Disclaimer: These are my personal views and do not represent any organization or professional advice.
#life
Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:16:34 +0200
HAVE TAKEN UP FARMING
My name is Dylan Araps and I used to be a software engineer, best known for my open source work (Neofetch, Pywal, KISS Linux, Pure Bash Bible) [0]. In 2021, without explanation and without telling anyone, I vanished from the internet. My usage of the internet became strictly "read only".
In 2024, I appeared briefly to tell the world I retired and had "taken up farming" [1]. The vagueness of my message and strangeness surrounding its circumstances created a lot of buzz. It is not every day a person in a cushy, intellectual career drops everything and pivots to working outdoors with their body. It was amusing to read the theories people came up with: from driving a tractor up and down massive tracts of land to being holed up in a Kaczynskiesque cabin in the woods.
Today, I return to the internet to tell my story and announce https://WILD.gr.
For nearly a decade I spent the majority of my waking hours sedentary and staring at a screen. Praised for my work ethic, quick response to messages and sheer number of projects, I was seen as a wizard. People loved what I was doing and I in turn wanted to please them. Chasing attention led to my projects becoming more complex and bigger in scope over time. It became increasingly difficult to maintain them and keep up the wizard persona.
This left me tired and worn out. Hump-backed, skinny-limbed, out of shape and in constant pain with a chronic cough from years of smoking among many issues. Abusing substances to sleep and others to wake up and unable to exert myself for more than a few seconds before running out of breath. My diet consisted of meat, potatoes, junk food and little else. Everything around me was in a state of decay from neglect, and the worse life became, the deeper the descent into my work.
In the end things reached a breaking point and I started experiencing burn out. This was beyond simply needing some time away. Recovering, getting back to work and soon after burning out again, this cycle continued and got progressively worse until I couldn't work any longer. Many hours were spent sitting at the computer unable to put anything on the screen. My brain was fried.
This culminated in an existential crisis where I asked myself: "What am I doing with my life?". The realization? All I was doing day after day, year after year was making the lights on the screen light up a little different and in the process killing myself, to do it as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Unable to work any longer, I stopped and abandoned all effort. This then is the cause of my disappearance from the internet. When life gives you signs that you need to make a change, it's best you listen sooner rather than later. Ignored for too long, life forces the change and as it's forced it comes at the worst time attached with a lot of pain.
Stopping left a massive void. Without the 16+ hour days lost in computer code, I didn't know what else to do. Eventually, I turned to reading books and bought myself a kindle. I jailbroke it, filled it with public domain ebooks and spent all my time reading. Not much of a reader before this, I had the entire world of literature to choose from.
Everything I read made reference to the Bible, something I had never read nor was in any way acquainted with. The references kept appearing and eventually I decided to dive in head first and read it. Putting the King James Version of the Bible on my kindle, over many months I read it cover to cover.
At the time, I wouldn't have called myself an Atheist. Agnostic is not the right word to use either. Not that I believed or didn't believe in the existence of God, in truth, I had simply never thought about it. In place of an answer was lack of the preceding question.
I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before. A mirror was put in front of me and I saw myself clearly for the first time. Finding God, I realized how far I had drifted from the straight and narrow. Weak of mind, steeped in sin, ruled by bodily desires and whims of fancy, the life I led could only lead to one place: the broad road alongside the liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers and cheats, for I was one of them.
No longer lost and with new found purpose, I set out to return to the straight and narrow. Knowing how I got here and where I had to go, I set out to change my life. Over the next three years I became a different person. One by one I quit cold turkey all vice that had afflicted me. Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, caffeine, sugar, pornography, masturbation, gaming and processed food. For the first time in my life I gained control over myself.
For reasons of spirituality, morality and health, I stopped eating all animal products (meat, fish, dairy, eggs, etc) adopting instead, the diet of my great grandparents: Plants; local, seasonal and whole. From eating only potatoes to eating everything. I ate figs for the first time and then proceeded to make up for all the years spent not eating them.
From home I took up calisthenics, yoga and barefoot running (the real kind, without shoes) and slowly reversed every postural problem and muscle imbalance created over the years. I regained my vitality.
As a result, my sleep/wake cycle, chronic cough, headaches and other issues resolved and I no longer felt like an old man. All that remained was to decide what to do with my life. From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.
I chose the path of farmer and to be more precise, "Natural Farmer". A vampire for so long, I needed to work outside in the sunshine with my hands. My family (brother, mother, grandmother) and I set out to acquire land and embark on this new endeavour together. In the village of Amphithea on the Greek island of Euboea (sidenote: In 2018, my family and I moved from Australia to Greece.) we found a small abandoned and neglected estate complete with house, vineyard and olive trees. We called this venture WILD and thus began our life as farmers.
When I said "have taken up farming" [1]. This is what I meant. I'm not growing corn and soybeans on 100 acres of land while spraying roundup and other poisons and no, there's no manifesto decrying the system written from a cabin in the woods. There's just me and my family in a sleepy Greek village producing Natural food and living according to Nature. Welcome to https://WILD.gr.