Well, for a start, it's safe to assume you're not a woman or a minority. And even if you're a young healthy white male, your quality of life would be significantly worse in the 1820s. Not only would you lose access to a lot of the everyday conveniences of life today, you're also far more likely to die a young and painful death from any number of disease.
Conveniences don't make life worth living, and a long life doesn't mean a good life. Do you really think people, on average, enjoyed their lives less back then? I don't
Well, enjoyment or happiness is tricky to measure because happiness = reality - expectation. So people in the 1820s might've been "happy" enough because they simply didn't know a better life like today's was a possibility. There's no reason to think they were happier than today's population though. And certainly, you as someone who experienced today's conveniences will not be happy long term if all those were taken away suddenly.
I've spent the best years of my life living in the woods and in wall-less huts w/ no water, plumbing or electricity. Imho our modern conveniences don't make life any richer, and in many cases take away the pleasure of things we take for granted. If I had medical problems I would probably feel differently.
Uh huh. What were you wearing? Did you sew your own clothes and grow your own cotton for those clothes? There's a surprising amount of "on the grid" work that afforded you the ability to live "off the grid".
There's also a big difference between living in a part of the world where the woods provide a relatively temperate climate. Try living out in the forest to Papua New Guinea with 100% humidity.
By the way, try to make sure you don't accidentally get bitten by a rabid animal because the cure for rabies wasn't invented until the 1880s.
I feel like you are probably taking a lot of things for granted. Clothes, food, equipment, vehicles, etc. Heck, even just the ability to choose to live in a hut in the woods.
