The Long Road to Living a Life That’s Mine

Why we went off the grid

I must’ve been about 20 years old when Kenny, then boyfriend - now husband, and I were chatting on the red Ikea couch in my student flat.

We were dreaming, as we so often did, about our future lives. Even back then, 18 years ago, we knew the typical life of working a 9 to 5 living in the city wouldn’t be for us. We dreamed of earthships, cob houses, growing our own veggies, homesteads, van life and sailboats. We dreamed of doing life differently, of breaking the mould.

The Belgian dream

And yet, for five years, we did our best to live the Belgian dream. We bought a house, renovated it and moved in. We had a dog, a cat, well-paying jobs and nice cars. All that was missing was the kid and the white picket fence.

I remember so many times sitting in traffic and driving home from work, and the thought would go through my mind: there must be more to life than this.

We had everything one could ever wish for, and yet, it felt like a golden cage. Life was convenient, comfortable and easy. But I felt stuck, lost and miserable. The daily grind was slowly eating away at my soul. I realised I was living a life that wasn’t mine at all.

The New Zealand dream

Kenny and I both felt the same way. We knew we had to get away from it all and start fresh. We felt a deep calling to be closer to nature, to reconnect with ourselves and to live a life more aligned with who we truly are. In 2015, we moved to New Zealand, thinking we’d find our dream there.

But as so often happens, life has a way of creeping in. Without even really noticing it, we quickly found our way again to the more “socially accepted lifestyle”. We even managed to live in a cool beach house for a while, but this nagging feeling always persisted — something was missing, something didn’t feel quite right.

Our life felt like a treadmill. I got caught up in the never-ending pursuit of more — more work, more money, more stuff, more of everything. But what I didn’t do was make time — time to breathe, time to think, time to just be.

Life’s curveball

It’s so easy to get caught up in just ‘existing’. We were going through the motions.

Then, life presented us with a little wake-up call. We were living in a farmhouse and one day got a call from the owner who needed the house back for one of his workers. We were given 90 days’ notice to find a new place. We didn’t manage to find a suitable place to move to in the short timeframe. Luckily my husband’s employer offered a place to stay. We moved our furniture in, only to find out at the absolute last minute the offer fell through.

Within a matter of hours, we found ourselves to be effectively homeless.

A stressful couple of hours followed, in which we called around to friends to find a solution. Luckily, a friend who had recently moved in with his partner offered for us to move into his house immediately.

I still remember the exact moment. It was a Friday evening, raining, dark and cold; it was wintertime. My husband had spent the entire day moving our belongings into storage. We were tired. We had two suitcases with some clothes and carried our parrot in his travel cage. The bird is an adventurous little boy so he loved the whole thing and was yelling excitedly, probably because he was up past his bedtime. When we arrived at the house, initially the key didn’t work. It was only a fraction of a second, but in that moment I could see ourselves sleeping in our white Honda Stream, in between our clothes, with an overly excited parrot.

That was the moment I knew I was done. This life wasn’t for me. The life of renting, being dependent on someone else’s whim and overpaying ridiculous amounts for leaky homes. I was done. I was done living a life that was only focused on overachieving and conforming to societal pressures. I didn’t need more of anything. I needed less. I needed to simplify. I needed to pursue the dreams I had buried away deep down.

Follow your dreams

Just like that, those dreams that had been stored away because we thought they weren’t achievable came rising up to the surface.

There is some time between this moment and what happened next, but a little while later, we were discussing the possibility of building our own tiny house. The barrier between us and owning a tiny house was finding a suitable piece of land. I went online, more to prove a point to my husband about how easy it is to find land and stumbled across an ad: ‘land available to lease, ideal for a tiny home’.

It was meant to be.

We went to have a look at the land. The drive there took us along winding roads, and then along gravel roads, and then along hilly gravel roads. The closer we got, the more we became surrounded by lush New Zealand native bush. It was a beautiful sunny day, too, as if nature was conspiring to show us that this place was the most beautiful place on earth.

Driving up the driveway, we both instantly knew: ‘This is where we want to live’.

And then we went for it. We took the jump. We “felt the fear and did it anyway”. There was an old shipping container already on the land, which we bought and turned into a liveable space. The entire property is off the grid, away from the busy city life, exactly what we had always wanted.

This leads to the question: why would anyone even want to live like that?

Finances

Financially, this is a wise decision. Living this way doesn’t take much money. We don’t have utility bills, we built our own tiny house, and we don’t have a mortgage.

For me, this is freedom. I’m not tied to having to do anything to pay off a mortgage or pay my bills. I could decide to work less if that’s something I wanted to do.

Self-reliance

We’re not reliant on town supplies or the grid for most things. Power outages don’t have any impact on us. It’s happened a couple of times when the power was down, and I only found out because friends or colleagues told me.

At this stage, we both still go to the city every day for our jobs. We also still do weekly supermarket runs. But I like to believe we’re slowly on our way to becoming more and more independent. Every little step towards being more reliant on ourselves feels like a victory.

Purpose

In some way, living like this gives a sense of purpose. There’s always lots to do around the house, and these tasks are directly related to your survival and comfort. Chopping wood, for example, means we will be warm. Growing veggies means we will have food. Using these skills, in a way, feels like connecting with a deep-rooted and long-lost way of life, the way the people who came before us must have lived (minus the Wi-Fi).

A healthy way of life

There’s no denying the health aspect of living this way. We are outdoors so much more because we’re always active and doing things and because we live in a tiny house and just don’t have a lot of indoor space. Disconnecting from the busy city life and enjoying time in nature has to be healthier than the alternative.

So, why did I want to move off the grid?

It’s simple, really. I had had enough. I needed to step off the treadmill, leave the rat race and embrace a life that felt more like me. I needed to disconnect from the noise and reconnect with myself, with nature, and with the things that really matter. It was never about escaping life; it was always about finding a life worth living. And for me, that meant finding it off the grid.

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Something that inspired me this week:

I’m doing the Voice Mastery course by

Sarah Fay

and I love it so much. The course is really helping me to reflect on my own writing. Plus I’m enjoying connecting with other writers.

One of the writers I connected with is

Autumn Saunders

. In our first session, she recommended the book Writing Down The Bones. I listened to it on Audible, this version is annotated by the writer. What an experience, I highly recommend listening to it on Audible.

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This is what you can expect from me every week! A long-form article related to a reflection or life lesson on personal growth and one thing that inspired me this week. If you liked this, don’t keep it to yourself; share it with your friends:

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