We Live in the Dark Ages. It's Nice Here.
We Live in the Dark Ages. It's Nice Here.
Today we learned that our lifestyle is appalling. Let's dig in.
Greetings from the Mesa. We’re watching a new wildfire start sending pyrocumulus clouds up over the nearby Sangre de Cristos today and hoping for rain soon.
We’ll be watching that all weekend, meanwhile a big welcome and thank you to the many new subscribers that have joined us in recent weeks, whether you’re family, colleagues, friends or new friends — including a sizable chunk coming via the fascinating Acorn Land Labs (thanks for the rec!)
Over the summer I’ve been working with some of the talented video folks at CNET to produce a short video tour of our homestead, which is finally complete and included in the seven-part series I produced here.
There’s thousands of words worth of tips and insights into off-grid living for a general audience in that series that we’re proud of, but this newsletter is where you get the insider’s view, our more personal reflections and the juicy behind-the-scenes stuff.
Today, it’s the first bit of audience feedback I received on the new video, an unsolicited email. I’ll get into why I’m sharing this in a bit, but first here it is — with the name of the sender withheld. The boldface is the sender’s original emphasis and was not added by me.
This is what I received under the Subject line: “off-grid living - ha!”
I stumbled upon your cnet video while watching Haystack news from my home in Baja California, Mexico.
I was appalled at how rudimentary you make solar living -- off grid living look small and sad!
There are close to 1000 homes here in the area I live in and we are all OFF-GRID. 100% solar, septic systems, water delivery, propane gas.
We are not hippies, this is just the life and area we choose to live. In fact, many of my neighbors are Republican if you can believe that!
My husband and I bought our project house, a 600sqft, cinder black shell in 3 years ago. I am 49, he 52. We are not retired, I work from home - yes in my 100% off gird solar house with Starlink internet.
After 2 years of building we now have a 1500sqft home, 3bd, 2ba. I have a full size refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine and 3 a/c units.
We run a 4500w system with 15 panels. We have a generator we use about 5 days a year.
The video you produced made solar living look like you had to make sacrifices and live in the dark ages. I could have sworn the oil companies paid you for it!
If you want to do a story of 1000 people living off grid on the sea of cortez - now that would be a story!
First - this person’s home and community does sound pretty awesome. We’ve spent some time in Baja and found some really interesting communities, both of primarily expats and more traditional Mexican families.
It’s true: the sky really is the limit with solar if you have enough panels, battery storage and maybe a generator backup just in case.
If our new friend were to dive a little more deeply into how we think about living off-grid, they’d learn we’re also interested in pursuing maximum independence, a more minimalist lifestyle and doing as much of it as possible ourselves without taking on unnecessary debt.
Honestly, I’m most fascinated by the psychology behind this email. I’ve received a lot like this over my career as a journalist and writer. The kind that’s different than the myriad corrections, clarifications, suggestions and denunciations I receive about my reporting. Those are all appreciated and an important part of the process, even when they’re obnoxious.
I’m talking about another type of email that comes infrequently, but more than you might think. The kind that seems to want to correct not my reporting or writing or my grammar (I actually love the grammar scold the most; it is seriously heart-warming when someone cares enough about these dying things to write a stranger), but me. As a person. I’m clearly human-ing all wrong and they thought I should know.
So when this person saw us in the video showing off a lifestyle that they see as “small and sad” they were affronted enough to contact me directly to say so, offer their similar but objectively superior lifestyle as a point of reference and then sign off with a few more insults and an invitation to come visit some time.
Obviously this is the kind of dragging we see on social media nonstop. I would actually understand this if it were posted on Twitter or Blue Sky or Facebook or whatever. At least there’s an audience to signal to and be affirmed by. It’s the choice of personal email as the appropriate channel for dismay here that’s so curious.
I mean, I do get the beef isn’t actually with me per se, it’s that they think our whole approach is bad for what they see as the modern brand of limit-free solar living. Be green and as luxurious as you want to be. Sure. Great. That’s not the project I’m working on, but you do you, I suppose. I guess I just don’t know what sort of response they’re imagining they’ll receive from me?
What’s ironic is that this email actually does a pretty great job of illustrating a feeling I have that I tried to explain in our most recent subscriber podcast — a sort of impostor syndrome I sometimes feel that none of my off-grid projects “count,” essentially because we live outside of the mainstream in certain ways.
This feeling is pretty concrete in my mind, but it’s hard to explain, even to Johanna. Well, the above email illustrates it perfectly. Our off-grid lifestyle doesn’t count, or shouldn’t be representative of off-grid lifestyles in their eyes. This is exactly the response I imagine when I have this feeling of impostor syndrome.
And it turns out to be a service, really. Getting acquainted with the type of person who actually does judge you like you feared strangers would is strangely liberating.
I don’t plan to write back, but maybe some day we’ll pop by in Baja.