My first two years were full of buyer's remorse. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had expected, the work was very hard, I felt incompetent, I missed my friends back in the metropolitan area, and I missed out on a lot of the food choices.
...but the buyer's remorse passed. Partially this was my preferences changing, partially it was making new friends, partially it was hiring on help to do some tasks (farmhands to install fencing and clear an overgrown pasture, etc.), partially it was acquiring the skills and equipment that made work easier, and finally it was cutting back on the task list.
I'd be happy to share more thoughts if you want to go into more details on your thinking.
Woah, I had no idea you posted on the Orange Site.
I can also highly recommend tjic's Escape the City. Even if you don't actually homestead, the recipes and tips on workshop/garage organization are fantastic.
And if you like Heinlein mixed with Vinge, Powers of the Earth is also quite good.
I'll be very upfront: homesteading is a money losing proposition. It's a consumption good - it costs more than any (monetary) profit it brings.
And my writing about it is ALSO money losing. I'm a coder. When I write and sell novels, the opportunity cost is huge - at an hourly rate, I lose about 90% of what I could otherwise be making coding.
Writing about homesteading is much better - I only lose about 50% of what I could otherwise be making.
I write because (a) I am more driven to create and share my ideas with people than I am to make a marginal dollar, (b) I am ideologically in favor of people moving to the countryside and living a different lifestyle, so writing is an ideological / political choice.
There is a an issue in all statistics: "the seen and the unseen". It basically means "measuring benefits but not measuring costs".
Even if the statistics is accurate.
Even if denying people the right to self-determination is a positive in your ethical system.
Even if X, Y, Z are true... I still have to ask: what about the COST? Pesticides exist because they do something useful - kill off pests. They increase food production and decrease labor.
What if we've saved some lives...but also made 200,000 farmers each spend an extra five hours a week bent over in their fields, picking bugs off leaves? Or made them plant more land in order to harvest the same amount of food?
> Even if denying people the right to self-determination is a positive in your ethical system
You are not denying people right to self-determination, in any way. If someone really wants to have a suicide method handy so that they can commit suicide immediately when they feel the impulse, you can buy it ahead of the time.
> What if we've saved some lives...but also made 200,000 farmers each spend an extra five hours a week bent over in their fields, picking bugs off leaves? Or made them plant more land in order to harvest the same amount of food?
Do you have any reason to think any of that is true? If you have to go to a specialist shop to buy pesticide instead of the grocery store where it's right next to your food; or if you have to use pesticide that's slightly more expensive but not toxic to humans, suddenly it's like you need to pick bugs off leaves?
Measuring costs is a fine idea; and 80000 hours definitely do that. Making up costs just to seem contrary is something completely different.
I've been using emacs for about 27 years, and even wrote two novels ( e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JPPMS6 ) in it. Author friends tell me that I've really really REALLY got to try Scrivener, but I know from previous attempts at using other tools that nothing but emacs feels right to me.
I should give it a try, I suppose...but it's going to be really weird.
I've just finished the draft of my first novel using Scrivener. (it's a kids/YA Sci-Fi novel).
It's been a joy to use. I wrote the first 45k words written on the OS X version on my laptop.
But in May I started a new job, and then used the iPhone version to write the next 50k words. Pretty much written entirely on the London tube to/from work.
I've also emailed Keith, the lead dev, a few times and he's been very friendly. Even incorporated some of my suggestions into updates of the iOS version.
Anyway, if Emacs works for you, then I'd say stick with it, unless you see some compelling reason to change.
For me, I had never written a novel before so did some research and chose Scrivener. Prior to this my longest work was my PhD thesis, in LaTeX.
If you're looking for novelty, travel to some foreign country or buy a pair of fashionable jeans. Don't change the tools you've trusted for 27 years; a new tool is not going to make you a better, more creative, or more organized writer, especially if you're already using the most configurable one in existence.
As a data point, Donald Knuth uses a minimalistic Ubuntu setup with FVWM2 and Emacs (with a lot of custom keybindings), and that's enough for writing his big volumes.
It's an amazing tool. I've been using it for screenwriting and worldbuilding for years. It's just a really clever take on a writing tool. I'm sure your Emacs kit fits your needs, but I'd bet even trying Scrivener, you might get some ideas to enhance your Emacs flow.
