hi everybody so today i wanted to take a
couple minutes out
just to chat about the realities of
living off grid
uh while still remaining online uh in
in the fullest sense of the word um the
biggest thing that i have found running
my own online business
the biggest challenge with the internet
has been that it is a little bit slower
than something you would find in the
city because we are
in a remote location we have satellite
internet and
what that means is that we are not on a
4g or 5g network
uh for reference 4g or 5g network that
you can find in the city
is usually around 60 to 75 megabytes per
second in terms of download speed and
upload speed
um whereas satellite internet or the
package that we have anyways which is
the highest
is around 25 megabytes per second um
so that sounds like a lot if you think
about the average it's about twice as
slow as your regular internet
given that most people have internet
like that uh you wouldn't really think
about it the biggest difference that
i've noticed in terms of internet
has been this download speed when you're
video streaming
other than that it's not really too
different what i've done in order to
remedy this
because i do run my own online business
has been to
sit closer to the router so what you see
me in right now
is my office this is not where i sit
when i'm running
meetings and doing appointments and
things like that i will sit down stairs
via rudder
so that i have it close to me usually
the satellite internet is pretty
reliable
sometimes there's some tech glitches and
bumps
but for the most part it's pretty good
that's my first point that i wanted to
chat about
the second point that i'd like to
discuss in terms of uh
being off-grid while still being online
would be the challenge of uh ordering
things online
uh with the way that everything has gone
in the world since uh march 13th
of 2020 it's been uh it's been a ride
and so what has happened is that uh
we have had to order a lot of things
online now the difficulty with that
is that because we are in a remote
location there's no such thing as next
day shipping
there's no such thing as shipping to a
po box
we can ship to a po box unfortunately
they're not really secure or reliable
amazon is not an option um and
unfortunately
there are time limits on a lot of the po
boxes so that's not really something
that we can do
unless we go out and actually get a po
box
which is definitely something we're
looking at in the future
shipping costs are also to be anywhere
close to us
um which is still like a ways away uh to
be anywhere close to us the shipping
costs are astronomical to be able to
ship there
uh so shipping to some place that is
closer to us than you know
six hours away um is definitely not an
option either um so what we have had to
do
uh what we both have had to do what i
particularly had to do
is to learn to do without if you don't
have something you'd better be inventive
the best example i can think of for this
particular purpose
would be kitchen tools so usually when
you have a kitchen you have all of these
different spatulas you have all of these
different
cutters you have all these different
knives you have all of these different
accessories that are available to you
right there and if you don't have
something
you could always order it and get it
next day or in a couple days
it's not really a big deal here that's
not an option so we have learned to
improvise with the utensils that we do
have and with the
things that we do have everything here
in our off-grid home
as i'm looking around here has a dual
purpose there's nothing here that just
has one purpose and one purpose only
everything has more than one purpose it
serves more than one use
which if you think about it is a really
good way to live your life uh just in
general
as a side note something uh something to
be said for
there's something to be said for the
state of society uh
when it's an inconvenience to not have
next day shipping
um when we first moved here it wasn't
too big of a deal i understood you know
like that we're gonna have to wait for
things to come in etc
um so i have that mentality andre does
as well
unfortunately not everybody does and i
know that a lot of people wouldn't be
okay if they had to wait
three to four weeks for things to come
in for us
we've just learned that's something
we're gonna have to deal with and that
was something that we were prepared for
when we first
when we first moved off grid we knew
that was something we were going to have
to
have to happen the third point uh that
i'd like to touch on would be
the internet usage itself so unlike in
the city where most companies will offer
you um or even in rural areas where most
companies will offer you
an unlimited package for the data that
you're using
out in remote areas it does cost a whole
lot satellite is a lot more expensive
than your regular 4g or 5g internet and
because of that internet
companies that serve remote areas will
put cap limits on
how many gigabytes you're allowed to use
and how much data you're allowed to use
per month
so what we have done in order to combat
this
usually we've been very aware of what we
are using and how much we are
downloading and
and how how often we are on the internet
um for the most part we use internet
strictly for business purposes
once in a while we'll watch a movie or
something like that um and we'll use
netflix or whatever
um it's not uh it's not too big of a
difference because we're not really on
the internet a whole lot anyways
um but it is something that we
definitely are much more conscious of
now that we have uh now that we've
actually
taken this on and we've been here one
more thing to be
said for that would be uh that we will
usually if it's possible we will
download things
um so rather than streaming videos all
the time say it's like music videos or
whatever
rather than streaming them we will
download things and make sure that we
have them
on our computer so that we can um so we
can have them there
uh it's a short term loss because we are
eating up that that
data that that gigabyte space as we're
downloading
but it's a long term gain because
eventually we wouldn't have to use any
sort of download speed
because we would have everything ideally
on our computers or on our tablets
so my fourth point um is something a
little bit on the personal side
um for myself i find new things
especially when it's a lot of new things
at once
to be quite challenging when i'm when
i'm trying to learn
new things so for me the contrast
between living in an off-grid home
and running an online business for
myself it's just been quite
different um and a little bit difficult
to get used to
um in terms of what the home requires to
maintain it
and in terms of uh still being able to
run my business
effectively um i find it a huge
a huge contrast it's a little bit
mentally difficult just to wrap my head
around
um it's been a little bit of a learning
curve
to be able to do both at once because at
times it feels like i'm experiencing two
worlds it's almost as if i'm in
you know the 1950s if you want to call
it that
taking a step back in time to being
where we where we are
and how we live our life day-to-day um
and then
also still running my business and being
in the modern tech world it's just
very it's very juxtaposing it's very
oppositionary and it's quite uh it's
quite a
contrast and sometimes it's a little bit
mentally difficult to wrap my head
around
but as i tell my students all the time
practice makes progress
it will get better and i am getting
there slowly but surely
um and one day hopefully soon it's not
going to be too much of a difficult
difficult job for me to be able to do
that
that's all for me today guys thank you
so much for watching really appreciate
the views
uh leave a like or a comment down below
if you've got any questions or
suggestions or anything that you
would like to see maybe there's
something i forgot and you'd like to
know something else
and i'll chat to you guys soon