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Big city living has taken a toll on me in all facets of life. I’ve sacrificed financial, physical, and mental well-being to live somewhere where there is culture at every turn, and I’m okay with that.
But I’m jaded and cynical in a way that I wasn’t when I first moved here, and we can chalk some of that up to just good old fashioned maturation. Now having said that, living amongst concrete and skyscrapers for years takes its toll in ways that you don’t notice until you’re lying in bed at 3:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning, unable to fall asleep and wondering how you got to where you are now.
I enjoy the hustle and bustle of city life on most days. It’s a phenomenal thing to be able to step out my front door on an idle Tuesday after work and be able to find a lively place to have a drink. It’s not like I do that regularly, but it’s just nice to know that I have the option if I so choose, you know?
That’s what you’re paying for when you boil it all down – increased cost of living is so that you know, in the back of your mind, that if you feel like going out and doing something you can do it on any given day of the week. But please don’t misconstrue this as a goodbye letter to the city. I’m not ready to settle down in suburbia just yet, either.
I mean, it’s my hope that I can one day afford to live in a nice suburban community with a mortgage and a lawn to mow every Sunday.
There are perks to living in a cul-de-sac or neighborhood setting, but just as there are pros there are also cons. Making nice with neighbors on either side of you seems like a nightmare, and being a part of a homeowners association where leadership takes their position way too seriously is equal parts concerning and hilarious. That dream – the one where I have a family and a driveway with a basketball hoop and one fucking Saturday blocked off every month to have dinner at a nice restaurant still seems far off.
So essentially what I’m getting at is that neither suburban living nor city living is perfect. And that’s where the woods come in.
I’ve tried reading Walden two or three times in my life, usually making it to the end of the first chapter before I fall asleep from boredom.
Thoreau drones on for pages about the fucking list he’s made himself to build a cabin in the woods, far, far, away from civilization where he can live off of the land and insulate himself from everything. That’s just not a book I need to read all the way through.
I get the gist of it – he wanted to take two years for himself and get away from it all. And that’s what I think I need. Not in that large of a dose, obviously. I can’t take two years off from work and life in general to just sit down and write a book, but I’m thinking that a week or two in the woods, cut off from people and the incessant pressure to be out and be seen would be fantastic.
I want all of the trappings of modern living, of course – I’ll still need wifi for blogging, Netflix and porn. I want a decent cable package, air conditioning, and a shower because I’m not trying to go TOTALLY off the grid here, but this idea of taking to the woods for a reset is really doing it for me.
I’ve been feeling cracked lately. Even the tiniest inconvenience or work-related stress seems to snowball into something more. A trip to the woods sounds better with each passing moment. Now I just need to figure out how to get enough PTO to make it happen..
Image via Unsplash
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jduda@grandex.co
This could not be more of a first world problem. You basically just want to escape to a lake house
Is that so bad? Although, I’d go your route and houseboat it up in D.C.
Escape to a hunting cabin every other weekend in the fall / winter. Does a very good job of accomplishing everything.
They don’t have brunch in the woods, nor would your blouses and handbags fare well.
“Thoreau is boring, lemme write the same exact take but mention porn and PTO to make it cooler”
“Rather than love, than money, than fame. Give me porn” -HDT
*Goes to woods*
*Lays in bed wondering what the boys are up to this weekend*
I feel you Duda. I’m having severe career burnout and the thought of waking up for work everyday is soul crushing. I am pretty close to quitting my job and getting an air bnb on the beach for a few months.
My biggest wet dream is convincing my boss to let me WFH permanently so i can move to a cabin on a lake in the UP.
I think the modern equivalence of “going to the woods.” is replacing your iPhone with a flip phone.
this is a great take that somehow duda has disguised as a bad take
I get this. I’m itching to get out of DC, away from my roommate, and have some peace and quiet. I want to fall asleep to the sounds of nature rather than the dulcet tones of drunk, screaming Hill staffers. I want to wake up to birds chirping, rather than screaming construction workers and moving cranes and jackhammers. Although I’d love to not have Wifi and not have to talk to anyone I know for a few days.
Michigan man here living in Chiraq. Everytime I go back to the Motherland, I get a severe itch to move back permanently. One of these days I am going to bite the bullet and do it
That’s what hunting is for.
You’re my people. If you kill something in the woods and bring it back to the city, your soul travels back to the woods every time you eat that wild animal filling your freezer.