I also taken up farming in 2013 after 10 years of working on startups (as founder and early engineer, with no success at all). I was about to move back to village I was born at and escaped as fast as I could at the age 15.

I started natural winery at the ripe time when it first started to be popular and managed to miss the wave. It was a great first year after many years of tech grind in big tech hubs. I was waking up late, went for walk where I probably met friend or two who had nothing much to do, so we drink a coffee and talked a bit. Waiting for summer heat to be over, then work in the vineyard till the sun went down and then go to the local pub for beer or four.

I guess it sounds like it was vacation or playing farmer. And that is what it was, really. I did that for couple of years and then moved back to the nearby city and rejoined the startup grind. What I got from this experience is that there are seasons in life and it is great to have an optionality to play with different modes of life. The tech industry will always be there.

I am in my 40s now. Found a wife, got a mortgage and couple of kids. I kept the farm and treated it as a weekend hobby, rented out most of the land and I am slowly building the infrastructure I missed when I started. One day the kids will be old enough and tech will no longer excite me. The season will change, I move back, wake up late, meet with local friends who have nothing much to do during summer heat, work the vineyards and then hit pub when the sun went down.

I'm happy this person found a way to live that's meaningful to him, but I grew up as a farmer. You're coming back to something we've known a long time. If a god is what let's you get there, then good, let god keep you whole.

But this is what the classics of stoicism (in the literal sense of both) have been telling us the whole time. We make our own meaning, and money isn't it. Go and grow things. Raise things. Build things.

Civilization is when men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.

This fits them I would say. I was, at a time, chasing the dragon of software minimalism. Y'know, using lynx to browse the web, using suckless software and so on. I was using KISS Linux for a while and even tried to make a package for suckless slock (which iirc was accepted only after someone from the KISS team basically redid my build scripts). So I kinda see myself as a fan of dylan and a great influence on my formative years. (Edit: Formative years apparently means 0-8. I meant more like 16-20 - my bad )

What alwas struck me about dylan araps's software was that the minimalism didnt come from a lack of scope or complexity, but rather the approach to use as much of the tools that were "already there" (at least thats my way to interpret this - i might be wrong). The pure bash bible is describing how to do common tasks in pure bash. Tasks that usually were done with external tools like sed an awk etc. Then later came the pure sh bible, doing the same for POSIX sh and therefore shedding the dependency on bash-isms. This represented to me a chase to go "deeper".

And this part clearly seems to still be a driving force to this day. Farming and producing olive oil and wine by hand, no chemicals no bullshit - that sounds like dylan araps alright. Looking at the website you can also see this spirit everywhere. Go ahead and disable JS on https://wild.gr/wine - the image slider still works. It uses inputs and CSS transforms. Makes the markup ever so slightly more complicated, and future changes ever so slightly more involved (unless the code is generated). But lets not kid ourselves, how often are those kind of web elemts updated?

It is once again a project that excels in "using whats already there" and I personally really like that, and even though I am not rocking KISS linux and DWM anymore, this way of thinking is still with me to this day, and I believe it was taught to me by dylan araps. For that I am thankful!

"Now, one day back at Data General, his weariness focused on the logic analyzer and the small catastrophes that come from trying to build a machine that operates in billionths of a second. On this occasion, he went away from the basement and left this note on his terminal:

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

— from "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder

Also, the statement "From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless." is just so wrong that it's hard to take rest of the blogpost seriously.

Helping people for example is neither farming, nor artisanal, and is quite arguably the least evil and most selfless things one can do. The world needs caregivers, health workers, etc.

I'm not saying that to be mean, not at all. I just find it odd that for someone who has gone through such a spiritual journey/awakening, become a devout Christian even, to then declare all other careers as evil or meaningless. For every ex-white collar professional now LARPing as a micro-farmer, there are tenfold more people not receiving adequate care.

I wonder about what in the software industry causes so many people to have similar "symptoms" from it.

I believe it must be something about dedicating oneself to creating something that "does not exist" in a material sense.

My 'farming' has been woodworking: completing the simplest wooden furniture has given me a satisfaction that I do not remember any app or software product ever getting close to causing, despite the fact that I love the work.

I tried doing the same thing, happy to see it worked out for somebody! I just didn't have the capital or social safety net to get the farm off the ground, so I eventually had to sell the farm and go back to coding. Someday though...

So they hit a mid-life crisis, and rather then take small steps they read the bible and move to an island to start farming, I wish them luck.

> From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.

I thought this was a beautiful statement; something to really help us think about what we're trying to do here on Earth. But personally I would add Artist to this. Painter, sculptor, musician, writer, poet, and so on. We need those too.

Edit: As others have reminded me below, service work like doctor, firefighter, teacher must qualify as well.

Is this actually a business that can make money? My family owns around 1000 olive oil trees in Greece that produce eatable olives and extra virgin olive oil.

The thing is that we always sell the product in intermediates that would pack it up and sell it in a much higher price. I don't know of any small producer that sells the product directly to the consumer. This seems like a very big investment and not really sustainable. Are there other people that are doing it?

Could my knowledge as a software engineer help that family business in any way to be more profitable ?

Thanks Dylan for all your work over the years. It has been very influential from Neofetch, Wal/Pywal, KISS Linux, to your own Bible, the Pure Bash one!

Wishing you all the best for the future, may the Greek weather keep you happy!

It takes courage to step away from what you were known for, and even more to return and explain why. The journey from burnout to renewal resonates deeply with me, and I suspect many of us recognize the slow decay you're describing.

I'm on a similar path myself, hoping to marry open source and open hardware with farming. Heartfelt congrats to Dylan on finding WILD and the clarity to change course.

I usually am the anti-religion type, pointing out the abuses happening in churches, and the general bigotry that leads to more violence rather than fewer. So reaching that part of the article made me cringe. The sentence about him being a sinner especially sounded like bad puritanism.

But then it goes on, the guy is mostly healthier from quitting bad and not-so-bad habits, doing eco-friendly stuff in Greece with his family. It sounds like it worked for him.

This dont-do-evil kind of Christianity is all right.

It's not completely obvious from the post though whether this man embraces the love-thy-neighbor aspect of Christianity. He seems to have this idealistic good-vs-bad view of the world that's typically protestant. And his condescending tone make it sound like whoever doesn't do like he does can rot in hell, cause they deserve it.

If you're (speaking in general) going through such extremes - working 16h/day then farming and 'discovering' god - I would suggest looking into therapy; simply to regain balance; I also had a period in my life in my 30s where I tried to overcompensate, correct the life course so to speak

overall I don't believe neither extreme is healthy; doing A, then doing 2x the opposite of A because you realize A was not really good for you in the long term

but I'm glad it so far worked out for the author

> adopting instead, the diet of my great grandparents: Plants; local, seasonal and whole.

I saw some mention of the same on the website for the farm. Care to share any recipes? Or even just names of dishes? I quite enjoy foods from the Mediterranean and I'm interested in trying more!

Thank you for sharing your struggles so openly for us to learn from. It's good to hear you've found your self-worth from within instead of without now.

Wishing you good luck!

Achieve FIRE. Then you can afford to explore different lifestyles without fear. The software industry will always exist if you want to come back.

Burn out -> Brain damage -> Religion.

This is a pattern that keeps popping up in tech circles.

After brain damage happens, it is too late. Reason is compromised, and religion easily takes root.

We need to focus on stopping burn out before it causes brain damage.

> All that remained was to decide what to do with my life. From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.

Seems shocking at first, but the more you think about what our SWE works does, for whom, and who benefits the most of it ... IMO it makes sense.

He said he found God and has taking up farming on a Greek island. He is living my fantasy. I don’t agree with the veganism though; the apostles were fishermen and manual laborers. I would think they would appreciate fish and other meat.

> Everything I read made reference to the Bible, something I had never read nor was in any way acquainted with. The references kept appearing and eventually I decided to dive in head first and read it. Putting the King James Version of the Bible on my kindle, over many months I read it cover to cover.

> At the time, I wouldn't have called myself an Atheist. Agnostic is not the right word to use either. Not that I believed or didn't believe in the existence of God, in truth, I had simply never thought about it. In place of an answer was lack of the preceding question.

> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before. A mirror was put in front of me and I saw myself clearly for the first time. Finding God, I realized how far I had drifted from the straight and narrow. Weak of mind, steeped in sin, ruled by bodily desires and whims of fancy, the life I led could only lead to one place: the broad road alongside the liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers and cheats, for I was one of them.

I'd like to see this person write in detail about specifically what about the Bible they found resonant, and specifically resonant in a way that lead them towards something like a Judeo-Christian understanding of God and sinfulness. I note that they do not mention Jesus Christ, who is the most important figure in the second part of the Bible, and (arguably) entirely absent from the first half - and indeed the schism between Jews who only take the first half of the Bible seriously and Christians who take the second half seriously as well is a pretty important one!

This isn't a troll post on my part, although I admit that I'm somewhat skeptical that this person read the King James Version of the Bible and was specifically convinced by the various writings in that long and complex text that some kind of Judeo-Christian understanding of the nature of God is the correct one. I think it's more likely that they were in some kind of personal spiritual crisis, read the foundational scripture of one of the major world religions, and were moved in a kind of a general way. I suspect that if they were reading books that made more references to the Quran or to Buddhist sutras, they might've found themselves reading the Quran or Buddhist sutras and ended up in a similar mental state. But I'm not sure of that, which is why I'm genuinely curious to hear more about what specifically in the text of the Bible they found meaningful.

This is my path, 4 years in the making, which should peak this year when I finally buy a property I have been saving for.

Remarkably similar to the author's, following a massive burnout from work in mid 2020 from which I became a new^Wdifferent person, with a new perspective on life. Three years of therapy later, jailbroken Kindle filled not with the Bible but philosophers and other role models [1]

The eyes of friends and family gloss over when I describe my new goal in life, of finding the tight path between being a computer wiz and finding a life as close to Nature as possible; of finding a community of like-minded people that exist in real life, for someone that grew up and lived all his adult life on the Internet. An Internet of people that keep telling me that urban living and modern technology isn't so bad, that I should stop complaining and schedule another interview that modern tech is "so much fun and comfortable, look at all this money." I do believe we have gone wrong somewhere, I do believe there is a third path between totalitarian techno-optimism and complete rejection of modernity, and perhaps this is the best time in history to explore it, by returning to our roots. Remembering our natural ecosystem which is our home and sustenance. We earn our living in front of a square piece of glass connected to the ether, why the hell would one live packed like a sardine in impersonal and smelly cities? I truly, desperately need to believe in a return to the countryside; to more humane rhythms of living.

My favourite quote is from George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man"

We don't have to abandon all our comforts. And for once the technologists like us can use their brains for the good of humanity and their neighbours, rather than making people click on ads. Go wire solar panels. Build hydroponic farms. Fix and refurbish electronics. Make art. Share your labour with your neighbour. Invite them over to talk about life. Leave the modern Internet behind.

---

1: Martijn Doolaard, and the Emacs philosopher Protesilaos Stavrou have had the greatest influence on me.

I've had this kind of idea when I was thinking about becoming a teacher

that maybe in the future it will be more common to have a split career of, in the 40 hrs work week tradition, manual labor / trade for ~20 hrs/week and a "cognitive" job at like ~20 hrs/week (or however many hours)

This would allow workers to exercise both mind and body

We bought a small homestead 20 months ago. The prior owners only used it for their horses, Nothing had been planted by them. We have slowly been planting fruit trees. We lost a lot due to our drought. I just put in another 20 fruit trees this past weekend. It is good for the soul.

This was quite an interesting read. It's good to hear that farming & spirituality have given you a new purpose in life, but I think this pop at Thoreau

> and no, there's no manifesto decrying the system written from a cabin in the woods

Is a bit unjustified considering you've just written an entire blog post decrying your old "meaningless" existence vs the fulfilment you have in your new life. It comes across a bit holier than thou. As if to imply you're "quietly just getting on with it", which is evidently not the case, as you still feel the need to write about it

You could have committed to the meme and not mentioned this connection on the Internet again.

This is a great read, and, no offense to others, not one I expected to find here.

I think that this path is best; one where you recognize the problem and solve it. He knew he was lost in an occupation that was not good, so he dropped that and found his purpose.

Not everyone can pack up their family and be a farmer in Greece, and even if you can, this path is still not easy. Many others may assume you’ve become lost. Life may seem great like this post and later be difficult.

But it’s great that this person found their purpose and know who they are.

I associate being stuck in the Level 5 or 6 trough that Richard Rohr describes. There is purpose waiting, but I don’t have the guts to do anything more than pretend I’m a good servant while being miserable with what I feel I must do.

It doesn’t matter if I attempt to be stoic and sometimes pull off looking that way, I’m self-obsessed since I wallow in self pity while having a martyr complex, and I can hate myself and diminuate myself as much as I want, to believe that I’m nothing and only God exists, but I couldn’t be more lost than I am and am only fooling myself to believe otherwise.

"My story escaping the corporate rat race. SIKE! It's just another product launch!"

JK I think he means it ;)

>I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before. A mirror was put in front of me and I saw myself clearly for the first time. Finding God, I realized how far I had drifted from the straight and narrow.

ahahahahahahahah

It's all about soil health. Also, use good seeds. If you have cows, you're a grass farmer now.

So, it was a marketing stunt?

from one extreme to another, notice the pattern.

> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before.

Interesting.

Reading the bible did nothing for me.

Understanding the bible is what turned me into a hard atheist.

I have yet to find anything more irredeemably evil than the god of the Abrahamic religions.

I mean, if it makes you happy. The few other I've seen that have made this same radical change, have eventually tumbled down the rabbit hole of cults, anti-vax, and all that. Hopefully that will not be the case here.

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Still couldn’t resist making a digital trophy and self important landmark eh?

I’ve had some relatable discoveries about the meaning of life but it’s very different than this back-to-primitive-existence as utopia. Mostly because I have creative talents. I can write and play music. I write a fuck ton better than this guy. He belongs in a field…as do most people on social media, or otherwise “influencing” discourse.

That’s why I muted my socials for quite a while. Doing is better than posting. I’m posting here at 3 am because my sleep cycle is still fuckdd up from jail this is when they woke us in solitary for breakfast. I only was in for a year and not quite out yet for a year. I wonder if this guy will still be of the same perspective 10 years from now. Might want a smoke just for the sake of it…