Day 150 151. (TFC Working Long Hours On My Book, Sleeping Erratically & Enjoying A Reprieve From The Cold Weather)

The last several days I have been rather immersed in working on my book about my last journey and I have to say that I have grown quite obsessed with getting it all to the point where I can seriously look at it for editing and eventually publishing.

As I have stated before the bulk of the work I have been doing has been to get all the text of the book into one file in chronological order and also get it all spell checked. Late last night I finally got those things accomplished and realized that in the future there are several things that I should do when archiving text material to make that process less daunting. Fortunately I was rather meticulous with archiving everything and am thankful that I had the foresight to do so because otherwise it would have been a much more difficult challenge to get all the text in chronological order.

Once I got all the text into a single file I sighed one heck of a mental sigh of relief because I have been working towards that goal for quite some time now. Even though I still need to proofread everything and do a lot of editing (especially with breaking many of the entries into paragraphs) I decided to hammer out some simple ebooks in various formats for the draft itself. Mostly I wanted to just have something to share with my Patreon patrons but I also wanted to begin learning some of the 'ins and outs' of ebook creation.

The whole 'book thing' has been one heck of a process and although I am far from being finished I am at least feeling rather good about the overall progress thus far. I have no idea on when I will be finished with the editing and proofreading (especially because there are over four hundred thousand words) but I am going to continue plugging away at it for the remainder of the winter and will hopefully have completed that phase of things by late springtime.

My plan is to just keep plugging away at it all and not overly stress myself about it along the way and do far that seems to be a good strategy.

Anyway. I don't really have much else to report other than my sleep cycle has been rather erratic because my compulsion to work on that book has been keeping me awake late and I often find myself napping at odd hours.

Well that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

Day 152 153. (TFC Relentlessly Editing My Book, Getting Better At Editing & Staying Hunkered Down In The Shelter)

It has been a couple of chilly days and for the most part I have done my best to just stay indoors and avoid getting out in the weather.

Today it poured rain for much of the day and I wound up having to re-install my big umbrella over the coffee cart again so that I could brew some coffee without the stove's burners getting drenched.

Mostly I have been spending very long hours editing my book and am gradually making some good headway in that regard. By long hours I mean that I am putting in somewhere between six and twelve hours a day on it.

By the time I am done working on the book each day I am absolutely 'over' doing anything that has anything to do with words!

When I started making those Daily posts (at the last place) it was because I could not share my videos each day and I had zero intention at first of perhaps making them into a book someday and all the editing that I have been doing shows just how true that statement is!

The book thing is a massive undertaking at this point and I really hope that in the end it will all be worth it.

For the most part the early portion of the book has taken some heavy editing to make it more 'readable' which has also resulted in the overall word count growing even larger. I was hoping to slim it down a bit during the editing process but apparently the opposite is true!

Hopefully by the end of the week I will have a more polished version of an ebook to share with you all than the rough draft that I previously shared a few days ago.

Anyway that is about all for now and I am going to wrap this up and get back to doing more editing. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

Day 154 155 156 157. (TFC Whoa Too Many Days In The Title, Losing Track Of The Days & Rambling On About The Status Of My Life)

Along the way of my stay here at Fantastica I got a wee bit off on my dates (with what Daily Posts' day I am on) and after doing some checking with a time calculator I found that I was two days off with my posts. Since I am trying to keep a somewhat accurate record I decided to 'make up' for those missing days in this post so that future posts will be on track with the actual number of days that I have been here at the new place, living my new adventure and continuing to share my journey along the way.

I will try to avoid having the miscalculation occur again but I think that it might be wise to occasionally check for the accuracy of the daily number. Honestly working with all the text (Daily Posts) from my last journey has my head so full of numbers (from the daily log) that I am surprised that I can even keep up with these new posts as well as I have.

It is difficult to describe but it is like the previous thousand plus days are all swirling around in my mind as so many fragmented memories/days/dates/times which somehow align with images, posts, videos, podcasts, text and dates when significant events occurred. Somehow I need to drag my attention (perhaps kicking and screaming) back into the 'now' of realtime and start focusing on what day it currently is and get my mind back on track the best that I can in that regard so that it does not feel so damn cluttered!

Assuredly having all that stuff running through my head is helping with the book editing process as well as giving me the perspective that I need to gain some sort of 'closure' over my last endeavor at That Old Farm but all that said, it is a bit overwhelming delving into all those memories and rutting around like a blind pig trying to perhaps find an acorn and although nothing quite makes the process easy or simple... there is a certain satisfaction that I feel each time that I spend a long day editing the book and gaining a small (albeit marginal) amount of new perspective along the way.

With all the book editing (and reading the text) that I have been doing I have noticed just how much of a shift occurred along the course of that adventure, not just in my writing but also in myself and how I chose/choose to express myself. Changing the primary platforms that I was sharing through (from Facebook to Patreon and Steemit) seems to have helped tremendously in my own personal evolution. I am unsure if it is wholly that the 'audience' changed or because I began gaining revenue from what I was posting but perhaps it was a combination of both that resulted in me 'growing into' who I have become in that regard.

Another thing that I noticed while editing/reading is that overall when my friend began giving me rides to the stores (and post office) I vastly mentally/emotionally benefited from our often long and insightful conversations. Aside from the conversations I think that just smiling and laughing more (because of our banter) helped tremendously to help me keep things in perspective.

That perspective was extremely helpful as things 'wound down' at That Old Farm and I found myself scrambling to find a new place and simultaneously cope with all my 'hurt feelings' concerning how much work, time and effort that I had put into not just building a homestead there but also improving the property in general. I guess that it could be said that my 'blood sweat and tears' fell on deaf ears as far as the owners of that place go and fortunately during that time I had someone authentic and sincere to confide in.

There towards the end of things there were numerous people that made my finding and ultimate transition to a new place possible and who the hell knows where I would be right now without them. It is always a tricky damn prospect to find a new place (especially the last many years with the dogs) but ultimately I landed somewhere that is a vast improvement in every way compared to my last scenario.

Do not get me wrong with that last paragraph because it was definitely a lot of work to get myself setup here from scratch on a raw piece of land. Fortunately I had some help in that regard from some of the folks here which really made all the difference because I went from living in a tent to living in a cabin (that we built) in a mere fifty days! For anyone that has done such a thing you can absolutely appreciate what a rapid transition that is and for those who do not know... everything always takes longer than we think it will!

All that jazz aside. I have been operating at a deficit of late and if it were not for the kindness of the folks here and their willingness to feed me I do not know what sort of shape I would be in physically/mentally/emotionally so a massive kudos to them for holding true to their word even though I had hoped to be 'pulling my own weight' in regards to food by now.

Much of the revenue that I generated since my arrival here went to building the cabin (and dog yard) and several gadgets that improved my quality of life and my ability to do work, like (but not limited to) my electric chainsaw and all the WiFi routers that it took to get the internet to reach me out here in the woods which has made so much possible!

Anyway, I basically spent the revenue that I should have been squirreling away for the winter and although I definitely do not regret my purchases, I am looking forward to the day when I can buy my own groceries and mayhaps even contribute more than manual labor, land advice and technical support for the folks here. The last thing that I want to do is 'strain' the situation here because thus far it has been pretty damn fantastic and not stressful at all!

I feel rather confident that over time I will reach a better balance here by being more self-sufficient but I also want to be a 'part' of this homestead and not just living independently within it's boundaries. Which in and of itself is (to say the least) an odd feeling for me because I generally prefer my independence. Perhaps I am growing... or perhaps I am just around folks that bring out the best in me... or mayhaps both.

Well this post has grown much longer than I intended it to be and I better wrap it up, get it edited and get the hell on with my day because this damn book will not edit itself!

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.