Why I Quit The Rat Race | The Bridgeman Returns

in your day-to-day life out here you just come across problem after problem after problem but then you also have solution after solution after solution and you you get around things and there are things that i understand like i understand this i understand that there is a pool of water at the back of the cottage and i need to get it away so water goes downhill i can fix that like there's just things i understand this and whereas city life just could be so complex and bureaucratic and it's not intuitive like this life is intuitive it's just i've never lived this kind of life before i've never lived outside the city i've never even lived without a housemate or a family member but as soon as i got out here everything just makes sense i know what to do hello everyone and welcome back to mossy bottom this is the first video in another new series here on my channel in which i'm going to be visiting and talking to people who like me have quit the rat race left their jobs and urban lives behind to move to the beautiful wilds of ireland to grow food to keep animals to restore buildings learn a whole new set of skills and transform their lives but what i'm really interested in finding out in meeting people who've done what i did or something similar is why what drove them to make that move what was their life like before what did they hope it would become and does the reality live up to that and in this first episode i'm going to introduce you to a young guy from dublin who did something which i definitely wasn't brave enough to do like me he bought an old derelict cottage on an acre of land you can see mine in the background surrounded as i am by cow fields and forestry but he did it without having a car his location is almost as rural as mine but his only means of transportation is a bicycle what's your name my name is kyle and how old are you i am 31 i turned 31 two days ago oh happy birthday yeah thanks very much thank you for inviting me to your home i should say and uh where are you from originally i'm from dublin okay yeah and um where are we now we're in sligo and in county sligo somewhere out in the wilds yeah we're between two places this so where i'm at there's not much okay yeah and um tell me a bit about your home here what kind of place is this where do you live uh i live on a small little acre with a river running through it so like a third of it is on the other side of the river and we've got this old 300 year old cottage um i could even be older than that but i have no way of dating it for sure and i didn't realize it was that old yeah yeah wow that's a lot older than mine it's at least 250 years old wow yeah and do you live here alone who are you with uh just me me and the dog that's it so we're now in winter it's now january yeah how are you finding it in january in the winter compared to back in the summer uh not as hard as i thought it would be i was actually i was very anxious in september i was kind of getting worried i was like i don't have everything set up i'm not ready for winter but like i didn't even have my my stove or anything at that stage so and i've never lived i've never lived outside dublin so i didn't know what winter would be like in the northwest obviously it does rain a lot more but like um it hasn't been so bad it's been nice it's been dark it's a lot darker there's no street lights um but it's surprising how bright the moon is that's something that um i didn't really consider when i was living in the city but the moon is quite bright i guess in the city you don't really see the moon and the stars so much because there's so much light pollution yeah oh the star like even just last night and i looked i just happened to look up and like the stars here are incredible and it's just mesmerized whenever whenever i notice the stars out here i i always stuff and look up so tell me a bit about your life before moving here what um what brought you here what how are you living what were you doing what was your job um my job was i spent most of my time in hospitality working in bars and restaurants and just the service industry in general and uh like coffee shops i've done it all when it comes to hospitality really and and then i moved into doing some web design and development graphic design like when i because i was in hospital for like 10 years so i kind of got sick of it i moved into trying to be self-employed and that kind of failed and i went into photography then and photography was well enough and then dog walking was another thing that i'd do did you have a particular career ambition is there anything you wanted to achieve um when i was younger yes but as i got older no i don't think i was really made for the modern world i just like i thought like i tried and i was like okay i picked this thing and i'll try this thing and it's just nothing ever felt like real um and does what you're doing here your life here fill that void in a way yeah does this feel like a career in a way yeah yeah like professional homeowner like um i haven't done it yet but like i do plan on doing things like making my own furniture and the idea of like fixing my house and i'm doing all my own plumbing all my own wiring work and being involved in all of those processes so i know my home inside and out how it functions how it works and if anything ever goes wrong i can fix it and so i intimately know my home my land like everything you know and and then growing my own food and just i want to be involved in all all of my processes so the life that you had before you moved here um did you enjoy it um it wasn't hell it wasn't like horrible and my life before i moved here was just static like you feel like you're not going anywhere up or down left or right you're just in this constant like hamster wheel thing it's just i'm gonna work got to pay the rent gotta eat gotta get the food gotta work gotta pay the rent gotta go to sleep it's just can't you just kind of i felt trapped and stuck and did it feel like something was missing from your life yeah yeah it just it didn't really feel like i was living i was just surviving and i did it like it's funny to say like i was just surviving in the city when i'm out here and this is what people would call just surviving but i feel like i'm actually living now and yeah it's kind of it's i think people have it backwards absolutely yeah here i feel like i'm moving forward and i'm going towards something and and i can see like i i know we're sitting here and like i'm i'm basically living in a construction site but i don't i when i look around i see the trees that i've planted fully grown i see like my vision is i i can see everything as it's going to be already yeah what was it like moving here how did that because you didn't have a car so yeah so my sister was kind enough to drive me down um we rented like a small little go caravan thing and she drove me down with the bare essentials in that thing um and yes she dropped me off and then just drove back to dublin and what did it feel like at that point when you were by yourself um it just felt like i don't know what adjective is suitable but it was just um it was satiating i guess fulfilling it was just so you didn't feel fear you felt no right i just i didn't i didn't do anything i didn't do any work i just i just walked around and stood in place i listened to the birds because like it was june so there were flowers everywhere and i just enjoyed the space um did you feel connected immediately to the location to the house to the land yeah like the first time i was down when i rang the estate agent i didn't feel any connection to the space at that point but i just kind of felt like i can do this like this is doable but when i when i was actually here and i owned it because that was the first time i'd been here after contracts were signed i was like this is mine and at that like that was a there's just a feeling i don't know how to describe it i've never felt that feeling before it was just total just comfort and peace just like this is mine yeah for the first time in your life right yeah owning somewhere the house is known to the locals as the bridge man's cottage and the bridge man was i don't know what to say about him now yeah well i guess it's because there's a bridge there right well yeah there's a bridge sorry hence the bridge man and now you're the bridge man now i'm the bridge man or the new bridge man or the young bridge man why is there a bathtub there what's the story behind that the bathtub this is going to be um my hillbilly hotdog so i'm going to uh put some copper pipe coiled into well i'm going to make a masonry stove uh so i'll be more fuel efficient and then i'm gonna use this for my outdoor bathing because at the moment i'm using a bucket and a cloth and i'm just scrubbing myself like that by the stove but this would be much nicer to be outside you can look at the stairs did you have much money when you moved here you don't need to give me figures but you have a security net there after moving down after getting the mobile i had maybe 300 euro left wow wow yeah so it's coming like i like i used every i spent everything to get down here because like i also had to get all my tools and everything as well so like i i bought all those things before i moved down right yeah so because there's a certain minimum amount of tools that you need in order to to function like wheelbarrows yeah you'd like i would say like two wheelbarrows isn't too much no i have three yeah like what one new one every year is uh yeah like i kind of want two wheelbarrows now i like i would i would find uses for them wheelbarrows shovels spades and not having a car if you see something like this online that you want to buy how do you get it here is it all kind of negotiating with neighbors well this i was actually very lucky the guy i've been looking on donedeal for like the last year i just pop on every now and then and i see what's available and i haven't been able to find any that are that were nearby like they're all in like they're in limerick or me they're loud or whatever this one popped up and it was in sligo and the guy said he was willing to deliver within reason and it's a beautiful bathtub as well it's much nicer than i like you see bathtubs these like cast iron tubes in fields because farmers use them to give their cattle water i thought i was going to get something like that but i managed to get this so i was just very very lucky to get it but you can't like i do negotiate with neighbors um and say like i have neighbors that bring me into town if i need to go into town like obviously like if they're going i wouldn't like get them to just bring me in but they usually have their routine and i can just get a lift and i guess that's why it's important to kind of make friends in the community and get to know your neighbors and integrate into that community so that you can you know they can help you out when you need help and you can help them when they need help you know if i ever need anything like i know that there's people there that want to help me there's people that like offer to like i go and get the petrol myself on the bike and for my generator but like i have neighbors that offer me they like to say don't do that we'll i'll do that for you whatever i've had a couple of people say that but i won't like i don't i'm not taking advantage of them like i can do it myself but if i do need something i'm not afraid to ask either right um and at the same time like i'm willing to help in whatever way i can and i do want jobs around the village were there any disasters in terms of moving here were there any things that went horribly wrong yeah my neighbor's cattle because like nobody's been here for like 30 40 years they they would often come in here and like that that day i moved down they actually came in because i didn't know the cattle or how dangerous they were or what like um day one was day one was a disaster in that sense but i got to meet the neighbors well because the cows were in here yeah yeah so i i had to just leave and walk down the road and just i knock on doors and i i knew there was a neighbor down the road that had cattle out the front and i assumed he would know who owns these so i went up and tell me a bit about the bike because it's going to surprise a lot of people that you don't have a car yeah i moved down here with no car no job i had a job lined up which i got in the end but i there was no guarantee i was going to get it but then no carrier no job i don't know anybody and i have no electricity no running water so i went really into it but um yeah another bike so the bike's your lifeline really yeah yeah i i've had flat tires and stuff and i've had flat tires in opportune moments but then that's why i have neighbors is really handy in them but yeah you need to make sure you have a collection of spare tubes and spare little bits around for windows those in opportune times come does it ever feel lonely here [Applause] no i've never felt lonely and is that because you're so busy or probably do you think it has something to do with your personality that you're not inclined to feel lonely it's probably a bit of both um i yeah i guess i just don't have time to even think about being lonely like when i was younger being around people my own age was important but now like i'm still i'm not old i'm still young i'm 30 31 now and with that desire to have people my own age around me is waning i have like i have friends here you know my neighbors are my friends and um it doesn't really matter what age they are um like i'm living in the cottage at the moment like i have walls to keep the wind away from me i have a roof that keeps the rain off me i have a floor that keeps my feet dry and the stove keeps me warm what more do you need that's it so like they're like obviously i want to improve things i want to remove the concrete to fix the damp there is damp and condensation in the cottage i can manage it and the floor is cold for like it does it's not the biggest issue for me in the world but i'm going to get around to fixing that and i might get around to fixing the roof at one stage in the future as well but i'm just one thing at a time and eventually i'll get there you know were you close to your family before you moved here an important part of your life because i think one thing a lot of people say about this way of life um is that the thought of leaving their family the people they're close to puts them off or they worry about doing that um no i've always been a bit of a not a loner like i i've i was popular in my youth and i had a lot of friends and many different groups of friends and stuff and with family like it's not like i'm anti-social or anything i've just i do prefer my own company and i've got a large family as well a lot of cousins a lot of aunts and uncles and and [Music] i just it just feels like a lot of pressure so i like i've just always been comfortable on my own and i love going hiking and and that's something i've always loved as a kid is like even when we went on family hikes i would always be way out ahead of the rest of the family and when my brother and sister would be tired and want to turn back home i'd want to get to the top of the hill like i was always want them to go out this flat area here is going to be where my veg is going to be grown and it's all obviously if you [Applause] this it doesn't look like the best agricultural land all this dabby waterlogged play and but clay is full of nutrition it's just not bioavailable to plants and the solution to that is to add organic material so i'm gonna be doing a no-dig method that uses silage so i'm gonna get two three bales of silage and i'm gonna spread it out here and i'm gonna put a tarp over that and then i'm gonna cut holes in the tarp and then grow my veg through those holes in the trap so i'm gonna do that every year and just keep adding organic matter to this and hopefully eventually one day you'll be able to stick your arm into this and it'll be nice tilty lovely soil what's important to you do you is it about the animals is it about growing food is it about just restoring the house what's your goal your plan here um my there's no i don't think there's any one thing that is my my goal like there's no like oh it's about the animals it's about the cottages it's all of they're all little projects yeah to build up to this broader thing i just i want i want to live my life a different way than most people and i want to live my life the way lives used to be lived um and i'm not sure if he agrees he wants a comfortable dublin apartment yeah um it's kind of more i ha this appreciation i have for tradition and the past is kind of a driver for it but it's also it also ties in with my need for financial security and home security and i want to eat healthy food and i want i want i love animals i like being around them and i want to raise them and and i love flowers and foraging and hiking and it's just like this it's just it's all-encompassing holistic thing it's there's no one element of it that's the driving force you know this is the pond that i've had dug out for the geese and maybe ducks if i ever get them um i do eat meat and geese are don't have the most amount of meat on them but they have a lot of fat which is good for you um and fat their fats really good for preserving meat as well so if you don't have refrigeration you can con feed the goose in its own fat and keep it in a dryer and you can leave that cooked goose meat on a shelf for six months to a year and it stays fresh didn't know that yeah and then there's you get the eggs as well and i have eggs for my chickens and so chickens geese ducks as well did you say oh no ducks maybe i don't know i'm not too pushed on if i get to like i'm sure an opportunity will arise or someone's like hey do you want some ducks and i'll say yeah fish fish yeah i want to put um common carp in here which is a it's a native irish fish and they're they would do well in a pond like this like that's probably from the surface of the water there it's probably six foot deep and i just need to get the plant life in there because they they eat plants they're a bit vegetarian so is is time management part of it yeah and i've i spent so many years i spent 10 years at least saying yes sir know about them of course right away i'll get that or it's too cold okay like it's just it was a and then i was serving them but i was also serving my bosses and the managers and constantly just thinking about other people and not having anything for yourself and not even that much money at the end of it just to show for it and so yeah time is a huge thing but i still serve nature's time yeah um so i'm still on i'm still on a schedule but it's it's more it's more doable and like like right now it's winter so i'm not really there's not much to do and i chop wood like plant trees i i gather water i cook and then it's dark and i go to bed but it's kind of it's nice to get that because in the summer it's non-stop like there were some days because i was working for neighbors and i was fencing and i was working up in the bog and i was i was doing all other sorts of things not even just for here and and there's just so much to do in the summer and then i can like i can imagine here now when i when i get my things in place you're constantly managing brambles and bushes and shrubs and things just things are growing all the time you need to cut things back and manage things keep things neat tidy and [Music] it's nice in the winter to get that break and you have nature telling you it's time to rest i never had anyone tell me it's time to rest in dublin just for the very beginning just because i'm one man i'm on my own i have no car like all these things like i've got a lot a lot to manage and i just want things to be as easy as possible chickens are easy geese are easy because you don't even need to feed the geese because they eat the grass and then potatoes onions cabbages they'll grow very very well in this climate so um you'll still be kept busy oh yeah yeah definitely but uh i want to keep the amount of work per day on the property as little as possible and why is that um not that i don't enjoy it i just want to enjoy the rest of it as well i want to enjoy making the place more beautiful as well as be able to sustain myself off at the same time i think like things still annoy me and frustrate me like things go wrong and things kind of get in your way like you wanna i wanna do this job i can't do this job until this other job is done like there's these things but they're they're all within my control and i think that's one of the big things is is the control aspect of it um because you find yourself more stressed and you only find yourself stressed in situations where you're not in control like when you're stuck in traffic that's a situation you're not in control and people can lose their temper in those situations and and i'm in control of most things there are things i'm not in control of but they're i have time as well is regaining a sense of control a big part of what makes you happier here yeah yeah i'd say so yeah it's um i'm in control of kind of everything to do with myself my life the direction my life is going in it's all just up to me a lot of people are scared of doing something like this and i want to take that fear away from people if i can and are you afraid of reaching an end point kind of yeah yeah yeah that's something i think about a lot what happens when you reach the end yeah what's your purpose in life at that point yeah like at the moment i've just got i've got too much to do i'm kind of overwhelmed with how much i have to do but then in the future like i know i'm going to look back at this time and just think like that was that was the best like that first year and that first year when like when i first moved here i slept in a hammock in the forest and then i got the mobile and i the mobile was down by the road and i slept in the mobile and then eventually i got the cottage going i moved into the cottage and just the the transitions and the changes that i've been going through i still haven't i've been here six months i still haven't fully moved in just because everything's just been shifting so much i've wanted to do this since i was a teenager but it was like a kind of like a a pipe dream it was like oh but it's not possible like there's no way i'll be able to to do that but i i have always kind of had this in me that i wanted to live this way and and i started making changes in my life when i was 26 was when i started like getting my my act together and stop messing around the traditional way of life the way people lived in the past i admire it so much and i just think it's incredible what what irish people how are people even just irish people people in general have lived um i'm just more infatuated with the irish side of things because a lot of irish grew up here and i feel like the blasket islanders i admire them so much in the way they lived and i just think it's a it's a way of life that's it's disappearing and dying out and and a lot of people lament uh other cultures and the way they live currently or used to live they lament those ways of life dying out and we don't really look at ourselves and that our way of life is dying out as well and it's probably further along than than those other nationalities and so i just want to try and like preserve knowledge and um skills ways of living and hopefully pass it along at some stage do you think you need to be a very very specific type of person which you probably are and i probably am yeah like first of all introverted yeah and quite um having a deep need to control your own environment and be sort of master of your own life yeah do you think there are certain characteristics that you have to have for this life to work yeah um i think it's a big part of it is like i stopped drinking and i stopped smoking and i did do drugs when i was younger as well i stopped doing all those things years and years ago and then i gave up social media i don't even watch movies anymore like i just i started cutting all of these things out of my life even like before i moved here and what i've done by cutting those things out is i've lowered my my dopamine baseline so like if you're if you're used to being like getting dopamine rushes all the time like i'm swiping on my phone and i'm drinking beer and i'm like kissing this girl and i'm going to this party and i'm watching this movie i'm playing this video game your your dopamine level baseline is up way high so when you come out somewhere like this it's when you go below your baseline it's it's very hard for you to cope my baseline is so low that seeing a robin land beside me is just like the most interesting thing you know i've seen thousands of robins but it's just it's still interesting to me and but then i'm more productive as well because i'm less distracted and so if i need if i if i've worked to do i can just go do it because i don't have this craving for stimulation the work is stimulating me and was that did that take a while to get to that place was there a period of adjustment oh yeah were you immediately there no that took a lot a lot of work right um slow like it was it was there was a process to that i think i was not i'm a naturally introverted person but i i lived an extroverted life and i socialized a lot and i think but i think a lot of my my drinking and drug use and all that was part of um me coping with extroversion or like i had a desire and to be extroverted i wanted to be in these race but i don't think i naturally could and i see right yeah yeah i think that's why like like most young people do drugs most young people drink and i think i wonder how many of them actually want to be where they are because i i didn't want to be i like i did want to be there at the time i wanted to be there but like in the grand scheme narrative of my life like i did not actually want to be where i was i thought i wanted to be there it was an absolute pleasure spending time with kyle and the truth is this video could have been three hours long the amount of footage that we shot his passion as well as his knowledge for self-sufficient practices and all that goes with this way of life absolutely shines through when talking to him at first glance kyle is someone like me who appears to have made his life more difficult by moving away from family um from career and job opportunities from people of his own age to live without electricity transportation companionship and who now faces an enormous amount of hard physical work and learning in the years to come but what he's actually done is choose to follow a path which gives him back control of his life and in doing so he now has the opportunity to create something incredible with his own hands hard work and imagination that's his and will always be his it's the same choice which i made but i have to admit i would never have been brave enough to do this without a car and for that i take my hat off to him i hope his life and courage is the inspiration to others which i know having spoken to him at length he wants it to be it's going to be fascinating revisiting kyle in the years to come to see just how his plans unfold things will go wrong as they have at times for me but that's all part of the adventure and he knows that he's not naive there'll be people watching this though who are thinking he's young give it a year or two the novelty will wear off and he'll be back in the city but i think those people are wrong i see that same glint in kyle's eye when talking about his plans and future here which i know others see in me this isn't just a project to him it's his entire sense of purpose in life and i think that's the greatest thing which self-sufficiency and a choice like this can give you purpose the bridge man has returned and i think he's here to stay do you feel that moving here has changed you as a person um i don't know if it's changed me more so than it's allowed the real me to come out [Music] oh i was born in a quaker town where folks were good and hard for the ones they loved and got above each day they punched their car and when evening came back home again they'd rest while we say tis a hard old life but for kids and wife would work cause another day when the [Music] oh [Music] oh i grew up i didn't i didn't take into account how cold it's gonna be yeah i wish i'd put something warmer on before we started filming i'm on the verge of shivering a bit so i wanted to save for another two and so this i have a neighbor walking down the road here ah let's see who that is and what the heck we're doing i know so is being self what happened he was kind of bumped into the ah i i can feel my voice starting to shake it's not showing i promise yeah it's not showing at all yes yeah i'm looking forward to the hedge

Channel: Mossy Bottom

Views: 259,733

Keywords: quit the rat race, housing crisis ireland, move to the country, moving to ireland, buying a cottage, cottage ireland, self-sufficiency ireland, cottage for sale ireland, cottage west of ireland, quitting the rat race, quit your job ireland, the good life ireland, buying a house ireland

Id: oUvU9fv1jCs

Length: 39min 20sec (2360 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/DeviousPelican]

This is not the way to do it. Not prepared, got a fucking pond dug for geese instead of getting himself a pig or planting some veg. Living in a rundown shack like jesus man...

[u/LeavingCertCheat]

The guy interviewing him has outlined what he did to prepare for an isolated life such as this. Seems like this fella didn't really followed any of his advice.

[u/tttyo7745]

Fuck me that looks depressing

[u/shite_in_a_bucket]

So many negative comments in this thread. This is probably part of the reason why he's ditching the rat race. Can't even have a go at anything without being criticised for it.

At least he's not sitting on his hole watching TV all day. Fair play to him.

[u/Sayek]

I think you do that you need to be fairly handy with house stuff and be prepared to do a ton of work. Can only imagine that house is a mouldy cold mess on the inside. I've seen other people who have done this but the places look decent, it's not just living in squalor like 1950s Ireland.

[u/ramblerandgambler]

I skimmed the video but it seems we don't get to see inside the house? It looks like it is made out of 90% mould from the outside.