Though we live off the grid, we aren’t living in a bubble. We are still watching television and scrolling on social media like most people. Even though we live in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful, serene desert environment, we are still tethered to the onslaught of daily headlines that never cease. While it is important to me to stay in touch with what is happening in the world, constant updates wreck my nervous system and negatively infiltrate my quality of life.

On my decade-long journey of going off the news partially, then completely, and then slowly reintegrating it into my life, I have learned a lot about how to create a healthy news diet. I discovered what is necessary and what is peripheral and found a balance that works for me. In line with our mission to help people find a slower pace in life, I’m going to share what I learned and help you to create your own news diet, based on your personal needs.

First, let me see if I can convince you that you need a news diet.

The Rise of the 24-Hour News Cycle

Prior to 1980, television news was consumed in 15 to 60-minute blocks once or twice a day. In 1980, CNN launched what would come to be known as the 24-hour news cycle. A little more than a decade later, CNN gained notoriety for its coverage of the first Gulf War. People at home could stay tuned moment to moment on updates of the war on the ground. I remember this time because my brother-in-law was stationed overseas in the Persian Gulf with the US Navy. I was young, but I felt a direct connection to the soldiers that were fighting. We tied a yellow ribbon around our tree in solidarity.

My mom didn’t yet have cable television, so we didn’t watch it constantly. But this period in the 1990s created competitors in the 24-hour news cycle game, including Fox News, MSNBC, and CNBC. By the time the O.J. Simpson murder trial aired in 1995, we did have cable television, and the continuous all-day coverage was mesmerizing. The 24-hour news cycle was solidified and became a normal part of life when the internet exacerbated the constant, round-the-clock news updates.

Feeds on Negativity

Humans have a negativity bias. We pay more attention to, are more influenced by and more likely to remember negative events over positive ones. This is most likely because we protectively evolved to pay more attention to threats so we could adapt and survive. Our brains are still wired this way, even though we are no longer running from sabretooth tigers.

One study showed that adding more negative words to a headline increased the click‑through rates, even when the story was similar. Negative stories feel more urgent and credible, so people are more likely to click, believe, and discuss them. Since emotionally charged, anger‑ or fear‑inducing posts reliably generate higher engagement, they are optimized by news outlets and social media algorithms to get more likes and clicks. So, staying glued to news and social media feeds is basically flooding our nervous system with negativity.

Additionally, this results in rabbit holes in which we are inundated with a singular opinion. Only learning about one perspective of any event does not increase your knowledge, it is only confirming what you already believe. Responsible news engagement requires us to look at different angles, engage our critical thinking and come to conclusions on our own, not based on what a computer program suggests will make us angrier.

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Our Nervous System and the News

The human nervous system was not built to be in constant hyper-vigilance of worldwide atrocities. When we see upsetting stories, our brain can interpret them as threats, triggering the sympathetic system, causing adrenaline and cortisol to rise, heart rate and breathing to speed up, and muscles to tense. This can happen even though the threatening story is on a screen. Our amygdala responds to emotionally intense images and stories, not just physical danger. Repeated activation via doomscrolling and 24/7 news can leave the nervous system in a state of chronic hyper‑arousal, which is linked to anxiety, irritability, sleep disruption, headaches, and blood pressure changes. Overtime, people may exhibit trauma response patterns. This has been found to be true even when the news is playing in the background and you’re not actually paying attention to it.

If you are already a sensitive person such as me, the symptoms are likely to be worse. You are of no good to the world if your mental health is disrupted. I learned this the hard way after finding myself constantly on edge and quick to anger. I was doing myself and everyone around me a disservice by continuing to consume the news at the rate I was going.

My Journey with Reducing News Consumption

In 2016 after Donald Trump was elected president, I stopped listening, reading and watching the news. I would love to say that it was in protest, but it was mostly due to overwhelm. Well, first it was shock. I suddenly realized that my nation was not what I thought it was. I couldn’t handle all the reports explaining why Hilary Clinton lost, analyzing where the Democrats went wrong and all the justifications for this disappointing outcome. After a while I realized that I preferred to not engage with the news. I felt genuinely better not being inundated with the constant world report.

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You Don’t Actually Need the News

The thing that most people don’t realize is that you don’t actually need to attend to the news to learn the news. First, people around you are constantly talking about the news. Open your ears to it and you will begin to notice. Especially if you have politically minded friends and family. Eric is the most updated person I know. Because of his years as a journalist and his work in communications, he always has one train of thought focused on what is happening in the world. Due to this, the news was unavoidable. If something major or interesting happened, I knew about it. If I was interested enough, I would do my own research and learn more.

Second, if you are on social media, you are always watching the news. Even though I didn’t intentionally watch, read or listen to the news, I was still aware of what was happening via my social media feed. I tended to follow people who posted political content. I soon learned that this was problematic when my news became one-sided algorithm fed. I learned this with an unnerving intensity after October 7^th, 2023 when all the political content I followed ended up posting drastically misinformed, often antisemitic information all over my feed. At that time, I left social media too for the same reason I left all other news sources, my nervous system couldn’t hack it. Looking at my social media feed only enraged me the way news media did when Trump first got elected. My news sources dwindled greatly.

For the next couple of years, all my news came from word of mouth. Sometimes I felt completely out of it. People brought up current events and I stared dumbfounded. Embarrassed I might change the subject or otherwise ask them to fill me in. I intermittently looked up news stories I heard about to learn what was happening, but otherwise I was naïve. Overall, though challenging, I don’t think this was harmful in any way. I did what I needed to do at the time to get by.

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You Don’t Have to Bear Witness

This may be controversial (maybe this entire post is controversial) but you don’t have to bear witness to other people’s pain to be a good person. Soon after I left social media, I was in a group for women entrepreneurs and explained why I had to leave Instagram and Facebook even though my business might suffer since I used them for marketing. A woman I barely knew said to me, “You are irresponsible to close your eyes to what is happening. It is our responsibility to bear witness to the pain and suffering of others.” She claimed that she had authority on the subject because she was gay and her wife was Black. I didn’t know what this had to do with my experience, but I let it go and spoke to the moderator later who agreed with my confusion.

I was deeply offended. Going off social media because people I once respected and followed for their fight against discrimination started using antisemitic cliches is not irresponsible. It is very responsible to myself. Ancestral trauma and epigenetics were causing my entire system to fire on high, and I could find no peace online. It was hard enough seeing it on every corner and from people I knew but there was no reason to voluntarily bear witness online.

The idea of bearing witness comes from Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient who said that “his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living,” and that he has “no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.” When people apply Wiesel’s framing to everyday news and media feeds, they are saying, do not look away so that the suffering of others disappears. Perhaps this woman in the meeting did not realize that my cultural, experiential and familial connection to Israel made it impossible for me to look away. I didn’t need Instagram to remind me.

What I am saying is that staying informed of what is happening in the world is a means of recognizing other people’s vulnerability and struggles and inspiring ways in which you may be able to respond, not with virtue signaling, but with donating, voting or speaking up to your government representatives. Staying informed does not mean to consume horror endlessly. Because on the flip side, constant exposure can exceed our capacity to make meaning and overwhelm us out of doing anything because nothing seems like it will make a difference. Constant witnessing can lead to news fatigue and emotional burnout. Responsible witnessing means limiting your intake and seeking sources that inform without crushing.

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Since the hostage return and ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, I have begun to reintroduce the news back into my life. While antisemitism is still growing globally, my news fast allowed me to be better resourced now to witness it. I am able to witness and empathize with others’ pain in the Ukraine, Middle East, Sudan and in my own country where people are struggling economically and immigrants are living in fear. I have reintroduced the news back into my life by creating a news diet that works for me.

Quick note: For the sake of honesty, I want to point out that even with my news diet in place, I still find that reading the news is often frustrating, disempowering and depressing. Trump’s reign cannot arrive quickly enough for me, and I just hope he doesn’t completely demolish our democracy on his way out.

How to Create Your Personal News Diet

As with a food diet, dieting is kind of hard. You are restricting things from your life that have become habitual and breaking habits are never easy. If you are like Eric and feel that you are fully capable of compartmentalizing the news without it affecting your everyday wellbeing, then you’re probably doing a good job of creating information balance in your life. However, if you are like me and notice that the news’s negativity can be overwhelming and trickle into other areas of your life, then it may be worthwhile for you to commit to trying a news diet and see how you feel. If you are interested in learning more, read on.

My hope is that the following 8 tips for how to create a simple and doable news diet gives you permission to step away from the battering new cycle and trending horrors and listen to your body, prioritize your values, and bring more peace and positivity into your life. This list is distilled from years of experience, experiments, and careful research and is shared exclusively with our paid subscribers. Thank you for supporting this work and making it possible to dig deeper together.

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When I was twelve years old, every night at 11:11 pm I would make a wish for a boyfriend and world peace. The boyfriend would take a few more years. I’m still waiting on world peace.

I don’t know how I thought world peace would arrive. Maybe I thought, like you, that one day all the world leaders would come to an agreement to end all wars, oppression and violence, despite several millennia of historical evidence to the contrary.

World peace is not going to ride in on a horse one day waving a white flag and leaving a wake of peace trailing behind it. Nor can we rely on the rich and powerful to turn over a new leaf, denounce material wealth and oppressive control. They are not going to suddenly step down and form a non-hierarchical society, hold hands in a circle and sing kumbaya.

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World Peace Comes from Within

You know you want world peace, but have you considered how it’s going to happen? Are you waiting for someone else to figure it out? Maybe you never really thought about it before.

Here’s the hard truth: world peace begins with you. World peace is only going to occur when the majority of people in the world are peaceful. People are going to be peaceful by finding their inner peace. Since we can’t immediately change the chaos of our modern world, peace must come from within outward, not the other way around.

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Inner Peace is Contagious

The good news is that inner peace has the beautiful effect of spreading rapidly and exponentially. Think about someone in your life who is peaceful. No matter what chaos occurs on the outside, this person holds steady. They approach every situation with calm and fortitude. They don’t complain or commiserate. They don’t fixate on the most horrible current event in the news. They are collected. But they are not cold. They emanate warmth and caring. They laugh easily. They are honest.

Consider how you enjoy being around this person. Recall how when you are near to them, you also feel at peace. They relax and ground you. That’s because inner peace spreads. It’s contagious. When you are surrounded by peaceful people not only do you feel peaceful, but you want to be peaceful like them as well. They model another way of being.

Additionally, you get into an energetic coherence with people around you. Your nervous system, emotions, and heart rhythms can synchronize with others. Studies show that when people interact, their physiology can synchronize heart rate, heart rate variability, facial expressions, and even brain activity can subtly lock into similar rhythms. So, just being around peaceful people can bring peace to others.

For more examples of inner peace, consider a mountain, tree or ocean. The mountain remains solid and still, even as the storm circles overhead. The tree sways with the strong winds but remains rooted to the ground. The ocean waves break overhead but in the depth of the sea there is eternal peace and quiet.

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Inner Peace Takes Work

Inner peace requires work. It’s not easy in a world full of challenges, struggles, and chaos. But you have overcome obstacles before. Remember a time that you overcome an obstacle-- illness, loss, transition, heartbreak, etc. How did you do it? You may have asked for help or been blessed with external support but ultimately your resilience and ability to overcome came from within you. You had to find it within yourself to make peace with the situation. Otherwise, you never move on, you never overcome. What did it feel like to meet this challenge and overcome it? What characteristics did you need to do so? Bravery, faith, forgiveness, patience, surrender, calm? This answer might hold your recipe for inner peace.

In other words, you’ve done it before, you can do it again. And when you learn how to cultivate inner peace, each new struggle becomes easier to overcome because you have the tools, you’ve practiced for this.

This might be a hard pill to swallow, but you can welcome every struggle as an opportunity to cultivate inner peace. Every time you are faced with a new obstacle instead of feeling like a victim of circumstance and wallowing in woe, take a moment to collect yourself and find inner peace. Finding inner peace when life is going swell is one thing, but to do it when you are in the thick of tension, is a master class.

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Inner Peace Feels Great and is Worth the Work

So, finding inner peace and spreading it around to the people you come into contact with who can spread it around to others is a recipe for world peace, but it also feels great. Existing in the world in a state of equanimity means that your ego is not triggered by every little thing. The words that might have offended you before don’t bother you anymore. Even when you read the news, you can see the full picture of what is playing out and not get caught up in the drama. When you have inner peace, you are witness to the world. You are watching this great play of life unfold before you and though you are participating, you don’t have to react.

Additionally, through practice, you learn to lasso your thoughts, and you become more present in the moment. Your thoughts are no longer wandering mindlessly into regurgitating the past or jumping ahead worrying into the future. In the present, the world is a beautiful place. You can think and act spontaneously in the moment rather than based on fear, old stories, programming or past experiences. You are able to better appreciate what you have right now with a deep feeling of contentedness.

When you no longer need external validation because you discover that everything you need resides peacefully within you, you feel compassion towards yourself and others. Characteristics of greed, jealousy, dishonesty, scarcity, fear, domination and the such begin to fade away. Imagine all the people living in this peace.

If you are really committed to world peace and inner peace, then you must start by setting the intention to seek it out every chance you get. Not just to consider it sometimes when it is convenient for you but to truly devote yourself to the practice and lifestyle of cultivating inner peace. Say it out loud. Tell your friends and family. Make yourself accountable. Get a little obsessed.

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Ways to cultivate inner peace

1. Find peaceful people to be around. Search them out, ask around. Visit places they may likely be such as temples, ashrams, yoga studios, nature-based activities, etc. Spend more time with people in your life who are peaceful or cultivating peace (and maybe less time with people who are not.)

2. Meditation is the most direct but not always the easiest path to inner peace. Because meditation allows us to quiet the mind and witness our thoughts, we learn to enhance the witness mind that can objectively view the world and in time learn to not react from our ego mind. As Swami Sivananda Saraswati says, “Fewer the thoughts, greater the peace.” But meditation can look different for everyone, so don’t assume it means sitting on a pillow and chanting Om, though that is my preferred method. There is walking meditation, singing meditation, dancing meditation, guided meditation, and more. Research and find one that works for you.

3. Yoga, tai chi, qi gong and the like are all moving meditations that allow you to practice being present in the moment.

4. Practice mindfulness. Watch your thoughts and emotions throughout the day. Notice your reactions. Notice when you are unable to accept the moment just as it is, when you get angry, triggered, agitated or start to complain. Take this opportunity to relax, reset and find acceptance with what is, perhaps even appreciation for what you are being taught about yourself. Even if you do react, this is progress for noticing, so don’t be hard on yourself. Next time you will take a deep breath and surrender instead.

5. When you feel activated, practice nervous system regulation techniques such as shaking, singing, chanting, and deep breathing.

6. Time in nature calms the nervous system and allows you to deepen into a peaceful state. Relax without rushing and allow the natural world to bring you peace. Meditating in nature is all the better. Visit green spaces as much as possible. Try a sit spot practice.

7. Eat healthy, exercise, get plenty of sleep and take your vitamins. Rest often. When you are feeling good in your body, it is easier to feel good in your whole being.

8. Create what is called in yoga a sattvic environment. Sattva means a state of harmony and balance. So besides healthy foods, exercise, good attitudes and meditation, you can also create spaces that feel harmonious. This may include, uplifting or calming music, pleasing scents, uncluttered tabletops, beautiful art, plants or whatever you consider harmonious in your home.

9. Selfless service, or karma yoga, is a way to step away from yourself as the center of the universe and begin centering others. In the act of selfless service that is truly selfless and not as a way to make yourself feel good or stroke your own ego, you give your full effort without concern for the results. Acting in service of the greater good and making offerings to something greater than yourself, relaxes your ego, reduces selfishness and creates a peaceful state.

10. Be careful of what you watch. When we are watching television or the news or scrolling on social media, our mind enters a relaxed hypnogogic alpha brain state where images, sounds and ideas can enter your subconscious and affect your nervous system. I like a good thriller as much as most, but I am aware that it shifts my body out of peaceful mode and into a more excited state. Same for the news. Being aware of this, helps me to be more discerning about what is worth watching and disrupting my peace of mind.

11. Read books and listen to podcasts about finding inner peace to stay inspired, such as:

    Be Here Now – Ram Dass

    The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

    The Untethered Soul – Michael A. Singer

    Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramahansa Yogananda

    Peace is Every Step – Thich Nhat Hanh​

    True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart - Tara Brach

    Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

    Breath: Wake up to Life - Prem Rawat

    A Return to Love - Marianne Williamson

    The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book - don Miguel Ruiz

    Add your books and podcast suggestions that I missed in the comments:

    Leave a comment

    Our Uncertain Future is a reader-supported publication written by two people who live off the grid in the desert and hope to model a peaceful lifestyle in nature, living slow, stewarding the land, caring for community, and spreading inner peace.

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You may have heard the saying that time is money, which is a great capitalist idiom to make sure that you aren’t wasting time being unproductive when you could be making money. But what about the opposite? Money is time. Which means that in order to make money, you need to invest time. And time is a commodity you can never get back. Time is our most precious resource. It allows us the ability to do the things we love that bring us joy. Most people want to make money so that they have more free time. But that’s the conundrum because making money uses up time. Henry David Thoreau famously wrote in Walden regarding cost and value, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

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You can work hard and hope to one day retire to a life of leisure. You can spend less and work less and live a life of leisure with less stuff. And/or, if you can figure it out, you can earn passive income, which is basically a stream of income that doesn’t cost you a lot of time.

The definition of passive income is earnings derived from sources or activities that require minimal ongoing effort or active participation after the initial setup. As an advocate of the slow living lifestyle, passive income is of great interest to me. Just the word passive gives off a certain vibe. You might imagine streams of money flowing towards you as you sit back and leisurely sip a cup of coffee or read a book or play with your kids

Why Do You Need Passive Income?

A great thing about passive income is that it allows you to make money on the side without burning out. You can keep your day job. With the economy as such, multiple streams of income are more important than ever. If you lose your job to AI or outsourcing, or if your company fails to keep up with recent tech advances and their stock plummets and they lay off 20% of their employees, you have something at least to float you for a while or subsidize your severance package while you look for more work or give up on the idea of working all together and buy an off grid home and grow all your own food.

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Throughout my adult life, I have had multiple income streams. I’ve never been the kind of person to have one full-time job. I usually work freelance or as a contractor. Because of this, I usually turned my hobbies into some kind of income generator. That doesn’t mean you have to capitalize on your hobbies. It’s nice to have some things that are just for you. But it does mean that you can. Some ways that I have received passive income include digital courses, resale, Airbnb, merch at local shops, books in print and online, crypto and my Roth IRA.

Basically, life is short. The whole point is to have more time to enjoy life, so pick something that you enjoy doing and see how you can make money from it on the side. Creating a new income source that stresses you out or you agonize over doing, is not worth it and is counter effective.

If you want to dive deeper into ways to make passive income, I have compiled an in-depth list for paid subscribers of 10 ways to make passive income based on research, 30+ years of adult life experience, and creative ingenuity. In this list I have included type of person who might enjoy this form of passive income, if you need a lot or a little investment upfront, if the return is minimal or high, and whether you need to invest minimal, mild, or mucho time to do it. Hopefully, this will help you determine which one or more is best for you.

Let’s dig in.

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In winter, we light the fire. Fire is primordial. Fire awakens our genetics to the deep ancestors, the ones who circled the fire at night to keep predators and dark spirits away. The ones who lived with the land, sun, moon, plants and animals as humble participants in the whole interbeing of existence.

When I see the fire, I want to throw my phone into it.

I want to toss my pocket computer into the red embers and hear the screech and shatter of glass as it melts into tiny pools of silicon liquid and deformed casings, while I inhale the smells of toxic fumes.

Diabolical, I know.

Thing is, I miss the Nineties.

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Remembering Life Before Smartphones

From 1990-1999, I was 15-24 years old. I wish that when I was in them, I appreciated them more. Instead, I was always worried about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have told myself to relax, chill out and enjoy the peace and quiet before the world descends to digital madness dependent on a hand-held screen.

If I knew then about social media and that the future would be filled with strangers I call friends, I would have appreciated more the real connections I made every day at the market, bar, bookstore, video store, concert hall, park, classroom, or club.

If I knew the future was filled with impossibly filtered comparison culture, I would have appreciated that I was able to distance myself from celebrities and models as advertisers, instead of perceiving them as real people streaming on my digital feed that I somehow had to live up to.

If I knew the future was filled with constant screens I stare at while ignoring my surroundings, I would have stared into space even more.

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If I knew that in the future I would be obligated to be in constant contact with people, that all plans would be triple verified, that anyone could reach me anytime anywhere, I would have gotten lost more often.

If I knew then that in the future, I would have access to everything I could possibly want to know at my fingers and feel dumber than ever, I would have appreciated the mystery more. I would have spent more time sinking into the unknown, the liminal space between asking a question and wondering if you’ll ever have the answer, the joy when the answer comes, the ability to be okay with wondering, cluelessness, and confusion. I would have enjoyed the fact that to learn something from someone, I had to go to them, sit in their presence and be able to ask questions in real time.

If I had known what the future held, I would have seen another rock show, spent more time perusing indie bookstores reading zines, made another mix tape for my next epic road trip with my girlfriends, gone to another reggae festival at a farm, made eye contact more often and enjoyed people-watching people who weren’t on their phones but were doing interesting things with their lives.

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What We Lost When We Went Online

But those days are past and there is no going back. I love all the conveniences of the world on-demand. Anything I want is available anytime I want it as long as I can afford it. I love that I don’t have to leave my house.

Still, sometimes I want to go back to times when it felt normal to be bored and waiting.

So, in honor of the winter season and its burning fires, I am offering a list of all the ways you can metaphorically burn your phone and enjoy life offline for an afternoon, day or maybe even a week if you are wild.

Next time you feel the urge to scroll on your phone, do these simple offline activities instead to break your phone habit. (There are actually 10 things, but I like the way 9 sounds better.) Instructions are specific and I urge you to try to follow them. It will feel awkward at first, but I know you can do it! Start with the one that feels the easiest. Who knows, maybe you’ll discover a new interest.

Note: This section is reserved for paid supporters because it takes time, care, and life experience to create. Putting it behind a paywall helps keep the writing sustainable and ad‑free, and signals that this kind of long‑form, reflective work has value.

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The other day I was approached by a young man who found me sitting drinking tea outside the yoga studio where I teach. After some small talk about yoga, he told me that he was beginning to question his life. He works remotely and is traveling around reevaluating his situation. “My job is exhausting. I’m in the rat race all the time. I need to get out.” He waved in the direction of his red Tesla sports car and asked if he really needed such a fancy car.

Then he said to me, “You seem like you live a really relaxed life.” He could tell from my composure and disposition that I wasn’t stressed. I giggled because little did he know. I told him that I live off the grid and, yeah, I live a relaxed life. I teach yoga, write, make art and keep expenses low. I choose to live a slower existence, which makes me happier.

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As inflation rises and making a sustainable income becomes more challenging, people are beginning to wonder if there is a different way. I don’t know what will become of that young man but based on our conversation, I think he’ll figure out the right path for himself. There are many different lifestyle choices that anyone can make to begin a life of more ease. The current paradigm of catching up with tireless productivity, keeping up with the Jones, ambitious striving, feelings of dissatisfaction, and believing that you never have enough is coming to an end as people wake up and realize it’s not making them any happier.

But what to do? Who would quit their job in this economy? It’s scary out there.

Quit Your Job Today

At Our Uncertain Future, we write about our lifestyle off the grid to show people there is another way. We bought our off-grid fixer upper in cash and paid it off within a couple of years. Buying cheap land and putting an off-grid tiny home and some solar panels on it is one way to lower your housing costs and free up your life. But this isn’t the only way. In fact, you can quit your job right now and live for free.

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When I was in my twenties, I lived for a month at the Yoga Farm, a Sivananda ashram in upstate New York. In exchange for karmic yoga or selfless service, which in my case entailed gardening and occasionally cooking and laundry, I could live relatively free. For a small fee and some work exchange, I received free room, board, satsang and yoga. I looked up recent prices, and you currently can pay $900 per month to live in a dorm, $700 if you stay in a tent. Of course, this requires devotion to the practice of yoga, which I had at the time and continue to have today.

A few years later, I landed another great opportunity while living in Alaska. Working as a Resident Advisor in a boarding school in bush Alaska, I received free room and board PLUS a living wage. Eric had a job in the same village (that’s where we met) working for the radio station, which gave him free housing and a car to use on top of his salary. On one hand, we lived where we worked and sometimes it was hard to separate the two. On the other hand, in the bush there was nothing to spend money on, so we were able to save up and after two years, we went backpacking in Asia for six months with the money we saved.

Live for Free and Live Free

These opportunities such as Resident Advisor and ashram community member still exist. I compiled a list of 16 more ways that you can live for free or for a nominal amount in exchange for work. These aren’t only for the young and unattached; there are places where families and couples can live as well. Depending on your personality and interests, some are more community oriented while others are more autonomous. Some opportunities include travel too. I include these details in the listing, as well as links as to where you can find these opportunities.

This list of 16 ways to live for free, is for paid subscribers only. It took a lot of research, years of life experience, and hours hunched over a laptop when I could have been outside to pull this list together, so this is a way of maintaining a fair exchange. It also says thanks to the folks who support this work and puts some respect on the time and effort behind it. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber and access this full content, simply click below to upgrade.

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At some point in my teen years, it occurred to me that the most beautiful beauty was natural beauty. Hey, some people prefer silicone breasts, fake tans, and heavy make-up, but that wasn’t what interested me. I looked around and saw that people who took care of themselves like drinking a lot of water or wearing sunscreen or getting exercise radiated a certain essence of attractiveness that I supported. There was a glow to them I wanted to emulate.

To this day, I continue to love the natural look. I will always prefer long wild locks, frizzy fros, freckled shoulders, blonde eyelashes, pale pink lips, braless breasts, hairy chests, bearded chins, and crows’ feet around my friends’ wise eyes.

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Rethinking Modern Beauty: Less Is More

I understand a major part of our media and society advocate changing the way you look to fit a stereotypical homogenous idea of beauty and it’s a lot of programming to unblock, especially if you live in more superficial environments where looks are connected to self-worth. Lately I’ve been a fan girl for Pamela Anderson who has been brave enough to go without makeup even though she exists in a world that emphasizes extreme amounts of modifications in appearance, including everything from makeup to plastic surgery.

For me, natural beauty also equates to natural products. Less is more being my go-to mantra for what I put on my skin. My dear friend, a healer and herbalist, pointed out to me once that we don’t want to put on our skin what we aren’t willing to put inside our bodies and that really struck me as true. Beauty products should be edible. You might not want to eat them, but you could.

Skin is the biggest organ of the body. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health found that skin absorbed an average of 64% of total chemical contaminant dosage. The face is several times more permeable than other body surfaces, while underarms and genitalia show 100% absorption rates. So, just because you’re not ingesting those carcinogens and petroleum products, doesn’t mean you’re not ingesting them.

Hidden Dangers in Commercial Cosmetics

Side effects of these commonly found toxins include cancer risks, hormone and endocrine disruptions, reproductive and fetal developmental issues, neurological effects, respiratory and skin irritations, lowered immunity, cell damage and much more. These side effects can be even worse in children.

In the United States, cosmetic products and ingredients do not need FDA approval before they go on the market. Cosmetic companies are not required to share their safety data or file their product formulations, and the FDA only acts against unsafe products after they’ve gone to market and are demonstrating harm. By contrast the FDA prohibits only about 10 ingredients in cosmetics for safety reasons while the European Union has banned over 1,500 different cosmetic ingredients due to potential health risks, including ones we use here such as formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, hydroquinone, triclosan, lead compounds, certain types of parabens, petroleum distillates, phthalates, selenium sulfide, quaternium-15 and many others that are difficult to spell and pronounce.

Are you starting to think maybe you should look more closely at those product labels after all?

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How to Choose and Use Truly Natural Products

Over the years my beauty products have changed as new companies come and go. Overall, I have always looked for products with the least amount of ingredients and with zero ingredients that I can’t understand. If the name sounds like a chemical, it probably is. This is not always easy to do and sometimes I am unsuccessful, settling for companies that don’t have perfect ingredients but that I feel good about and don’t test on animals.

Secrets to Natural Beauty Products:

• Buy products with fewer ingredients and as many as you can recognize as possible if not all

• Locally made products will often meet this standard

• Buy in bulk to avoid extra plastic packaging. If that’s not possible, buy products that use recycled or recyclable packaging.

• Make your own beauty products

Here are some products that I purchase and love:

Satva Botanicals: Local to New Mexico, Satva Botanicals are completely natural bespoke beauty products made of organic and wildcrafted ingredients. Each item is formulated with intention and love by owner Kristin Moore and are meant to be used with conscious self-care in mind, which you can tell from the names. My favorites are the Restore lip and balm, Nourish facial oil, and Refresh tonic mist.

Uncle Harry’s: Take one look at their ingredient list on any of their products and you will feel good about using Uncle Harry’s. I know what every item is on the list and why it’s in there. Plus, they feel great and work great. My favorites are the Ayurvedic face cream, Jojoba face tonic and seaweed hair gel.

My daily sunscreen from La Puebla Elementals is local and I’ve been using it religiously for years. The ingredients are so pure. I love that it is matte on my skin, perfect for daytime, and it is literally green. It is only 15 SPF so in the summer when the desert sun is brightest, hot tip, I put on a layer of pomegranate seed oil beneath it, which increases the SPF by 8.

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Beware of “Natural” Labeling—The Greenwashing Trap

Warning! Be wary of products that tout themselves as having all natural ingredients. Many of these such as Burt’s Bees, Thayer’s or Tom’s of Maine have been bought out by larger corporate monopolies that ruined natural products that used to be genuinely healthy but are now shells of their former selves. Instead, seek out independently owned companies with third-party certifications like MADE SAFE.

If you are in a pinch and only have access to Walgreens, yes, go ahead and get Burt’s Bees. They are still cruelty-free, eco-friendly and budget friendly. It is the lesser evil but, unfortunately, there are currently allegations against them for having undisclosed PFAs in some of their makeup products, so it’s best to avoid those. This goes to show that just because a product says it is “all natural” doesn’t mean you can believe them.

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The best option is to make your own products; this way you always know what is inside. Not only that, but it’s also so inexpensive. Beauty products, especially natural ones that are run by smaller businesses, can be pricey. For some things, it’s worth it, but for others you can easily make it yourself and save a lot of moolah.

9 Easy Beauty Products to Make at Home with Minimal Ingredients

And when I say easy, I mean it. Like there’s no cooking involved, you don’t need special equipment. You probably already have these ingredients in your cupboard and can start experimenting right now.

Making your own beauty products is so inexpensive, requires very little packaging and you know everything that you are putting on your body. You can even eat it (though it might not taste good.)

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How-To is a new sub-section of Our Uncertain Future that provides researched and/or instructional content.

If you want to live off the grid, you may want to take into consideration what state to do it in. Some people don’t have that kind of flexibility to live anywhere, but if you do it’s important that where you are is supportive of your lifestyle. And if you don’t have a lot of cash to invest, you especially want to find someplace cheap. I did a deep dive and researched a list to help you out.

I’m lucky that I ended up in New Mexico by chance. I had been living in Alaska when I met a handsome young man who wanted to marry me, but first he wanted to move back to the Mountain West to spend a couple of years with his ailing father. We landed in the Land of Enchantment and never left.

We lived off-grid in Alaska too, in varying capacities. Usually, we didn’t have indoor plumbing. An outhouse in the middle of Alaskan winters is intense. (The secret is to make toilet seats out of foam, so they don’t get cold.) We hauled water in 5-gallon jugs to our dry cabin and went to the laundromat to take showers for a quarter per every two minutes of water. I’m sure the prices have gone up since 2005.

Ultimately, Alaska was a little too far out for us, but we liked the rustic vibe and proximity to nature. New Mexico has a similar vibe. Interestingly, in New Mexico we have more access to wild spaces because they are within reach and easier to navigate. Alaska has a wild beauty that is far beyond human comprehension; it’s massive and amazing. Both states have indigenous populations that have lived continuously on the land without being pushed onto reservations and their living stewardship is palpable.

There is so much to love about New Mexico, such as the progressive politics, the gorgeous scenery and the diverse history and culture. Of course, there are negatives too; no place is perfect. But for us, the pros outweigh the cons. We especially love New Mexico because of the ease of living off the grid.

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Living the Dream

Are you dreaming of moving off the grid? Do you follow off-grid influencers, read off-grid blogs and pin photos of off-grid homes? With the uncertainty of our economic, energy and climate future, many people are seeking a new sense of security not embedded in wealth. You can’t eat money. Money won’t shelter you when it rains. And our society is working harder to make less, leading to burnout. Off-grid living is a realistic alternative to stress, exhaustion and insecurity. If you can figure out how to make a living, be self-sufficient, or join a community sharing resources, you can basically move anywhere. But where?

Generally, living off the grid means living in rural areas. Put aside your narrow stereotypes of what rural people are like and realize that they aren’t so dissimilar from you, seeking a respite from modernity, appreciating a slower rhythm of life and a more minimalist lifestyle.

So, to help you out with your visioning and preparing, I have compiled two lists. The 5 Worst Places to Live Off the Grid and the 5 Best Places to Live Off the Grid. Let’s see if Alaska or New Mexico make the lists. I wonder if your state lands on one of these lists.

How to Choose the Right State For You

I made these lists based on the factors that I have learned from experience are important to easily living off the grid:

• Cost of living, including taxes

• Land prices

• Regulations and Zoning Laws

• Climate

• State energy policies

• Natural disasters

Ultimately, you want to choose states that align with your budget, weather tolerance, and ability to navigate regulations. For sustainability, prioritize regions with low barriers to renewable energy and water independence. You may also consider what you find aesthetically pleasing. I love mountains and so I live in a mountainous area. You may prefer oceans (though cheap land is usually not coastal), waterways, saguaros or deciduous forests.

When considering off grid living on a state-by-state basis, it is also important to look at the differences from county-to-county in cost and zoning laws, which I learned in my research can be vast. More desirable areas near urban centers across the board are going to be more expensive.

As a bonus, I took into consideration the natural disasters inherent to each region. With the rise in global warming, there is an increase in flooding, drought, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and other climate risks that are beyond our control. Of course you don’t want to build your ideal off grid homestead only to see it destroyed.

So, I wish you luck my friend in living your dream and finding you planetary oasis. I hope this information helps move you closer to your vision. Stay wild.

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Five Worst States for Off-Grid Living

1. Texas

While land is affordable in the Lone Star State, regulatory hurdles and grid independence complicate off-grid setups. The ease of living off the grid can vary widely depending on what region you are in.

• Some areas in Texas mandate grid-tied utilities or specific construction standards, limiting alternative building methods like strawbale or tiny homes.

• Some counties mandate solar panels be placed 100+ feet from property lines unless neighbors waive the rules, which they can refuse to do.

• While SB 819, targeting utility-scale solar, died in the Texas House in May 2025, smaller projects still face bureaucratic delays for inspections or interconnection approvals.

• Drilling wells often require costly permits and is challenged by groundwater scarcity in arid regions.

• Solar tax credits exist, but off-grid systems rarely qualify, and property tax abatements for renewables are prohibited in some counties.

• Texas leads the nation in natural disaster costs, substantially higher than other high-risk states. Flooding is the most common natural disaster followed by tornado-producing severe storms, which can be the most expensive, hurricanes/cyclones, droughts and heatwaves.

2. Alaska

A lot of people live off-grid in Alaska out of necessity, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best place for it. Sorry to all my AK friends!

• While there is more than enough sun in the summertime, Alaska’s dark winters with limited sunlight make it nearly impossible to harness the sun half of the year unless you master battery storage.

• Due to its far-out location, transportation of materials is 2–3x more expensive than in the contiguous U.S, so the cost of living is high.

• 80% of Alaska sits on thawing permafrost, which makes digging wells costly and repairing foundations necessary.

• And though you can buy cheap land in wilderness locations off the road system, the cost of getting there might offset the savings.

• Alaska is part of the infamous Ring of Fire on the Pacific. Earthquakes are their most frequent natural disaster with a magnitude of 8 or larger every 13 years. Alaska's natural disaster frequency and costs are relatively low compared to most other states, but its size and remoteness create unique emergency management challenges not found in other states.

3. Florida

Much of the land in Florida has strict zoning and building laws due to hurricanes, coastal zones and flood risks, complicating sustainability.

• Florida’s intense air conditioning demands create challenges for off-grid sustainability.

• Many Florida counties enforce minimum square footage rules for residential structures; often mandating homes be 1,200–1,800 sq. ft.. Tiny homes, shipping containers, or unconventional builds (e.g., under 500 sq. ft.) are prohibited in these zones, classified as “accessory dwelling units” (ADUs) and in most counties, they can’t serve as primary residences unless paired with a larger, code-compliant home.

• Earthbag builds, straw-bale homes, or recycled buildings often face permitting hurdles due to non-compliance with hurricane-resistant building codes.

• Over 50% of Florida homes fall under HOAs, which frequently ban, rainwater collection barrels, visible solar panels, vegetable gardens, livestock, or sheds.

• Exception: Liberty County allows off-grid living in national forest zones with minimal oversight through the U.S. Forest Service Recreation Residence Program, a federal initiative permitting private cabins on public forest land under specific conditions.

• As already stated, Florida is wrought with natural disaster issues with a frequency of 2 natural disasters a year and increasing, usually hurricanes and flooding.

  

4. California

California has a reputation for being laid back and eco-friendly, but unfortunately that might come at a cost.

• Avoiding the coast and more desirable locations, you can find land that isn’t terribly expensive in California, however housing costs are still high. Construction costs are 2–3x higher than other states due to labor costs, materials and energy standards. There are great reasons for this (higher union wages, required eco-friendly materials, required solar installation) if you can afford it.

• There are also permitting delays, development fees, design requirements, and high property taxes.

• Rural counties like Mendocino ban tiny homes on wheels as primary residences, while others restrict composting toilets or livestock.

• Don’t forget to take wildfires and drought into consideration. 45% of California is classified as high-fire-risk, mandating costly fire-resistant materials.

5. Illinois

Illinois presents significant challenges for off-grid living due to a combination of restrictive regulations, financial burdens, and environmental factors.

• While state laws are relatively relaxed, many counties enforce minimum home sizes (e.g., 1,200+ sq. ft.) and restrict alternative housing like tiny homes or RVs.

• Rural zones often mandate grid-tied utilities if available.

• If you are interested in homesteading, permits are required for most livestock, with caps on animal numbers.

• Illinois has the second-highest property taxes in the U.S. (double the national average).

• Weather-wise, the state is prone to flooding, has cold winters, flash droughts and not many sunny days.

• Illinois is considered relatively low-risk compared to other states for natural disasters. While the state does experience tornadoes, they are less frequent and less intense than in states like Oklahoma or Kansas.

  We’ve got years of experience living off grid and we’ve learned a lot about how to do it right (and wrong). We’ve made a lot of mistakes, so you don’t have to. But most importantly, we genuinely care about making the world a better place and helping people find happiness by slowing down and enjoying life because the future is uncertain and all we have is now. If this sounds like your vibe, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Five Best States for Off-Grid Living

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Remarkably, we’re in our fifth year of living off-grid (at least in terms of all public utilities, but still as online as ever) and there’s been a number of lessons learned for me personally.

I’ve learned tons about all you’d expect: things to do with water, electricity, gardening wildlife and even a little bit on the effects of isolation on the human animal. Here’s a quick list of things for those of you with the shortest attention spans:

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During these darkest days of the year in the northern hemisphere, it is impossible not to think about heat. The days are growing colder as we tilt away from the sun.

Heating our homes is a matter of survival. If you doubt it, recall February of 2011 when a huge storm caused rolling blackouts in West Texas that affected the pressure in gas pipelines and impeded delivery of natural gas to over 30,000 homes in Northern New Mexico. At the same time, thermometers plummeted to record cold temps of 36 degrees below zero in some mountain towns. There were long lines outside stores as people purchased electric heaters. For 6 days and 5 nights, a state of emergency was declared, schools and businesses shut down and shelters were set up for anyone in need. There was the unusual sight of National Guard vehicles and uniformed guardspeople patrolling the streets. Fortunately, nobody died.

My family was not affected in our mountain homestead because we heated with a wood stove and used propane for our cooking and hot water heater.

Personally, I don’t think people consider heating enough. Yet, it is so essential. Not just to survival but to saving energy, which is very much the goal when living an ecofriendly life.

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(FYI: This post contains affiliate links via Amazon for some products in which we get a measly cut for advertising fees. Don’t sue us, please. Thanks.)

One of the many benefits to living off grid is our direct and intimate connection to the natural world. Out of necessity, we must create a cooperative relationship with the elements. A cloudy day never goes unnoticed. If it is winter, we must concern ourselves with how much sunshine we are absorbing from our panels. But if it is summer, we hope for an unexpected downpour to fill our dwindling cisterns. When your home water is obtained from rainfall, every drop becomes a reason for gratitude. For the same reason, every drop must be conserved and utilized as much as possible. We’ve had a dry few weeks here in New Mexico and our tanks are running low. Who knows if the monsoon season will ever come?

Growing up in New York in the 1980s, I recall being educated in elementary school about water conservation and being taught to turn the water off when brushing our teeth. Now that I live in the desert, it seems strange to me that we were concerned about drought in New York. I think of New York as moist, rainy, lush with greenery, and plentiful with lakes, streams, and coast lines. Curious, I did a little research and found that there were indeed periods of stage 3 drought in New York in the 80s, which led to educational campaigns. Obviously, the term drought is relative. It means that an area receives less precipitation than usual and has long periods of dryness. Occasional drought is a normal, recurrent feature of virtually every climate in the world.

Here in the southwestern desert of the United States and other desert regions, drought is a much more serious issue. Severe drought can cause wildfires and dust storms. Extreme drought means that crops fail, and livestock die. Due to malnutrition and lack of sanitation, drought conditions can also lead to disease. Drought forces people away from their home, turning them into drought refugees. Additionally, rapid increases in surface temperatures corresponds with declining biodiversity, which includes higher extinction rates. According to the World Health Organization, water scarcity impacts 40% of the world’s population, and as many as 700 million people are at-risk of being displaced because of drought by 2030.

There is a debate out there about whether we should take personal responsibility for social issues when corporations caused the problem and corporations should therefore be responsible for finding solutions. Many people argue that the onus should not be on the people to make sacrifices when we are the victims of Big Fill-in-the-blank. This is probably a whole post in and of itself, but I will briefly state here that I believe that personal responsibility and corporate responsibility should be shared. I don’t throw up my arms and say, “Well, I didn’t make this mess, so I’m not cleaning it.” If the mess affects me, then I’m going to help clean it so that I don’t live in a mess. Also, although we have been socially programmed to believe that we can turn on a faucet and water magically appears out of nowhere, this does not mean that we are not responsible for all the water we have wasted over our lifetime.

We can all take steps toward water conservation, just as we recycle, don’t litter, and avoid plastics. The average person uses over 100 gallons of water a day on drinking, washing, cleaning, cooking, etc. If each person in my family used that much water a day, we’d be making two trips a day to the community well just to keep up.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, three percent of the nation's energy is used to pump and treat water. This doesn’t include transporting water when needed. So conserving water conserves energy, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and your carbon footprint. Additionally, conserving water keeps more in our ecosystem, protecting water supplies, watersheds, and water habitats. And if the environmental benefits aren’t enough, conserving water also saves you money if you have a water meter.

Many people know the basic things you can do to conserve water. Some of these include:

1.       Turn off the water when you brush your teeth.

2.       Fix leaking faucets.

3.       Use full loads in your (front-loading energy-efficient) washing machine and dishwasher.

4.       Don’t flush every time you pee.

5.       Put a weighted water bottle in your toilet tank so the tank fills with less water and hence, uses less when flushing. Alternatively, install a low volume toilet.

6.       Mulch in your yard and garden anywhere that there is exposed soil to keep water from evaporating.

7.       Use drip irrigation in your garden instead of sprinklers.

Since we collect rainfall or otherwise haul water from a community well, we have become pros at saving water. Some methods are easy, and you can start doing them right now. Others might require some planning. Here are 10 more water saving secrets we’ve learned since living off the grid:

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