Friends, family, most of us have them, and for most of us they play an integral part of our lives and decisions we make. Making the decision to completely change your life, the way you live can have some pretty interesting, potentially disturbing reactions from those around you.
Moving and living off-grid is a fairly big life change, it often means moving to another place, most likely it’s going to be much farther away than you realize. Chances are that many of your less close friends will eventually fall away, you will be meeting new people and making new friends anyway. Family, well that’s another story, they tend to stick with you (for better or worse LOL)…
You will likely get one of two reactions, the first is the “Oh wonderful, a new vacation spot, when can we come visit?” and the other is “Are you nuts?”.
Let me address the second reaction first. It’s an unfortunate thing that so many people don’t follow their dream or are such negative people, those are the ones who will most likely try to talk you out of making your move. They are often the ones who don’t like or want change, especially in their family dynamics, so any major changes you might make would be perceived as a threat to them. Don’t let someone else’s fears or concerns stand in your way. It can also be hard on those who are close to you and rely on you for more, they might see your leaving as a removing of their safety net, whether financial or emotional. That is something you will have to work out with them, again don’t let someone else’s fears or concerns stand in your way (assuming they are adults and you aren’t responsible for them).
Make no mistake, the people in the “Are you nuts?” category might be pretty persuasive in their arguments to stop you, from trying to scare you with all the unknowns, to threatening to cut you off from them, yes you probably will make some mistakes, yes things will happen that are out of your control, but don’t let that stop you from living your dream. Hopefully the negative Nancy’s will come around once they see you are doing fine and life didn’t end for them just because you left.
Now, to the other reaction, hopefully you will experience more of that side from your family and friends. Moving away, there would of course be some tears, but if they are happy for you it’s all the better. If they can see some benefit for you and them, that is a big help. Your place would more than likely become a destination for visits and vacations, you might even convince some of your family and/or friends to move where you are and live the off-grid life as well.
Either way, change is never an easy thing, but hopefully it’s a positive thing in the end. Fortunately our families and friends are supportive of our decisions, it wasn’t easy to leave them all behind (some 500 miles to the east of us), but everyone has adjusted and most of them come out to visit on a regular basis.
If you are already living off-grid, what does your family and friends think? If you aren’t yet off-grid, what kind of reaction do you expect?
PS
I LOVE the title of this page (URL), I don’t exactly choose it, it uses the title of the article and if it’s too long, it truncates it, this is more true than you would realize ;)