history.

The life you describe has always been the reserve of the very few.
Over the ages most people have lived much shorter and more brutal lives.
Most people had to be up by dawn, worked in very physically demanding jobs for tiny amounts of pay until it was dark. They had no heating, no lighting no medical care and women in particular had no rights. Most would live and die in the village they were born in, in the social class they were born into.
The life you think you’d like is a myth from a movie for most people.
There was perhaps a greater sense of community but don’t fool yourself into thinking life was easier.
Only middle class/ rich people had anything even close to what you describe. And those women had their own issues to deal with.

I wish I could be allowed to wake naturally in winter.
Instead I'm woken from my toasty slumber by an alarm clock and have to haul my carcass out of bed to be at my desk in a freezing office for 0830.
It's hard being me.

It’s the drudgery of this time of year. I dont enjoy it all, the only thing that really keeps me going is the promise of the equinox and the days getting longer. The Christmas break is busy but I’ve kept some holidays back and have got 3 weeks off which will be a decent break, my first since July.

Im having a shit time with work, I’ve had a flexible working request denied (childcare related) and have also been told wfh is basically not allowed other than odd days here and there which has really fucked me off. So it’s 2 hours a day in the car in the dark for me for the foreseeable. At least the drive is nice in the summer. Definitely looking at other options though, I think there’s been too much water under the bridge for me to stay where I am. I’m too embittered and they’re too inflexible so we are at an impasse.