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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Well, I lived in such conditions most of my adulthood before having a kid to care for, and it was possible precisely because it was just me. Either it was a small town not even close to a big city, or it was a small town at the outskirts of a big city, some 20-30km away. I loved it. Still do.

    But it’s so hard to uproot once you have all the other stuff like not only your own job, but also your partner’s. And kid’s school or daycare or whatever. And then having to work out the bus routes for the small humans and figure whether or not it’d be plausible for them to adjust to that and not get burned out or lost or confused or whatever.

    And once you need more space, it’s much harder to find places to rent in the small towns. Mostly for sale, if it’s beyond two bedrooms. And in that case it’s much more complicated since you need to go to the effort of getting the place evaluated, arranging the loans and finances so you can pull it off, and that’s a big decision since it’ll probably lock you in there for quite some while, because small towns don’t move houses fast if you decide to go, so you could be looking at years before you get the sale done and another mortgage.

    It’s just so hard. Once you are in the city, it’s hard to leave. And the more you root in the city, the harder it gets.

    I hate it. I hate the city. I hate most about it.

    But I love my family and would suffer in a city until my death if that’s what it takes to keep it together.

    But as a positive anecdote, in my life prior to rooting down, as a younger and more adventurous human, I found that maintaining a community and a good group of friends even somewhat far away from the rest of them is easy and most importantly, comes easy. Its natural. I never found community a problem, because I always had a few groups of friends and it was always enough for us to touch ground together only monthly or every other month, so our location wasn’t really a concern. Most of us lived apart anyway. And the actual day-to-day sense of community came from work or uni or that kind of thing. I was never alone, though I lived blissfully far from most everyone.

    So the only thing that really makes it difficult is trying to find a way and a good timing for not only one, but three+ people to move at once with all of them being happy with it. That’s a puzzle I’ve found near impossible to crack.

    If we had a lot of money saved or good enough jobs to get a nest egg going, the problems likely wouldn’t matter and could very easily be worked around. But alas, we are just lower middle class, and while we are well enough off, moving is a completely life changing and paradigm shifting thing. It’s not something to choose lightly.

    Maybe that plays a part within your group of acquaintances too? My work is even WFM and my partner could likely commute easily from most of the options we have within 100km. So technically we have a lot going for it. Should be easier.

    But it’s not. Life is complex.

    Edit: For context, I’m in Europe too.






  • Fair enough. I’m not going to, nor do I want to, dissuade you from continuing your search and believing what you believe, just wanted to get a better understanding on how you reason about these things. And initially I had hoped also to spark some questions and maybe second thoughts on your part.

    For the record, I’m not entirely following your chain of thought here, and I do not believe as you believe, nor do I really see the the distinction you posed just now, but who knows, maybe I’m wrong and it turns out you’re right.





  • Yeah, it’s a hard balance to find, trying to maintain your own mental wellbeing, career, social relations like friends and family, household, money with all that comes with it, and then also try and bring up a small human in as healthy and as encouraging an environment as possible.

    Sometimes you just have too much going on, especially in today’s world, so I also do get the occasional breaks given by some screen time.

    But it can also be productive, it doesn’t have to be mindless and meaningless content. But it’s sort of understandable to default to anything at all that can give them something to do for a moment, if you need to.

    But I’m not much of a parent either, in the way that I don’t really know what I am doing. I can’t imagine most do either.




  • Actually, the mobile/touch screen client side has gotten more love lately! I would recommend Luanti, especially with the mineclonia game, since Minecraft is so common they’ll have more to talk about with friends who play Minecraft, and not feel left out. The redstone stuff just recently got redone to the point it feels very similar to Minecraft, and I’ve found it’s actually a fun way for them to learn about programming, although mine, at 6, still struggles with the concepts and I’d be very surprised if a 5yo got a grasp on them properly. But then again it is entirely possible they are less logically inclined than their peers, and maybe they come more naturally to most other kids. But even so, it’s productive fun. It promotes imagination and sticking to a project in longer term. Building up things is fun for all kids I bet, but add to it the need to go gather, search and produce the tools and materials to build, it teaches some important life lessons too, that would not be so easy to convey otherwise. And with all this, it’s still just fun. If they get frustrated, they can just instead go sail across the seas and spelunk in some caves.

    Screen time has to be enforced a lot more though, since it’s so easily addictive. If one doesn’t put boundaries on it from the start, it’ll get unhealthy and hard to shake. A lot of grumpiness is bound to follow, unless really carefully keeping limits from the get-go.






  • Personally, I think it’s because life is beautiful, the world is beautiful, people are for the most part beautiful. In a hell, I don’t think we should have so much beauty and majority of our time spent in awe of this all, enjoying our time, the nature and each other.

    I think this might very well be a hell, though, if one focuses on the bad stuff. Which is way too easy these days with our phones and constant cycle of news and updates and whatnot.

    But to be a hell, overall, I would think there wouldn’t be so much niceness, so much endearing stuff, so much love and joy. I know not everyone gets nearly enough of those, but there are people, like me, who are just way too lucky I guess, or maybe it’s a little bit about attitude or perspective gained by having been at the lowest lows, but also able to escape those pits of suicidal despair. And, again, in a hell, I can’t imagine they’d let you escape and lead a joyous, happy life, in a beautiful, breathtaking world

    Edit: Also, like one commenter put it so well: What does it matter?

    If this is all a hell, then I’m okay with that. It’s nice. It doesn’t matter what this “actually” is. It’s just nice, warts and all.