u/ofkenor

I am wanting to build the UK off grid community as those of us who are online are disparate and not well connected. I am wanting to change that.

Express interest here please.

Any interest?

As title. I stopped wanting to check on that place with the constant shaming for what increasingly are unhinged and baseless accusations about other ccers doing something that doesn't live up to some purist cc ideal then blackballing the user for said made up reason.

I have set something up for uk based off gridders or aspiring ones as I didn't see anything like that which exists already, only some disparate facebook groups.

Let me know if interested. It is ready to go just needs some people to populate it. :)

Firstly I am not advocating to be an 'anti-masker' and drop all precautions before someone accuses me of that like I have been in the past by other ccers for voicing my real emotions about the cost of taking precautions. On the contrary I know I can't and hate it, and just feel stuck in this cage of isolation of my own making.

There is no hope on the horizon for any breakthroughs or for society to change. Yes there are tiny little breadcrumbs of articles here and there but nothing that say things are going to shift in the public consciousness or science.

The research that is going on is finding a new cause of long covid every day which tells me they haven't got a clue and just shooting in the dark. The research just seems like that of CFS where it is just the odd scientist in some dark basement somewhere like Mulder's office in the X-files.

So it just feels like prison keeping up precautions and hiding from the world for something that will never come. It would be different if we knew the cavalry were on the way but there is nothing to give hope really that it is going to come so we could just waste our whole lives away like this.

It is like being imprisoned and then forgotten about.

I would prefer die tomorrow than have to live this boring life for another 40 years. It just feels like a rock and a hard place because I also don't want my LC to get worse by more infections but this life sucks and just being left to rot by the rest of society as they get off seemingly scott free.

I know ccers say 'the rest of society are doing damage they just don't know it' but where is the reckoning? seems like smoking where some can have 40 a day and live into their 70s or 80s and no problem. Saying they are doing untold damage just seems like 'cope' to justify ones own moribund social existence.

I watch documentaries about how prisoners feel about their lives and what they say sounds just like how I feel - same thing day in day out.

...so the haulers are just left to rot like with CFS?

Seems on target for the latter...I don't see society crumbling any time soon from LC? A lot of haulers or CC talk of a hidden epidemic of LC where people have it but don't know it but they can't be that bad as most of society are still able to work.

The question is whether the cumulative infections will add up causing collapse or if that is wishful thinking from those desperate for help.

As I have this nasty neighbour spreading things about me to other people in the community and trying to get me evicted I have thought that I should be more proactive with meeting other locals to win them over to even out the hate this ill doer has been spreading because currently he says what he wants, and I stay isolated from people and so have no defence in the community so some may believe whatever he says about me.

As such I have been thinking to make a point about going to meet other neighbours in my area as most times I would only give a wave if I see people passing in their vehicles.

Now I am a pretty stocky built male and I am well aware that wearing a mask approaching strangers will take some people aback and look intimidating, particularly since it is a rural place where you are most times going to be the only people in several hundreds meters, I can just imagine how someone with a larger build in a mask walking up your drive could put someone on edge from the getgo.

Even if it doesn't this is something that is always in my mind when approaching.

So I am wondering what the risk would be of unmasking in public. Not only the intimidation factor but also you can express yourself more without it so being unmasked helps with the charisma side of things.

I would say it would be standing a few feet apart outdoors. I know sometimes though when you speak to people there might be the unintentional visible spit that flies from one person to the other - and that is the visible so how much invisible stuff is bridging the gap?

So with that in mind, conversely, I would actually feel more comfortable being masked closer up. I know that before I started masking outdoors I felt uncomfortable speaking face to face like that and people even commented that I was edging away from them!

I did end up masking outdoors all the time simply because it was easier than to constantly be thinking should I put it up or down and also I felt it seems more rude to people if they approach you and you suddenly put your mask up rather than it already being on. They might be thinking 'huh I smell or something!?'

I have mild LC and continue to have super strict precautions.

I have tried to make the life the best I can by living in isolation but I would take going back to living without precautions in a heartbeat if I could.

I know that there could be some middle ground which is less restrictive and somewhat more satisfying but thinking about romantic relationships it feels pretty much like an all or nothing thing.

You can't be intimate with someone without accepting that other person opens you up fully to infection unless they were total hermits like you which I think is going to be almost impossible to find someone like that.

I am in my mid 40s and as a man I felt I was only just coming to maturity relationship wise and getting myself established in the world, getting financial stability and all the other life niggles out of the way to allow me to be free to mingle but then covid scuppered all that.

I do regret now not living more for the moment back then as I was living for the future, which covid put a brick wall in front of.

That is why I feel that living in isolation now has me wasting away and what if things never get better covid wise? I will have wasted the best years sexual viability wise locked up watching that ship sail before my eyes.

That is why I wonder, since I am not severe, and could physically do everything I wanted if I chose to, why not go full send for a few good years now, accepting I may be struck down by another infection but at least I would have lived to the hilt rather than just wasting away and possibly never having gotten to live how I wanted. Then if it was severe just exit satisfied to know I enjoyed those few years.

Better to live a few good years than a lifetime of boring ones.

People with LC/CC say going out in society is a risk, which I agree with, but the risk of not living and experiencing the life you wanted to live seems to be about an equal risk in the current climate as nothing seems to be changing in terms of improving.

Yea there could be a middle ground of doing some stuff with a mask, but as per relationships which is really what made me feel alive, it seems all or nothing.

I have often thought it would be good for solidarity but I am not sure what the focal point would be because I have joined a couple of the discords before and they just end up more depressing because it just turns into a bunch of sick people discussing their symptoms.

So in one sense it would be good to be in contact with others with some of the same struggles but can be worse if it ends up just discussing them.

Not sure what would be better though?

In real life for instance you would gather around a shared activity like hiking or cooking or whatever but gathering around being sick, I dunno...

I mean we could gather initially due to being haulers but what is there which would be more positive to keep a group together?

tl;dr title question. The rest the back story why I ask.

I did take a very hard line for a while like "f anyone else who doesn't mask, f the system, I will live in total isolation!" but after some time I have found that you have to have some interaction with the rest of society.

As I am mostly living off-grid most of the rest of society are against that so it means besides being a 'weirdo in a mask' I also have them hating me for being off-grid as well because it goes against societal norms so they treat me with even more suspicion and contempt when all I am doing is trying to protect myself.

However I find there are quite a lot of people who are also interested in off-grid but have no interest in covid who have approached me expressing their interest in what I do. So I am thinking it can be useful to form loose alliances with these types because they also 'get it' on the off-grid side of things and sympathetic to what I am doing and could be supportive against the anti-off-grid crowd.

The trouble is the off-grid community is also riddled with fringe conspiracists, probably the types who think covid was/is a hoax, general anti-socials ejected from society and such, while I was ejected due to my experiences with covid.

I am wondering how I test the waters with other off-grid interested people. I think just tell them how I view it and see their reaction and just let the chips fall where they may.

Due to society's general resistance to off-grid lifestyles I think it can be helpful to form alliances because there are a lot of issues related to it that you don't see on those youtube videos that glamorize it. So any alliance from those who are supportive of it I am thinking could be useful even if their views on covid are wildly different than mine, which of course I expect in the world that has forgotten about covid.

You might think society doesn't care due to relative increase in popularity of tiny home living and green related issues but when the rubber hits the road the majority of people in the country are conservatives who are still negative about it and try and shut down what you are doing. I am speaking from personal experience. Might be different in the US where you could travel many miles maybe hundreds? and not see another soul and get off the beaten track but there is no off the beaten track really in the UK and so you are pretty much on someone's doorstep whatever you are doing; even in more rural areas. Rural ones are actually the worst as in cities ppl mostly dgaf but rural they are super nosey.

I just write that to say that is why it would be good to try and befriend those who are at least supportive of the off-grid stuff if not the covid stuff without the covid stuff making you seem like your are crazy just for wearing a mask which sadly how it is framed in the current covid is over climate.

tl;dr title question. The rest the back story why I ask.

I did take a very hard line for a while like "f anyone else who doesn't mask, f the system, I will live in total isolation!" but after some time I have found that you have to have some interaction with the rest of society.

As I am mostly living off-grid most of the rest of society are against that so it means besides being a 'weirdo in a mask' I also have them hating me for being off-grid as well because it goes against societal norms so they treat me with even more suspicion and contempt when all I am doing is trying to protect myself.

However I find there are quite a lot of people who are also interested in off-grid but have no interest in covid who have approached me expressing their interest in what I do. So I am thinking it can be useful to form loose alliances with these types because they also 'get it' on the off-grid side of things and sympathetic to what I am doing and could be supportive against the anti-off-grid crowd.

The trouble is the off-grid community is also riddled with fringe conspiracists, probably the types who think covid was/is a hoax, general anti-socials ejected from society and such, while I was ejected due to my experiences with covid.

I am wondering how I test the waters with other off-grid interested people. I think just tell them how I view it and see their reaction and just let the chips fall where they may.

Due to society's general resistance to off-grid lifestyles I think it can be helpful to form alliances because there are a lot of issues related to it that you don't see on those youtube videos that glamorize it. So any alliance from those who are supportive of it I am thinking could be useful even if their views on covid are wildly different than mine, which of course I expect in the world that has forgotten about covid.

You might think society doesn't care due to relative increase in popularity of tiny home living and green related issues but when the rubber hits the road the majority of people in the country are conservatives who are still negative about it and try and shut down what you are doing. I am speaking from personal experience. Might be different in the US where you could travel many miles maybe hundreds? and not see another soul and get off the beaten track but there is no off the beaten track really in the UK and so you are pretty much on someone's doorstep whatever you are doing; even in more rural areas. Rural ones are actually the worst as in cities ppl mostly dgaf but rural they are super nosey.

I just write that to say that is why it would be good to try and befriend those who are at least supportive of the off-grid stuff if not the covid stuff without the covid stuff making you seem like your are crazy just for wearing a mask which sadly how it is framed in the current covid is over climate.

It had been a couple of years so I thought I would send them an email to see what they have been up to.

Response time for the first was within a couple of days and sounding very pleased to hear from me saying they tried to contact me a couple of times with no luck.

I thought to 'front load' covid and long covid because I want to see how people will react to it because it will be awkward to not mention it and then meet them. They were aware of my covid caution even before we lost contact. They knew I suddenly started wearing a mask but did not really say much about it. Just once they ask 'is it because of covid?' and when I said 'yes' they replied 'it's just the flu now isn't it?' then it wasn't discussed again, to my face at least, probably among others when I wasn't around but they didn't mock me or anything and we got on fine as usual.

When they first replied to my email they expressed interest in coming to visit me so that is why I thought it important to let them know I am still doing the precautions. After this email it took them about 3 weeks to respond and then an apology for not responding but still a full reply.

I must have mentioned something else about covid and they got fed up and have not responded circa around 2 months now.

Anyone experienced similar? It is tricky, do you go full isolation - very bleak existence I have been living the last couple of years, or still try and socialize with none cc people? or try and find only cc people? This latter one seems the hardest but would probably be the best but the middle one most likely for those that don't run away when you mention it.

I tried posting this in zerocovidcommunity first but the post got ghosted. I have no idea what it takes to post there these days. Seems super strict and they will never tell you what is wrong.

I have really been struggling with the drudgery of endless social isolation which is compounded when going to town shopping, my only venturing into the social setting these days, and seeing people all out enjoying summer without a care in the world.

It just feels #foreveralone that then I just trudge back to my lair back to this endless sentence of solitude.

I have been toying with the idea of going to some smaller outdoor festivals. I would wear the mask but then I think what do I get out of it at the end other than a few hours entertainment? maybe a little bit of mental therapy.

In two minds if it is even worth it. Best case I 'have fun'. Maybe it makes me feel like I blew off steam for a couple of weeks but still wouldn't have made any real connections so kind of seems pointless while there is also the remote risk of exposure while mixing. Worst case, don't want to think of it.

Uk roll call and age and what your are doing with your life please?

I spend my time in social isolation want to meet other haulers in uk to connect with.