Do you have a lifestyle?

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Sorta kinda, I guess. I don't own my own home. I would love to purchase one, but I don't have the money for a down payment. Part of this is due to caring for my elderly parents & part in caring for my teenage kids. I have a steady job (if the current economy doesn't kill it), & have a more stable lifestyle than I have had in the past. I am also happier, although I am still very hard on myself (major inferiority complex I guess). I do drive, have a small SUV that gets decent gas mileage. I also ride a bike, & if the air quality heat index ever improve enough, I'd like to use it to commute to work. Better for me better for the environment. I do photography every chance I get. Have decided that I need to somehow get my work out there. So I can turn professional & make my hobby work for me.

My lifestyle involves breathing.

I never felt as though I had a lifestyle. At least not one that really fit together like it appears other peoples lifestyles do. Its always been something I have tried to do and failed. Much like my attempt to have a "hairstyle" and keep it consistent. Or grow my nails long and keep them "pretty." Meh. I can't stand the feel of long nails, and I just can't stay consistent with my hair for long. I *want* to fit myself into different molds sometimes but it just doesn't stick.

To describe myself I am a low income renter on disability, I'm a mother with 4 kids, I'm a wife. I'm a one car family. I don't go many places alone due to overstimulation and anxiety.
I am on the computer every day. I research everything! If someone says "I wonder how..." I run to the computer and won't get off til I can answer their question.
I play video games. I love nature.

This question feels like a "What is your style?" question. And I don't feel I have one. Almost like a hodgepodge of styles. And I guess my "lifestyle" feels the same. I'm a wannabee? I dunno

I have a hermit lifestyle. It involves avoiding people, as much as possible. I'm a city hermit now, but I plan to be a country hermit one day.

Going by this definition, then no.

I didn't purposefully seek to have a lifestyle. It developed by itself, the more I stopped caring what others think and stopped trying to fit in.

I must say I always thought it was one of those fashionable words: "lifestyle". IF I have a lifestyle, it would be a very restricted one, as my life is. I suppose my lifestyle is defined by my obsessions: beauty (art and antiques, all cheaply bought at jumble sales), books (English literature, ghost stories, poetry and everything about the UK, 19th century England, pets and women), my dog and cats... I model my life mostly on how a genteel woman of little means would have lived it in 19th century England: I am a woman of leisure (not out of choice) and small means too, so I fill my days with household duties (which I perform myself, of course), bracing walks (constitutionals), the required social contact (family, some neighbours, one dear female friend), reading, needlework, drawing and painting. I dislike excess and uncivility. So I suppose I cling to a lifestyle for which there is really no place in this modern world...

That does sound like a real lifestyle. And a very nice one!

I'm a country hermit based upon the same criteria. It evolved out of a mix of fortune and intent. I always find a way to incorporate nature into my routine no matter what else is going on.

Seems to me I actually had more of a lifestyle when there was less fortune and intent involved. When I was homeless the only thing I cared about was keeping a low profile and surviving. That was the closest I ever came to living completely in the present moment which is a high priority for me.

I wasn't aware that one had to build a lifestyle. I figured you just is what you is and whatever happens hey well that's it.

I think NTs are more obsessed with that, cause they wanna fit in. So they wanna drive a car that matches their tastes and thoughts, live in a place where everybody is just like them, dress like the others who think like them, and all that. We know we are different anyway so we care less about what our peers are doing. I don't look for a place to live cause it has people "like me" - if it is cheap, fits my stuff in it, and is close to public transportation, it is good enough for me.

The style of life topic

I am a writer/philosopher/student of my Autistic life. I also dabble in NTness, studying them, trying to figure it all out.

Your lifestyle doesn't have to be about meeting others like you. Your lifestyle can be YOURS only. What makes it a lifestyle is the harmony between your life and your self, not between your life and that of someone else.

A life is what you have; a lifestyle is what you do with it.

My harmony comes from avoiding the things that throw me off balance or make me feel bad about myself. I avoid people, artificial environments, polluted food-air-water, meds. I welcome only those things that create health and well being for me.

This means organic food, holistic healing and communing with nature. If I can get some fast flowing water or the ocean in there somewhere I'm doing really good.

A life without pleasure or pain would be satisfactory but usually what I get are the extremes. Whatever I choose in the way of lifestyle it is supposed to level out those extremes. To merely survive sometimes requires superhuman powers of resourcefulness.

That's exactly how I came to have a lifestyle. Gradually, without noticing, my life took on a certain pattern that reflects me, and that was through avoiding what is not me, what throws me off balance, what feels artificial and extraneous to me.

What's good about having a lifestyle is that it feels like belonging. But I don't live to serve my lifestyle. The lifestyle serves me. Otherwise, it becomes enslavement.