I quit my job, sold my house, sold all my stuff and moved to a lazy beach town near the equator. Never felt happier, never felt more rested, never thought as clearly as I do now.
Totally not answering you question when it comes to finishing the project, but sometimes you just have to call it quits because your health is more important than yet-another-website.
If you are ever in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico -- give me a shout and we'll hang out :)
I'd be really curious to hear your story. Clearly you're still reading HN once in a while. Are you doing your own projects? How much time do you spend on the computer vs other stuff? Was your burn out the computer itself or just doing stuff on it you didn't want to do for other people?
I quit 19 months ago and have been traveling and goofing off since. I can't say it's made me any happier. I spent 9 months last year working on my own project which was kind of fun but also kind of not fun.
Looking back over my life so far what I think I need is (a) more balance as in stuff not computing and (b) partners as in when I am computing I don't want to be alone. I want to collaborate with a few people at the same location I really like working with on something we all want to do. I'm not sure how to get from where I am to that though except to go to meetups, hackathons, etc and hope I meet some guys before I run out of money and need a job again.
I did the same. Mexico for a couple years (I love Mazunte and Zipolite!) then Guatemala and Chile. Actually moving back to Toronto from Guatemala in a few days after almost 5 years to work with a startup there.
The thing I've found most effective to combat my own burnout has always been a change of scenery and behaviour and getting a fresh perspective on my work.
I would recommend heading somewhere nice, warm, and cheap, and finish your project from there.
Sounds like a great plan; I'm moving to Brazil for a bit to do the same thing. Not for too long the first time, but with an intention to scope out the place and find some incubators I can hack in; been learning portuguese for the last year to make it easier for me to do. I found English fluency was a lot less in Brazil than it was in other non-english speaking countries I had been to.
I live in Cambodia. I pay $250 a month for a villa, electricity is around $20 a month and water is free. Food costs me around $5 a day -- which is a lot. You could live off $2 a day if you want.
For internet I use a sattelite connection, which gives me 4mbit full duplex for $25 a month.
Life is great, but after 10 months spending time here I feel like I'm still recovering from the rat race back home. I'm spending my full time on hacking away on Haskell projects, just learning for the sake of learning, and I feel that slowly I am starting to miss home again, so I'll probably return somewhere at the end of the year.
...does your mom still cook/clean/shop for you? Other countries are not alien planets which are devoid of grocery stores and somewhere you can buy a broom. Just grab a backpack and go. This whole 'arrangement' thing is very american. Use hostelworld, go stay at some hostels for a while. Meet people and have an adventure. Backpack around your target country (or countries) and find a city you like. Ask the people that work at the hostel there how to get set up with a place. Or, get to a country and take language classes at a school somewhere and ask your professors.
This sort of comment isn't useful. You might have tried asking about my experiences before assuming things. I've lived in six different countries, I speak five languages. I've stayed in hostels, or in apartments, I've cooked for myself and I've had others cook for me.
Right now I'm in production mode with my business, and having someone else cook is a massive boost to productivity. That's why I asked. Am not interested in hostel travel right now.
P.s. am not trying to start an argument. Just letting you know the norm in comments here. Remember that all commenters are human beings. Don't assume the worst if there's a charitable interpretation of comments. Cheers!
I usually buy my food on the street -- i eat rice with pork or noodlesoup with beef in the morning ($1), eat some springrolls or whatever for lunch ($1), and go to the market and buy a grilled fish ($2) or some chicken ($4) with some rice and vegetables ($0.50).
You can easily get someone to do the cleaning and shopping for you, but I like to hop on my motorbike and do the shopping myself. I sometimes work from restaurants and chat with the staff (they get paid a bad salary, but their work atmosphere is really relaxed and have lots of time to chat).
As for the financials, I was lucky to get an exit with my business that basicly covered all the money I was personally in debt for plus a little extra. I rent my house completely furnitured through an agency which specializes in couples that are getting divorced, which brings in around $1000 a month. This covers my morgage and health insurance.
I live off money I had left after the exit (around $25k), and just accepted a freelance gig for a few grand which I'm really enjoying.
All in all, one of the best choices I made in my life, it really is so incredibly different here, and you really learn what it's like to live in a country without decent doctors, for example. At this point I do really start to miss my family and friends back home, but I'm very happy the Khmer are a very friendly kind of people, so I made a lot of friends here. I don't really hang out with expats, since they are generally still part of the whole lifestyle I want to avoid.
A friend of mine works as a cleaner for someone who is general manager of a real estate agency, and she knows a lot of people. I helped that friend out a few times in the past, now she helped me find that villa.
Furthermore, a lot of negotiating. Original price was $450, I ended up getting $250 if I paid 6 months in advance.
Not GP, but I moved to Costa Rica for a few months in 2013.
Depending where you go, you can get away with very little to no English.
I was in a (tiny) surfing town, Playa Grande. It gets a lot of foreign surfers, and so all the locals speak English. Many ex-pats live there year-round. Nearby is Tamarindo, very similar there, and a much bigger town.
I can order food and ask for directions and have basic conversations in spanish, if they slow down for me--but I found speaking spanish was always just for fun, and virtually never a necessity.
The owners live a few steps away in their own home. The wife cleans your place once per week. The man will taxi you around as-needed (he charges normal rates, which are pretty high there--gas is expensive). They are FANTASTIC people, they made my stay much better than it might have been.
There's a wall around the property and a gate that gets locked at night, but in all honesty, I've never felt safer anywhere in my life than I did in Playa Grande--wall or no wall.
Edit: I paid $550/month for that place in the off-season. The prices listed seem a little high, they were going to charge me $600/month in season (US winter is their season, US summer is their winter, and it's pretty rainy).
Totally not answering you question when it comes to finishing the project, but sometimes you just have to call it quits because your health is more important than yet-another-website.
If you are ever in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico -- give me a shout and we'll hang out :)