Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 643)
Hello Everyone!
The scope of challenges, Pesky technological hurdles, Life still happens, More hiking & Sandpapering the psyche!
It is another rainy morning here and I slept in a bit later than usual because I was up late racking my brain on how to move forward in life. I should probably just go back to sleep because between all the wacky dreams that I had and being up late I am feeling rather rough around the edges but hey it is best not to let my sleep cycle get skewed if I can at all help it.
This morning I am drawing a total blank here and just keep staring at the blinking cursor as if it will unlock some part of my mind and let the words start flowing... but every time that a thought begins to form it gets overshadowed by thinking about my current plight. Which yeah keeps weighing on me a bit heavier each day and I keep failing to find a way free from it.
The scope of the challenges that I am facing are rather extreme and although I keep expressing that I have reached a 'dead-end in life' I doubt the severity of that statement is something that I am adequately conveying. Do not worry because I will not be diving into all that at the moment but yeah the prospect of losing everything I have worked for in life is so frigging palpable that I cannot ignore it.
As I was saying the other week the losses I have incurred over the last several years are wearing on me and yeah they (the losses) have left me in an all around worse spot than I was in when I first began this phase of my life. Sure I am in a better place mentally and emotionally but whoa the 'price of admission' has been a costly one!
I really should avoid that line of thought because it never leads me anywhere good but my pragmatic mind is screaming at me that I have failed, my efforts have been wasted and now when it is too damn late I am frantically searching for a way to turn it all around. Which yeah is so much 'easier said than done' that I may as well quit saying it altogether and avoid the frustration!
As much as it may seem like I have taken on a defeatist attitude... rest assured I have not! If that were the case I would have quit trying to think my way out of the blind alley that I find myself in and shuttered my problem-solving mindset altogether instead of continuing to grope in the dark for solutions. I also damn sure would not be complicating my life by reaching out to friends, family and total strangers whilst looking for solutions!
Sure a lot of folks fail to see how significant reaching out like that (or just communicating with folks) is for me and while it is extremely uncomfortable for me I keep doing it. Do not worry because yeah I am thankful that there are folks to turn to but ugh does it stir up all kinds of things that lead me to hermiting... and primarily not communicating with folks to start with outside of these entries. Which yeah is a pretty one sided affair but meh!
Honestly, had I not constantly ran into one technological hurdle after another when making videos and podcasts this entire vein of long-winded writing may well not have emerged as it did in the first place. One of the more persistent frustrations that I face with the content stuff is folks inability to grasp how difficult it is to manage and upload large files from a remote area over a dodgy cellular connection.
As with most things (at least in western countries) folks have no clue how challenging uploading even a one hundred megabyte file is and yeah most videos (and even podcast given my long-winded nature) tend to be well over that size no matter how I compress them! I mean even if the upload succeeds it sometimes takes hours and yeah during that time I cannot use the internet (or the phone) for anything else.
Then there are things like throttling (after so much data is used) and other things like the phone itself overheating or just crashing altogether... because surprise surprise those cheap phones (which is all I can ever afford) are frigging trash to start with and are in no way meant to be used in the way that I use them for extended tethering/hot-spotting purposes!
I am not complaining there and am merely making an observation but the kind of stuff 'normal' folks can do over the internet (and often take for granted) are either incredibly time consuming or just flat out impossible in these kinds of scenarios. I know that I have written extensively about all that jazz before but lately I have found it incredibly annoying when folks fail to grasp such a simple thing... and yeah I do not even want to begin delving into the problems the weather creates in that regard!
What I am driving at there is that sure I love writing, I do not so much mind that it has become my main form of content creation but whoa making videos (or podcasts) is way simpler, less time consuming (given a real internet connection) and all around more appealing to folks given it takes very little attention span (which seems like all most folks have these days) and by and large a much more profitable route from a content creator perspective.
Something that I realized along the way though: Is that personally I do not give a damn about the profit potential, the short attention span of others, nor that most folks cannot follow a train of thought that involves more than two-hundred and fifty characters. Because yeah, apparently folks would rather knee-jerk over blurbs of pseudo-information (or make others knee-jerk) than invest their time into actual dialogue, discourse, debate, rationale, understanding, logic, critical thinking... or thinking in general!
I mean really how folks became so reactionary and inflammatory with no real purpose (or often intelligence) behind it is a mystery to me. All I can surmise is that it is what folks actually want to be doing... because it is 'easy' and fits their lazy mentality in such a way that they can feel better about themselves... for having shared their myopic opinion with... wait for it... other folks who also share, foster and validate myopic opinions whilst wholly espousing: That the facts be damned!
Of course much of the above is probably inflammatory but hey at least I did it with more attention span than, a gnat on a high wind! Which yeah is the best way that I have yet to describe what I am talking about there! I mean honestly just look around at the pure drivel that folks take to heart as the truth, get absolutely fixated on and never entertain that perhaps they are wrong... like anyone with half a brain should do about everything... but hey I best digress before I really start ranting and raving here!
Alright, it looks like I got off on quite the tangent there earlier in the day and alas I think that it ran its course and I should get on to writing about something else! The weather never improved today and if anything it seems to have settled in and although it is not raining all that hard... it is still steadily raining! Like I said the other day this entire week is looking super dodgy with the weather and it will be hit or miss (but mostly miss) on getting anything done outdoors.
That also means getting in any hikes is going to be tricky. While I am fully committed to getting the hiking firmly lodged into my daily routines... I am not so committed as doing it in the rain! Sure if I was interested in continuing to do maintenance on this site it would not be a big deal... because walking around in the rain is something that can reveal what is happening with the water (and what needs to be done about it or not) but seriously I will pass on that given the scenario!
It really is all to easy to just keep working on things around here that need doing (like picking up sticks out of the road) but whoa the only thing besides my daily routines (and of course packing down) that I am inclined to do at this point is being watchful for ne'er-do-wells, wildfires and things of that nature. Basically, anything that falls within the 'safety and security' fields I have to do regardless... so if any of that comes up... yup I will be on it (working) if I can and/or have to be!
Not to get too far into that line of thinking but yeah 'life is still happening' while I am trying to get moved and all kinds of day to day stuff is still going to pop up that will need to be dealt with one way or another. Earlier this morning I was trying to word down to myself what it felt like being in that position and the closest that I got to with it was: It is as if rough sandpaper is getting drug across the surface of my psyche!
Okay, it is now much later in the afternoon and the sun finally came out so I was able to get in some hiking, pick more grapes and get caught up on my routine chores. It is still a bit overcast so it did not get super hot outside but whoa it is incredibly muggy after all that rainfall. There was so much rain that for the first time in quite some time now there was water pooled in the meadow.
I doubt that most of that water that I saw today will remain there for very long (due to evaporation) but if it keeps raining heavily it may well do so until all this weather clears up in another week or so. Most of the storms are supposed to be rolling in late in the day (or at night) so perhaps a good bit of the water will soak in before the sun comes out the following day.
Alright, it is getting close to sunset now and the rain has already returned so yup it is looking like it will be another soggy evening. Thankfully it held off just long enough that I could get all the critters fed and do all my routine end of the day chores without getting heavily rained on.
Overall, it was a rather drab day and I think the highlight of it for me was taking a late day nap! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
I went through a few of your "apocalyptic homesteading* posts. I quite actually like the idea. Not a lot of people willing to shift lifestyles 😎🙏Looking forward to seeing your content on my feed
Glad you enjoyed them. Been living this lifestyle for quite some time now and a lot of folks are wise not to make the shift. Its a rough ride at first and that weeds most folks out in the first few years.
Cheers and Hive on!
I can only think, you are literally surving by yourself your own environment with minimalistic attitude and thats good 👌
For sure not alot of people will do that willingly though.. Even myself included, I like the comfortable life too much😂😂