|
Top-level
Esi Jóhannes G.
Lets say I start painting. Great, can't do that at home in the city. Will need to find an office/studio space somewhere. Don't have the square meters for it. Every square meter is really expensive. On the farm? Space is abundant. You want a studio? There's an old barn somewhere I could turn into a studio, or a spare bedroom... Heck, I could build a little cabin in the garden to use as a studio. 11 comments
Esi Jóhannes G.
It just baffles me because everyone talk about how "everything is so nearby" when you live in city and they keep asking me how I could have lived on a farm so far away from everything. But now I live in the city, All my stuff is way further away. :/
Esi Jóhannes G.
Note that it also works the other way around when I am at the office. "Oh I really want to do X and Y", but nope, that stuff is at home, 3 km away.
Esi Jóhannes G.
On the bright side, I am getting some exercise for my body thanks to all the walking back and forth from the office. My farm did not provide me with that except to grab a cup of coffee in the kitchen and walk back to the office.
Esi Jóhannes G.
Some people might say "oh you need to buy/rent a bigger apartment/house". Well sure... The rent for my farm which has around 170 square meter house IIRC, and a huge empty barn, and about circa 4x4 kilometers of a "garden", costs around 100 thousand ISK per month. (and that's excluding some discounts I got because thank god for nepotism). The rent for my 45 square meter apartment in Reykjavík is around 150 thousand ISK per month, and that's cheap as it's student housing.
Esi Jóhannes G.
Two other things that got me thinking also. 1. I can't attach anything to the walls, so I can't have high bookcases or shelves, (I have a 4 year old daughter. Anything higher than a meter or two is a no go as it can fall, especially in a geologically active area. 2. My apt. storage is about 2 sq meters. If I want more I'll have to rent a storage unit several km away. Oh, and it's not in the same direction as my office. You can't have your things nearby, but everything else is nearby.
Esi Jóhannes G.
This also got me thinking. All services I mostly needed were located in one small town 25 km away from my farm. Pharmacy, school, bank, post office, etc. I could drive there, park the car, and walk to all of these and do my errands and then drive home. (plus, no traffic). In the city the post office is several km away in one direction, my office in another, the grocery store in another direction, etc. They all require dedicated trips in traffic.
Esi Jóhannes G.
Now there are obviously a lot of positive sides about living in a city, but I don't think I need to list them as 99% of people are well aware of them. But people don't often see the less visible positive sides of living rural or in smaller places. We often see the obvious ones like "oh, so close to nature" and "everything is less stressful". But there are loads of other things that we don't really realize until we've tried both and compared.
Esi Jóhannes G.
I think the only thing I would really miss about living in a city/town is the following. The ability to go to the pub for a beer and not need to worry about finding a driver. 🍻 |
Gregory's Server
On the farm if I got an idea for a really cool song I wanted to record in the evening, no problem, I'll just say to my wife and kid, "hey loves, I want to record one song, I will be on the studio in the other end of the house for an hour. Poke me if needed".
In the city, if the same thing happens I can't do it because my gear is 3 kilometers away. Heck, even if it was 500 meters away that's still 100 time further away than on the farm.