Death of an Engineer, Life of a Farmer

Death of an Engineer, Life of a Farmer - Harada

Harada

SubscribeSign in

harada Aug 21, 2026

About twenty years ago, I was working as a systems engineer. My days started early and often ended late at night. Even after I got home, the work wasn’t necessarily over. My phone might ring, I’d open my laptop again, and suddenly I was back at work from the kitchen table. For a long time, I convinced myself that this was simply what working life was supposed to look like. But my children were young, and I was missing more of their lives than I wanted to admit. At the same time, I could feel myself wearing down. I’d always struggled with eczema, but during those years it became much worse. Some mornings I would arrive at work with my face so red and inflamed that colleagues would joke about what had happened to me. Eventually, a question I had been avoiding became impossible to ignore: Do I really want to keep living like this? Where Do You Want to Be in Ten Years?

Around that time, I began paying attention to thoughts I had spent years pushing aside. During one meeting, my manager asked me a fairly ordinary career question: “Where do you want to be in ten years?” I knew what kind of answer he expected. A more senior position. More responsibility. A bigger role. But the first image that appeared in my mind had nothing to do with an office. I saw myself standing in a field. I didn’t say that out loud. I gave the kind of professional answer you give in a meeting and moved on. But the image stayed with me. It made me start asking questions I hadn’t seriously considered before. What kind of person was I when I wasn’t trying to meet other people’s expectations? What was I actually good at? And if I could choose how I spent my days, what kind of life would I want? I started reading about farming and self-sufficient living. I met people who had already chosen to live closer to the land and listened to what their lives were really like — not the romantic version, but the difficult parts too. Gradually, one thought became harder to dismiss: My life was going to end someday. I didn’t want to spend it wondering what would have happened if I’d tried something different. Of course, wanting to change your life and actually changing it are two very different things. I had a family. I had a mortgage. There were practical responsibilities that couldn’t simply be ignored. Not everyone thought leaving a conventional career was a sensible idea either. The person whose opinion mattered most was my wife. Fortunately, she understood why I felt the way I did and supported the idea of trying something different. Without that support, I’m not sure I would have taken the first step. Learning to Live by a Different Clock

We eventually moved to the countryside, near land my grandfather had once farmed. I didn’t quit my job overnight. For a while, I continued working while spending early mornings, evenings, and weekends learning how to farm. It was a strange adjustment. In engineering, much of my life had been organized around meetings, deadlines, emails, and project schedules. Farming ran on an entirely different clock. You could make plans, but the weather didn’t care about them. There was a right time to prepare the soil, a right time to plant, a right time to harvest. Waiting too long could mean losing something you had spent months growing. My grandfather understood these rhythms almost instinctively. I didn’t. So I watched him. I asked questions. And slowly I began to understand that farming wasn’t simply about producing food. It required learning how to pay attention. When my grandfather eventually became too old to continue farming himself, I reduced my engineering work and began spending much more of my time on the land. What had started as an alternative slowly became my normal life. The Change I Didn’t Expect

One of the biggest surprises was what happened to my health. The severe eczema that had troubled me during my working years improved dramatically. I can’t claim that changing careers is some universal cure, and everyone’s health is different. But in my own case, the difference was impossible to ignore. Other things changed too. For the first time in years, breakfast and dinner became real family occasions instead of something squeezed between work obligations. I could spend time outside with my children. They could help plant things, watch them grow, harvest them, and then sit down at the table and eat food that had come from the ground around us. There’s something surprisingly powerful about that. My wife says I’ve changed as well. According to her, I’m much calmer than I used to be. She’s probably right. I think years of stress had made me sharper around the edges without my noticing it. Living differently gradually softened some of those edges. You Don’t Have to Become a Farmer

I don’t believe everyone should leave their career and move to the countryside. Farming isn’t...

Death of an Engineer, Life of a Farmer

Related Articles

Incident with Github.com

(no title)

Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray

NHS apologises and admits Palantir have access to identifiable patient data

Cursor Origin