I just spent week working for room and board at Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farm in Alberta and now I feel like a chump. Not for the week of free labour but for the 15 years of trading my life for the mountain of junk that is either contributing to the landfill problems, occupying second hand store shelves or worst of all, anchoring me to the wage slave economy.
Sure, some of that stuff will be useful to me when I start living for real but I probably could have accumulated that in 5 years of living frugally. So OK, only 10 years truly wasted making other people wealthy.
The week on the farm makes me more than ever want to make the jump and soon - even if I can't see the bottom. It's not like farming isn't easy, the days are long and not always pleasant and there will always be an inescapable connection to the market economy but the work has some things that no job has ever provided - satisfaction and a sense of purpose. And its not as hard as our elite would have you believe, the hard parts are the same as for any small business.
And maybe farming is not for you, maybe you hate fresh air, getting dirty, manual labour or watching things grow but if you are having trouble finding happiness despite the security or a "good job" consider entrepreneurship. The detractions of insecurity and struggle aren't really detractions - they are living.
