I don’t live in a major metro area - on purpose. I left a major metro area almost a decade ago to live somewhere surrounded by trees, with a small pond, and lots of space to futz around outdoors when I’m not touching computers. Sometimes I even take meetings from my back deck - it’s great.
A big storm blew one of our trees down last week. I was able to use my tractor and a maasdam come along to stand it up again. Time will tell if it survives.
I can’t tell you what it does for my quality of life to live somewhere like this. I derive a ridiculous amount of joy from futzing around with my tractor, or walking the dogs around before or after work, or just being able to step outside and hear birds chirping, or the neighbor’s chickens, or one of my neighbors doing something with a tractor or a chainsaw or whatever equipment they happen to be running that day.
I know with RTO a lot of orgs expect employees to be in-person or hybrid. I have no interest in relocating and giving all this up. As a remote worker who lives somewhere like this, I am still perfectly capable of doing industry-leading work around agents and AI. In fact, part of why I am able to maintain such a high level of productivity over time is that I live somewhere like this with so much to recharge my battery at my doorstep.
