Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 529)

almost 2 years ago

Hello Everyone!

The morning stillness, Breaking the comfort zone twice, Getting ogled, Meeting folks & Yeah I need a nap!

It is still early in the morning here and I actually woke up before six so that is rather nice. Last night I fell asleep a good bit earlier than when I have been in the hope that I would wake up close to four o'clock and while not perfect I did succeed in getting closer to that time!

I have assuredly missed that early morning stillness that I enjoy so much and also having that extra time to write at the beginning of the day so perhaps I can start getting back on track with doing it more often. I am not going to push myself too hard to achieve it but like I said yesterday it would be nice to re-gain my usual sleeping and napping cycles.

Anyway, today is the big day for that game that I play and whoa has it been a grueling few weeks waiting for the arrival of today! I am definitely going to need a long nap before this evening when the online ladder begins but I think that will not be all that difficult to achieve given how early that I am awake this morning.

A while back I had mentioned how I had 'conditions' for letting myself play the game. Well, somehow I managed to achieve the majority of them over the last few weeks and only have the shelf that the computer rests on to tidy up and the storage in the attic left undone.

The storage project is still on hold but the other thing I plan on doing sometime today which will not be all that difficult considering it is relatively uncluttered and I mainly just want to deal with the dust. Out of all of my 'conditions' that I had set having one or two undone things is by far no big deal and overall I feel pretty good that I will not have them nagging at me!

I am still planning on sacrificing some habit (or habits) as a compromise with myself for backpedaling on my word about never playing that game again. It is also worth noting that sans my (nearly desperate) need for a social life I doubt that I would have done any 'pedaling' at all whether it be in the forward or backwards direction!

I have still not fully committed to that course of action even though I have mostly cut out sugar and yeah it is definitely first in line on the proverbial chopping block. Cutting out any of the things that I enjoy in life is dodgy to start with but I figured that I would start with one of the easiest things and go from there.

Mainly all that has more to do with looking after my health than anything else but I also think that any such 'victories' will be good for me mentally at my current juncture. Unlike many folks I do not have some turbulent relationship with what I consider to be my vices but changing things up some just seems appealing to me at the moment... hence me mulling it over for weeks now!

That said I am in no way going to commit to anything in these entries even though for a while there I did think that doing so might help in the process. Instead I am just going to keep my mouth shut and see what transpires over the coming weeks without making a bunch of fuss about it beforehand.

On a different note, last night I got to finally test out how adding more RAM to my computer affected my audio editing because I was putting together a few mixtapes to listen to during my gaming activities. I dunno if it is just me but whoa does it seem a heck of a lot faster at crunching those large audio files than it used to be which is nice because that has always been a time consuming process.

Gah! What a wacky morning it has been! Well, it is now afternoon but meh it is all blending together at this point and one thing is for sure I am definitely going to nap good today! I do not know if I really have it in me to spell everything out so I will try to keep it brief so this does not turn into a novel of an entry.

The last few months I have been avoiding ordering tobacco online just so that I could start curbing some of my habit with it given that all the stress has left me smoking more than I usually do... which yeah is a lot anyway but that is beside the point. Anyway, I figured if I ever got too hard up I could always walk to a nearby (relatively speaking) store and just get whatever they have available.

After consulting the 'all knowing' internet last night I discovered that the store opens at nine in the morning which I thought was nice because I could hike down to it before the heat of the day struck. As it turned out though there was a note on the door saying they would not be open until close to noon!

Now I am a rather patient person and all but hanging out on the side of the road getting ogled by all the passerbys (because yeah I literally know no one around here even though I have been here for well over a year) just was not all that appealing. But another fellow arrived (via foot also) at the same time I did so we sat around shooting the shit for the better part of an hour before he split and not long afterwards I did the same.

By the time that I got back to the homestead I was pretty beat which was mainly the result of walking on the narrow uneven shoulder of the road and having to get away from the edge of the road every time a vehicle was approaching. Call me crazy for not walking on the less than one foot wide (at its widest) piece of pavement beside the white line on the edge of the road while cars zipped by inches away!

Anyway, after making the hike back empty handed I was like well I can take it as a sign and not get tobacco or I can wait a few hours and try again. Of course I tried again because having made the trek once I knew what I was in for and feining out for nicotine (and basically being distracted) while gaming tonight for the ladder was wholly unappealing and not acceptable in my opinion!

To be clear here I had ran out of tobacco a few days ago and am pretty good at not letting it get to me the way that it gets to most folks after just a few hours of going without the stuff. As a side note I have also ran out for days at time before while here and never walked to the store.

That said though I had reached a point where I was like 'well it is go cold turkey' (which yeah is a horrible idea) or break out of my comfort zone, risk my OPSEC and hike my happy ass on down the road!

Obviously I chose the latter not once but twice today and still have all kinds of mixed feelings over it. But hey I got some really cheap cigarettes because they lacked any rolling (loose leaf) tobacco, some hard seltzer just for the heck of it and a few strong coffee drinks because after all the damned hiking I will need them later tonight when I am gaming!

I know that walking to the store is not a big deal to most folks but for anyone that knows me they know just how out of the norm (and like I said my comfort zone) doing so is for me. Like I have said in past entries the moment folks figure out that there is someone living alone without a vehicle somewhere it just paints a target on them for the more nefarious elements of society.

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know how 'paranoid' that sounds but it is a simple truth and if folks cannot swallow it I highly suggest they give it a try sometime and find out why I have that 'rule' to start with. I mean obviously if you do not own a vehicle in this country you are a dirtbag to start with and if you have bad teeth (like I do) you are equally obviously also an untrustworthy drug addict to boot!

Most of the time I will take a 'hard pass' on exposing myself or my life to the locals and have no illusions that I somehow actually 'fit into' any part of the society in this country... and kind of do not want to considering how toxic it is. Which is a big part of just staying on site, doing my routines and making my shopping trip to the next town over once a month and calling it good enough!

That once a month (every six or seven weeks lately) trip to the store is often complete overload for me to start with but honestly being able to wear a mask the last few years at least spares me folks judgmental stares every time I open my mouth. Basically, the silver lining of being treated like a decent human being in public has not gone unnoticed for me the last few years!

It should go without saying that I do not give a damn what folks that are not my friends think about me (and even that I dose with the proverbial grain of salt) but that superficial judgment sure does get my hackles up. I get it though because it sure is convenient to pigeon-hole folks and thus side-step being decent (or simply humane) to them out of some self-entitled sense of personal insecurity and false superiority.

Undoubtedly my life has been a difficult one full of failures, mistakes and all that jazz that is a part of growing older but at the end of the day all that stuff has repeatedly failed to make me 'turn to the dark side' or just become some shitheel with no moral compass, a broken integrity and all the 'ethics' of a ne'er-do-well hellbent on doing wrong in the world.

Believe me I have met plenty of folks like that in the course of my life and have studiously eliminated them from my life one by one as necessary. So, to be clear there yeah I know what the heck that I am talking about when it comes to that stuff and there is a damn good reason that I can count my actual friends on less than one full hand and am not interested in making more.

Well, that all got a bit 'ranty' and there are parts of today that I am omitting out of wisdom (because I live in a very small town) but suffice it to say that not all my interactions today left me feeling (wholeheartedly) like my faith in humanity is intact. Most of my interactions were pleasant enough, cordial and downright friendly but there always seems to be that one person (that I somehow always happen to meet) that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Like I have said numerous times before... for the last many years I prefer my social interactions to be conducted on the other side of my firewall. Which just so happens to be a good way to keep my mental firewall from having to work double-time!

Anyway, somehow today I got more potatoes planted, got all my routine chores done and am now really pushing the clock if I am going to squeeze in a nap before tonight when that game's ladder begins. I even got a normal hike in and got to get a better look at how the cherries are doing on some of the other trees. For some reason all the short squat trees are loaded with them but the taller (more spindly) trees do not have many of them at all.

Okay, I just have to cut this short, call it good enough, get it edited so that I can get that much needed nap! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.