The ranch life didn’t add some unknown meaning to life for me. But it removed noise. It showed me that subtraction can be a powerful force. That you don’t have to live your life on autopilot. It slowed me down, and sharpened my attention to my surroundings. It taught me that sometimes a little friction is good for you and helps you feel alive.

The ranch life didn’t add some unknown meaning to life for me. But it removed noise. It showed me that subtraction can be a powerful force. That you don’t have to live your life on autopilot. It slowed me down, and sharpened my attention to my surroundings. It taught me that sometimes a little friction is good for you and helps you feel alive.

I started to see that cities didn’t really represent “real life” more than ranches do - they just hid the consequences of life better. In the city, food still comes from death but someone else does the dirty work for you. Labor still exists, its just more abstract and probably behind a computer. Systems and processes fail, they just fail quieter -