Most mornings start with the dogs. They’re my alarm clock, eager to get outside. I follow them out, coffee in hand, and do a small loop around the house. It’s not a full tour of our 40 acres, just the immediate grounds, the part that feels most alive.
The pigs usually wander up to see if I’ve brought snacks. The chickens cluck and mutter like a gossipy crowd waiting for the day’s news. Sometimes the cats are waiting too, proudly presenting their “catch of the day.” It’s a strange little welcoming committee, but honestly, it feels more grounding than jumping straight into email or a Zoom call. Before I’ve even touched my computer, I’ve already checked in with the land, the animals, and this place we now call home.
Then I go inside, sit down at my desk, and step into a completely different world. Digital marketing campaigns, project deadlines, Slack pings. It’s structured and predictable. It’s the kind of work I’ve been doing for twenty years. I know the rhythms. I know the playbook.
But the property doesn’t care about my calendar invites. Every project out here is new to me. I’ve been living on this land for four and a half years, and still every fence repair, irrigation tweak, or chicken coop fix feels like a first attempt. That’s humbling and sometimes frustrating, but also exhilarating. Where corporate life is repetition and refinement, land work is improvisation.
And then there’s the physical side. Corporate work is all wrists and eyeballs, hunching over a keyboard and flirting with carpal tunnel. Property work is full-body. Lifting, digging, building. Even when I’m sweating through a stubborn project, I can hear a hawk calling overhead or feel the wind move across the field. The land interrupts your frustration with beauty. A Teams meeting never does that.
There’s a healthy tension between these two worlds. I love tech, love tinkering with apps and workflows. I’m a nerd. But I also love working outside, where progress means something you can touch. A fence that holds. A tree that takes root.
Of course the two collide. Daily, really. I’ve muted my mic mid-meeting because the dog found a snake, or because a neighbor stopped by at 2 p.m. not realizing that “working from home” still means working. More often it’s just the background soundtrack bleeding in. Chickens squawking, pigs grunting, the low hum of country life sneaking onto a conference call.
But sometimes the overlap is a gift. On days when my meeting load is light, I’ll step away from the screen and let my brain wander while I tinker outside. That’s when the best ideas hit. How to communicate better with a colleague, or a new angle on a campaign. Nature is a better whiteboard than any app I’ve found.
Living on this land has changed how I see corporate work. Honestly, it’s made me care less about the game of it all. The stress, the politics, the manufactured urgency. It all feels small when I walk outside and see a hawk circling or a deer on the ridge. Out here I’m reminded that the world is bigger and older than my inbox.
Do I see myself giving up the corporate side? Not anytime soon. It funds this life after all. But if I had my way, I’d tilt the balance a little more toward the land. This ranch feels like home in a way a city never did. I don’t see myself moving back. If anything, I see myself looking for more land, more space, more of this grounding chaos.
And for folks living in the city, I think that’s the biggest thing they miss. The counterweight. Nature doesn’t care about your performance review. You can step outside after a stressful meeting and be greeted by an eagle flying overhead, or the sight of a bobcat on the hunt. It puts things in perspective.
Of course I miss the city sometimes too. The spontaneity of meeting a friend for coffee or discovering a new restaurant. Out here, isolation is part of the deal. But the trade-off is worth it. The stress feels different when you can walk out your back door and be reminded that most of what we worry about at work doesn’t actually matter.
