40 old me looking at a screen with SSMS and Azure: Instead of an engineer like my father I should have been a tailor like my mom… Or a carpenter…
It’s never too late to enter carpentry. I know quite a few programmers who do carpentry as their main hobby. Something about the math and the amount of careful planning is highly transferrable, I guess.
Whenever I try building something with wood, I get so frustrated that it’s not version controlled. In software, I can fearlessly try dumb stuff because I can just roll it back if it didn’t work.
Creating anything physical requires a lot of practice, and practice really only works if you make mistakes and then learn from them.
Just have to accept that you will waste a lot of wood getting that practice. Heck, a lot of woodworking practice is repetition of the basics before trying to make something with those skills. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of hobbled together ugly stuff that still works like my stuff.
Not catching very slight warping in boards is my weakness.
Engineer your design in FreeCAD and tweak it before you build.
Assuming you can afford all the stuff to do it.
Which most software engineers can
Nah fuck carpentry. You’ll just end up destroying your body to make shit money.
I mean you can do it as a hobby though.
I mean I was referring to having a shop in your garage so you can build furniture, but you’re not wrong. Construction carpentry is one of the more intense trades I’ve seen.
This isn’t brick laying or plastering. Carpentry is an easy job on the body.
If you think carpentry is easy on the body I can tell you’ve never worked for or as a carpenter before.
In either case carpentry is a massive world. There is a lot more to being a carpenter than making furniture. If that’s all you’re doing as a carpenter than I would argue that you aren’t much of a carpenter and your experience is highly limited.
To me this is like calling yourself a computer engineer because 2 hours a week you write Visual Basic code in an excel spreadsheet.
Tell that to my dad’s hips, knees, and back
lol what.
No.
I work in tech. But (long story) started with a few years of carpentry/joinery. It is not easy on the body, unless you’re just making small boxes or cabinets. And even then, it’s still not really that easy.
What is so bad with plastering? I would have thought that one isn’t too bad.
The pressure to get it done now now now. The overwork. Ignoring safety regulations because they’re fucking annoying.
Don’t be a carpenter. Splinters.
At 35 I’m beginning to realize it’s good I don’t have an office job. Finnaly found a good employer and happy driving through the country.
After traveling all over for work, having freedom to somewhat set my own schedule as long as I meet deadlines, I know I would lose my mind in a traditional office.
There’s not much I hate more work-wise than sitting around after the work is done so you can get your hours, because someone on the crew thinks that’s more moral than leaving and they’re a snitch.
CongraFuckinLations I officially envy you.
Honestly I am thankful all the time that people are able to find jobs that suit them best. I am a graphic designer by trade, and working from home has basically been the greatest creative boon I’ve ever had in my life, lol. The routine, access to nature, and just general lack of distractions has been incredible.
proof that capitalism kills people. And everyone has a price.
They forgot the whole genocide thing which is kinda necessary for this to work out
This is why we colonise space, at least the planets without aliens living there.
Almost every colony ever: gets oppressed and exploited, fights for independence, gains sovereignty, becomes either a tense ally or a hostile rival to their former empire
Earthlings: “maybe we should colonize space”
Seriously? Most of the world today are colonies of the rich parts. We just don’t say it that way.
Have fun up there i guess
A planet where no conservatives are allowed. We put them on rockets to the Conservatives only planet.
So you want to send those undesireable people somewhere else? Maybe to conserve your way of living?
If you can’t tell I’m joking in this stupid fantasy scenario…
Also the whole industrialization, privatization, and rise of capitalism thing in Europe that led to successive waves of emigrants leaving or being coerced from their homelands. I think in general people don’t leave their communities and families without some kind of direct or indirect violence.
Also homesteads weren’t exactly a great place to be. No infrastructure and tornado heaven. People lived there because it was their only choice.
I mean if it would’ve been empty land it could’ve worked likes this. I don’t think genocide is a necessary part of it
If you weren’t rich you couldn’t benefit much from “most advanced civilization” at the time. most of the them were really poor and desperate and gave everything just for ticket across the Atlantic with the hope for a better life.
A decade ago my wife and I quit our jobs packed our kids and stuff and moved 7000kms to our now rural homestead. Our closest neighbor is 2km away. Town and groceries is a half hour drive one way. We have a huge garden and laying hens. We raise our own chickens for meat as well as quail and rabbits. Our kids hunt and fish and play outside. Like we did when we were kids.
It’s fucking amazing y’all.
Our closest neighbor is 2km away.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhh that sounds great
A 30min drive to town is perfect. That sounds incredible.
The thing that I hate even more about all this, I could afford to do this. But you are not legally allowed to live on your own land in the UK without planning permission. I think it is vaguely comparable to zoning in the US.
Thats what i love about Canada, you can buy land in unorganized townships and can do whatever you want there. The interesting wildlife is just the icing on the cake.
We still have parts where you can disappear into the woods and just sort of fuck off forever. Alaska has the Remote Recreational Cabin Site program as a replacement for the Homestead Act and there’s parts of the state so remote you could essentially do whatever you want and nobody would ever know. Provided “whatever you want” involves freezing in the dark wilderness.
I’m sure some of our other low-density states have similar things going on, and zoning laws vary wildly.
I live about 15 miles outside of a small town (~20k) in a trailer park on the side of a mountain. Been here 6 months and it is AMAZING. Super quiet at night, can see the stars and it has a great view of the adjacent mountains nearby.
It’ll most likely be awhile, but the plan is to save for a small piece of property with a similar rural location. In my teens and twenties, I used to think that I’d live in the big city, but as I got into my late 30s I couldn’t stand being in the city much. I don’t mind being able to visit occasionally, but city life just isn’t for me anymore. Too big, busy and noisy. Give me a nice, peaceful spot where I can read and enjoy nature quietly.
I relate to this a lot. Grew up in a small town, excitedly moved into a big city when I went to college, then bounced around cities for work for a while, and now that I’m married and have kids, I keep dreaming about living further out where we’d have more space and peace.
I have been working for many years to find the right balance for me.
Currently, by day I am a software engineer, but in my off time I am basically a recreational farmer — as in keeper of animals, not gardening. Though, plants are often involved in service of the animals.
I live in suburbia and am pretty ideally located as far as local resources and infrastructure. So I brought a little bit of the wilderness to me. Currently spending a bunch of time on my koi pond.
This is something I will never understand. You want all of the trappings of civilization without being part of it? You want your cake and to eat it too.
Most of civilization isn’t needed for the good parts to exist. The invention of the steam motor should’ve resulted in a ridiculously sharp decline in population, as most labor was no longer needed to feed the population.
50 y/o: get the fuck out of my cave.
If thats what you think happened, then you dont get it. readsettlers.org
Unfortunately we’re living in a world that no longer has much unowned/unsettled land. Everything has been bought and hoarded by the ultra wealthy.
Removed by mod
Then you start talking about colonizing space and people flip the fuck out
we should totally leave the earth and go to the moon and mars and all that, I just don’t want Elon leading us there. And ofc there is gunna be environmental effects from all those rockets, but ngl if most of humanity left the earth, the earth might be better off
Didn’t the Puritans leave England because they really hated the Catholics and wanted to change the Church of England to not be as Catholic but the government of the day told them to fuck off?
Also they hated taxes. Basically libertarians with a different name.
The Puritans weren’t the only or even primary colonists, but yes that was their motivation. That and their barbaric faith practices were quite literally illegal… in medieval England of all places. Children weren’t even considered people yet but how the Puritans treated them was bad enough to be made illegal.
i don’t like most people. i don’t like clutter. i don’t like distractions. i don’t like hassles. i don’t need much. i’m with OP.