The Off-Grid Fantasy

How off-grid living evolved from a technical term for utilities into a fantasy about escape.

People dream about disconnecting, unplugging and living in the woods as a hermit. Stepping away from the busy rat-race that’s become normal life. I get it, I really get it.

I’ve spent as much as a month entirely alone, and months just myself and Curt. I understand why so many people fantasize about disappearing into the wilderness and leaving the rest behind, but off-the-grid has become an idiom for that fantasy. Like ‘bite the bullet’ doesn’t literally mean chomping on lead, ‘off the grid’ doesn't necessarily mean vanishing from society. Somewhere along the way, a technical description became something else.

Free from hydro.

This Is Off-The-Grid

A couple of days ago, a connector to the solar panels decided not to work. I was charging batteries and noticed the system was depleting. Fast. It became a problem which needed addressing if I didn’t want to read my book by candlelight that evening (which isn’t altogether bad, but lights are nice). It needed to be sorted out right away.

In its most literal sense, off-grid simply means living without one or more public utilities. For some people, that means electricity. For others, it includes water, sewer, or natural gas. For me, it means all of the above. Outhouse, propane for cooking and showering, water from a natural spring, and solar power. When someone tries to tell me I’m not off-grid, because I’m here sharing with you, I wonder what they could possibly mean.

Quiet moments in my favourite place.

So, What DO They Mean?

Do they mean I should stop writing? Stop using the internet? Stop communicating entirely? Did they seek out stories about life beyond the utilities, then insist that anyone sharing those stories can’t really be living it? Did they seek out off-grid information, then dismiss someone living it firsthand?

No. What they mean is something entirely different.

For them, off-grid living has very little to do with electricity. It’s become a fantasy and a symbol. When those people use it, they aren’t talking about utilities. They're talking about dancing naked under the moon, howling with the wolves and, above all else, being free.

I can’t blame them. Modern life can be exhausting. Notifications, traffic, bills, ads, algorithms, there’s so much competing for time and attention at every waking moment, never letting up. When people say they want to go off-grid, they’re not saying they look forward to maintaining solar batteries or troubleshooting water systems. They’re dreaming of a break and disconnecting from the noise.

Deep snow>algorithms

MY Off-Grid

When those people argue that off-grid means disappearing from society and living life untethered, I get it. I feel that in my bones. I used to work 80-hour weeks, tried to keep up with the algorithms, sat in traffic surrounded by the noise. Heck, I could see my workplace from my balcony.

Now though, the version of “off-grid” people tend to imagine when they talk about it has started to happen in my life on its own, in a different way. The quiet, unplugged, disappearing-from-everything version. Not as withdrawal, but as the result of how I’ve chosen to live and having the time to realize what matters to me.

Hello, your majesty

Where Fantasy Meets Reality

I’m writing this in the barn, with the bees humming above me (they live in the loft). I’m on a blue couch I found on marketplace, my laptop plugged into the small 200W solar system which powers the barn independently of the house. Most of what keeps this place running is something Curt and I need to understand and maintain ourselves. Though it’s difficult at times, I love it.

I live off-grid because I like taking responsibility for things usually outsourced to utilities. Sharing that experience online doesn't make me less off-grid. If anything, it reminds me that independence and isolation are not the same thing. I can’t imagine living in a way that removes me so far from systems and people that I couldn’t still share small moments like this.

Writing this won’t stop the occasional person from finding my writing and telling me I’m not off grid, but it will help me to remember something important. They're not defending the idea that I’m fake or phony, they’re defending their fantasy in which they can unplug from it all. If they take the time to dig into my content farther they’ll see me - writing online from my buzzing barn in the middle of nowhere, powered by the sun.