Alternative lifestyle as a Veeky Forumsentist

I am a PhD student in chemical physics. My life has been centered around science for the past five years, becoming proficient in mathematics, physics, programming, chemistry, and statistics and doing research.

Recently my attitude towards life has changed. I feel that there is more to it than spending most of my mental energy and time solving problems in a room of quiet people. I have no interest in going the path of postdoctoral research and {unemployment, grant writing}.

I am very interested in pursuing the so called alternative lifestyle. I'm drawn to self-sufficiency, exploring the world with a boat/van/bicycle, meeting interesting people, and being in solitude with my mind for long periods of time.

Is there a way to solve interesting problems while being a digital nomad or should I just STFU and learn web development?

Don't have much to say, since I've only studied math, but it's an interesting topic. Have a bump.

It seems that you need a vacation. I doubt you'd really enjoy being a hippie in a van for most of your life. I'm a bit tired with my PhD studies, but somehow manage to get things done and to not drastically change my lifestyle.

Should have studied condensed matter physics. In that field you can literally make breakthroughs with water and a fucking portable heater.

My man, we are in the same boat.

The blank yin your heart that you're trying to fill is the lack of research and studies in other sciences, which your brain craves for, that is, philosophy, political/social sciences amount other things.

I can't say for you, but I can ensure you that learning more to the world around you is waaaaaay more than understanding it on a molecular level.

I am undeniably in need of a vacation. None the less I feel intrigued on exploring the phase space of the world, motivated by the constraint of my finite lifetime.

No. Well not unless you do computational work.

And even then, you need good ping time to your machines so transfering massive amounts of data doesn't take too long

Bump

OP here. I have been looking around at postings in the Data science & Analytics section at upwork. I have been using the python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, scikit-learn, pandas etc for a year or so. The tasks seem to be relatively straight forward.

Modeling is becoming more relevant in the industry AFAIK. I do not if getting into the payroll of some big chemicals/pharmaceutical company would allow the freedom that I am looking for.

Corporate Webdev brianlet here.

I lurk Veeky Forums for fear of descending into a vacuum of brainlet eternity otherwise.

TLDR: You need a vacation AND you need a well thought our plan (with spreadsheets).

I’ve freelanced, been on EI (unemployment pay from the government), and been unemployed, fucked because my parents can’t bail me out. I traveled during these periods in my late 20’s and have some things to say on this.

What I’ve learned:

>you need to save.
Making money at a stable boring ass job? SAVE MONEY NOW.

>drink the Tim Ferris 4 hour work week koolaid.
You’ll need to generate income. Come up with something to do this. It has to be bullet proof. For example I was doing freelance and clients fucked off when I had to pay rent. NOT FUN!

>But user, you are working a job now.
YES. After a string of fails (this lifestyle is like walking a tight rope that has a different prick shaking the wire month to month) I decided to go back to a desk (mind you in a totally different city than when I started). I gained a lot of awesome experience, worked on some nice sites that will look good on the resume, partied/fucked some qt3.14s

My plan has been to establish myself, save, and work on projects with the hope of figuring out a revenue generating success. It’s hard, but you gotta keep trying.

While on your journey you will need to keep reading self-help books otherwise you’ll go insane. I’ve found myself in some fucked up situations, sleeping in places where I thought I was going to get murdered or eaten alive by the rodents, clinging to Tony Robbins books.

For now, TAKE A GOOD VACATION (Cuba is nice/cheap this time of year). It will put it all in perspective. Throwing it all away won’t do you any good. Save money, have a plan, THEN throw it all away.

Burn Bridges for fuel!

>matplotlib
Why did you choose it over PyQtGraph?

Also just spend a couple of weeks every summer dropping acid and cruising the countryside, it's not a sustainable lifestyle as fun as it seems

Retirement is when you can go crazy with that kind of shit

...go on

Vacation to Japan and go to the hotsprings. Go to the forest or woods in a cabin for 2 weeks or so.

I'm very interested in in freelancing but not pajeet, code monkey, web dev stuff. I'm interested in doing freelance working on harder problems and more advanced stuff that requires skills in mathematics and actual computer science(not meme sweng).

Bump.

What are your experiences of transferring from academia to doing some sort of programming?

I could live more than comfortably working 20h/week. 3500€/2 = 1750€, 15% taxes = 1500€. My rent is 600€, other expenses are about ~400€.

nice, thanks

Life is way too complicated to summarize it as such. Academia might not be the best thing ever but im more comfortable with it than with a dead end job that pays more.

That being said, it sounds like you need a vacation.

You're clearly an intelligent person and you have drive. I come from a similar position, wondering how to best spend my life. I'd say read Walden and take it from there.

1) Cut all meaningless expenses and save up a ton of money
2) Quit your job and travel a beautiful life of meeting tons of interesting people all over the world, discussing ideas and solutions to worldly problems.

look into internet marketing OP. stackthatmoney.com blackhatworld.com