Running Toward a Future

I was thinking about the primitive life today in class. About the possibility of living on land and hunting and gardening to store food for periods of time. Simple cabin life. I feel like I'm in the rat race, or A rat race. People in cities are generally running toward something, there's always a rush. The rush I feel is more of a personal, self-induced rat race within myself. I know I want land, not necessarily in the US, and a simple home where I can live in some sort of balance with the land around me. Oh, and it needs some sort of water access. But I'm rushing towards this dream because I know there is a trade off. I need security apart from being able to afford these goals, so I need to get a job and earn lots of money. At the same time, I know I need to begin following this dream goal before I'm too old to do all the things I'd like.
It's like one needs capital to reach the goal, but the capital has to be gained quickly enough so that the work involved with that lifestyle is still possible. I'm taking so long to get a degree that I'm afraid I'll be too old to adequately live that sort of life. Ideally I would work and live very cheaply and start investing and creating larger savings so that I could get land and the house and then live off of the investments I've made, to cover costs that come up and possible worldly travels.
If I get a government job and retire and leave the country I'm not sure if I can still reap the benefits of my retirement since I left. I'm not sure how complicated it would be to manage investments out of country either, or if I would have to learn the system of wherever I am and invest there. I feel it's a matter of living cheaply and only paying for what is a big part of your life or what you think may be a big part down the line. All I know is I'm getting older and I'm still in the same position as when I was a young teenager. I need to pick up the pace and get the gears turning, after I'm done with the forced day-to-day of college. Sometimes it's hard to take one day at a time.