I’ve never really considered myself to be a counter-culturalist. In my mind that label is reserved for old hippies and people with extensive body piercings. Held in comparison with the general population I imagine that I come across as the picture of conformity. There’s nothing overt about my appearance or behavior that speaks to anything other than maintaining the suburban status quo. However, I cannot escape the idea that I do not belong. This idea really isn’t anything new to me. I’ve felt this way for most of my life. The difference now is my perspective. I’ve been trying to “fit in” for all these years with varying degrees of success, and I’ve recently had a revelation: I don’t want to fit in.
The term “off-the-grid” is generally used to describe people who have chosen to unplug from the electrical grid that supplies most American homes with electricity. I’m using the term in a social sense. Just as there is a network that has been built to make it easy to get electricity into your home, there is a social system that has been established to make living ‘the American Dream” simple and standard. The problem for me is that the outcome is templated and boring. I no longer want to conform to the set standards in order to achieve a standard life.
The two main ingredients for living off-the-grid for me will be self-employment and home-schooling. Two topics that elicit simultaneous pity and revulsion from typical suburbanites.
More to come on this subject.