I quit my apartment to code from the forest

I recently quit my job and my apartment to live in the forest in a tent.

Actually tonight I'm in a wind shelter by a still and beautiful lake and in front of me there is a small fire, the sun is setting,
and on my lap, my laptop.

I'm a developer. I moved to a tent into the forest to be able to code on my startup project full time.
Not only does that give me the time to do this but it also gives me peace of mind.
I change my location about two times a week.

Computer, forest, batteries...? Unpractical? Maybe it would have been more rational to keep the apartment and just cut costs?
Well, rational and right do not always align.

I have no apartment, I have no job and I have no income.
Still I'm exactly where I should be. I'm on my path. My gut feeling lets me know that.

I'm not exiting to a normal life until my startup has taken off. This is my big adventure. I'm not coming back empty handed.

Small notes on how to do this:
I power my laptop, phone and external battery with two portable Brunton 62 Watt solar panels.
I cook nice food on my Primus OmniLite stove.
I live in a comfortable Hilleberg tent.
I carry all 35 kg in a Norrona Recon back pack.

There's my live, 35 kg. It should not take more to slay the dragon, win the kingdom and divorce the princess.
Well I do also have a car. C'mon, dragon slayer without a horse?

If you are in the startup business you know that raising capital is not easy.
I speak to some seeders. They love my idea. I mean everyone I speak to love it, but the seeders
say it's to early to invest in without having actually seen the product. Maybe they're right. Hard for me
to decide, I'm a bit biased.

I can't really tell you what I'm doing, but yesterday I read this in an article by Adam Wiggins:
"Software is eating the world. Everyone can and should be able to write software in order to have a stake in the future."
This is exactly what I'm doing. Bringing software development to the masses.

The lulz requires this, me and my designer Micael are looking for:
Javascript/HTML/CSS haxx0rs with a sense of design.
C++/Lua/GNU/Linux gurus.
Investors in IT that want to break new ground.
Not that we could pay you any bucks, but the lulz are the lulz. =)

If you want to see some pictures of my forest life, try my blog, it's my fullname dot com.
Or follow me on Twitter, my Twitter id is also my full name.

Quitting my apartment and my job at the same time was really hard to do.
I had elevated adrenalin levels for days. To sooth the waves of anxiety that swept over me regularly, I had one picture
that I kept looking at. It was a picture of the beautiful forest which I was to move to. That gave me strength to
take the steps necessary to get on the trail.

I really hope you're on your path or taking calculated steps to get there. However big or small it may be.

Some kisses and some hugs and remember to stay true. But you already knew that.


Thomas Backlund
ts.backlund[AT]gmail.com
By a lake, in a forest, Sweden.

Comments

Post a Comment

Favorites

This is a puzzle.

Beyond this message a challenge awaits; In the listserve, no links are allowed, what a cruel fate! The first clue must be deciphered by ROT 8. . Let me know and just email if your brain needs a spark Your first clue is just after this punctuation mark / dsoqwj vwxwfvafy lge jgtafkgf af lg cadd s egucafytajv Listserve Puzzle listservepuzzle[AT]gmail.com
Read more

21,612 is a lot

Hi, everyone. I'm a teenaged girl. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know much about the world. I'm 18, a freshman in college, and I struggle every day trying to see into the future: into what might be, where I might go. Recently I've decided that my destiny in life is to be a high-school biology teacher, but ask me again later and perhaps that will have changed. One thing I feel passionate about is body modification. Somehow my standards of beauty have developed in a way that put piercings, tattoos, implants and scarification at the forefront. However, my parents have threatened to cut off their funding for my education if I modify myself in any way. I already have piercings, and though my family will never see them due to their private locations, I would love to be able to share this important part of my life with them and express myself through modification in a more public way. Essentially, they have rejected my lifestyle, and through this, they have ...
Read more

Tiny wings

Hi all, I want to write about a subject that is very close to my heart - bees! I started bee keeping last year, and have two colonies right now. These two already managed to supply my family and my friends with more than enough honey, and keeping the bees is a tremendously satisfying activity. They smell so good, and are very tidy animals, and are just very, very interesting overall. The insects' way of dealing with the world is just so very different from how we as mammals approach it - it seems almost alien. Anyways, what is probably most impressive is the workload these little animals deal with. For one kilo of honey, they visit 4 million flowers, and fly a distance equivalent of more than 4 times around the earth. Think about that for a second. And then, if you start to think about how they "furniture" their housing themselves by the wax they sweat out, how they can control temperature inside the hive to the tenth of a degree, how they collectively make decisions i...
Read more