Going Off Grid in the UK - #001 How intend to improve my mind, body and soul.

I have had enough. I'm 35 now, and the thought of working a job I ultimately don't like, for a company I don't care about, for the next 30+ years mortifies me.

I want to improve things. Every aspect of my life. Health and fitness, financial, emotional wellness, mindfulness etc and I have spent a large amount of my spare time researching these areas and on how to improve them. I will dive down more into each subject as time goes on, not sure how I'll categorise them or if I'll just lump them all in here, we'll see.

To understand where I am coming from you might need to know a bit more about me, where I've come from, how I've developed over the last few years and how much more growth I need to feel more fulfilled and enriched. I have a lot to be grateful for and I am fully aware there are people much less fortunate than me, but this is of no concern of mine, me and my little spudds are the most important thing to me and their health and wellbeing and overall quality of life is my biggest priority. I will delve more into this as time goes on too, but for now let's get down to the meat and potatoes.

After everything that I have researched, I have come to the realisation that one of the biggest contributors to my mental health is the stress of modern life. Living from paycheque to paycheque is one of the most stressful things you can do and yet this is the modern world we live in. You are only one bad day from losing it all. One fuck up and you lose your job, miss your mortgage payments, lose your house, become homeless and then where are you? You've gone from being a functional family to being in the most stressful situation in the blink of an eye. Potato sack that! (Sorry for the potato puns 😜)

So where are we at then? How do we not live paycheque to paycheque? Well there's a few solutions...

1) Become homeless - not an option, I have to keep my baby spudds wrapped in tin foil

2) Suicide - serious think these modern life stresses are a huge contributing factor to rising suicide rates

3) Be rich already - yeah I don't have any rich relatives to inherit wealth and it's not sustainable anyway

4) Earn so much money you can save for early retirement - I'm not talented or lucky enough nor want to invest my time into such an avenue as time is the greatest commodity

5) Have no need for money - 🤔 Err... well could this be a possible avenue to explore...?

There's no doubt a million more ways but there are only a few viable options from what I can gather, so I want to attack it from as many angles as possible.

Not having a mortgage with a ridiculous amount of interest would be start. So how do we go about doing this?

Go off grid and become self reliant!

Now the chances of getting to a point where you need ZERO income is not possible, so the only thing we can do is reduce all outgoings to the point where we don't need so much coin. For most people this is retirement. But I have another idea, if we were to buy a piece of land, build our own home, grow our own food, make our own firewood etc, we could live sustainably and would require very little income that way. Yes it would require a lot of hard work, however do we not already work 40+ hour weeks to pay for a house you don't get to spend any time in because you're busy working to pay for it!?

Replacing a typical 40+ hour work week with working on your own land seems like a fair trade does it not?

We all know how it feels when you make progress in your home, doing the garden, cleaning out the kitchen cupboards, building that new piece of ikea furniture to solve a storage issue you've had for years etc. It's that sense of progression working your land and building your own home that will offer fulfilment, more so than a typical mundane monotonous dead-end job.

Of course you will need some money to pay for any supplemental food, petrol and other car expenses, can't pay for your road tax with potatoes unfortunately 😂 school uniforms, day trips, holidays, replacement parts and overall maintenance etc.

So we've established we need at least SOME money on an ongoing basis this is where this blog comes in. I intend to use this as a potential source of passive income in some shape or form, I'll get into those details at some point but basically I'm trying to make as many different avenues of passive income as possible so I don't have to rely on a typical job. I'll use my free time on my land to build shit, furniture or lamps or whatever, YouTube videos, blogs, music etc anything I can to harness my time to the best of my abysmal abilities. If you're reading this then congrats, you've found the weird part of the internet, but thanks all the same spuddite, your time is appreciated 😘

So we have going off grid and becoming self reliant, earn a passive income where possible, what about health? Well the best part is that this would come hand in hand, doing so much physical work and eating real unprocessed foods would be a huge benefit to my health, and it would also buy me some time and resources to build my own outdoor gym, crossfit/strongman sort of style maybe.

Now this may sound completely radical, and it is, but I'm at that mental stage now in my life where I want to get back to how our ancestors lived, in a little community working the land and helping each other out. I have my best friend on board and he has several baby potatoes to look after too, so at this moment in time we are 2 families strong and we may grow over time, but for now it's just us, we got each others' back and will keep each other motivated and accountable.

Which is also great for mental health reasons as procrastination and living in our comfort zones is something us humans love doing, no one likes doing the hard work, and it will be hard work, if it was easy everyone would do it. So being part of a community where we actually care about each other is key to mental health as we are social creatures, trouble is with modern life is our tribe is fragmented across the city and we all live in our own independent bubbles, our aim to bring ourselves back together and share our time and resources with each and work together like our ancestors used to do. I believe, and hope, that this will be a key aspect to a fulfilling life, once we have everything built and up and running we will be chilling next to our firepit, drinking homemade apple/pear cider/ eating homegrown jacket potatoes etc. It's certainly going to be ball busting but with a clear goal in mind, our minds will be sharp and focused 🤞

The major drawback with living in the UK is there are policies in place to stop this sort of way of life, it's really fucking irritating but we'll get to that on another day. So much to cover, so little time.

Hope to see you back here again soon, subscribe for notifications when a new post comes, not fully figured out if it works or anything yet, I'm learning as I go so bare with me.

I think I've ranted long enough so it's time for this fat potato to get mashed so I'll see you on the other side.

Love to all x

Spuddacus