The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 255-261)

avatar
(Edited)

Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.

A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!

The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.

I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.

The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.

TL;DR: There is no tl;dr because you should have more patience and attention span than a gnat on a high wind.

[End Introduction]

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 255-261!

Day 255-256. (TFC Getting More Chilly Weather, Helping Bug Test That Blockchain Game, Trading More Cryptocurrency & Pretty Much Just Enjoying Staying Cozy In The Shelter)

Hopefully all this chilly weather is over now! The last several days have been mostly sunny but there has still been quite the chill to the air which has repeatedly lead me to going from 'wow it is a nice day outside' to backpedaling on that sentiment (after going outside) and returning indoors where it is nice and cozy! It really has been a rather mild spring here and I have no complaints in that regard even though the rain has been an inconvenience (and a hindrance to progress on a few projects) overall I prefer this sort of weather to it being cold, rainy and windy which has been the case for me the last few springs.

For the most part I have spent my time indoors the last few days helping bug test (and troubleshoot) that Exode game for the Hive blockchain and I have also been very active helping others in the game's chat room as well as managing the account that I have been using to sell the game's card packs on the user market. Like I have said before the card selling is an experiment for me on whether I can create a new job for myself that might eventually turn out to be profitable one in the long run. At this point I have put a tremendous amount of time into it all over the last few weeks and although I have mostly been 'glued to the computer screen' I have not been wasting any time on things that are not adding to the quality of my life and have been tirelessly working towards bringing some more stability to my financial scenario which I desperately need to do at this point.

Speaking of 'financial stability' I have been doing a good bit of cryptocurrency trading and mostly keeping an eye on the price of Bitcoin because of the 'halving event' that happened late in the afternoon yesterday. For the most part I have been turning a very small amount (of my very marginal amount) of Bitcoin into USD every time that the price shoots above the amount that I bought the Bitcoin for initially. I have also been using Bitcoin to purchase Hive when the price of Hive is low and the price of Bitcoin is high. Doing such small transactions does not provide large profit margins but it has been providing some profit which I am then using to buy more of those game cards (card packs) to sell on the user market. It might all seem convoluted but keep in mind that I earned the initial cryptocurrency that I began trading with via my author rewards on Hive so it is not like I am investing a bunch of fiat money or anything like that.

It is always difficult to write out all the stuff that I do online (or with technology in general) and I often feel like it just is not all that appealing of a subject matter for most folks but slowly (ever so slowly) I am finding that I actually enjoy writing about that stuff because it is something that I feel rather passionate about and also spend a heck of a lot of time doing one way or another. I guess that it all goes back to my inclination of 'sticking to my genre' (or 'staying in my lane' so to speak) but really my life would be very difficult to live the way that I do if I did not use all this technology at my disposal. In other words it has (and probably always will be) an integral part of my homesteading life and I think that it is important to include it all so that folks can see what is 'behind the scenes' providing me with the financial means to not just 'get by' but to also be able to invest in my various projects.
I think that the transparency is important because it paints a much larger picture of what my life is really like.

Without all the technology I would undoubtedly have a much lower quality of life than I have because it would essentially lead to me having to hunt for odd jobs which I dislike doing because I am such a homebody to start with and getting 'involved' at other folks' homes and doing their projects always leads to being much more of a headache than it is really worth. I used to really enjoy working for other folks but over time I realized that I never quite had time for my own projects and endeavors and always seemed to 'absorb' the stress of other folks' lives in such a way that it was detrimental to my overall attitude and well-being. I also found along the way that I have a profound distaste for being exposed to folks' domestic lives and everything that entails. Perhaps I am a bit delusional but I reached a point where I just could not and would not sacrifice my own happiness and well-being for the sake of low hourly wages or 'money' in general so go figure.

Of course those were decisions that I made many years ago now and I do not regret making them especially since they seemed to play a significant role in me overcoming my chronic depression, improving my health and in general just 'feeling better' overall. There has of course been hardships along the way and lots of learning curves as I figured out (and continue to figure out) how to generate the marginal amount of revenue that I need each month but so far it is all working because the dogs never go hungry and more often than not I can afford the little things (like coffee) that bring me so much joy. As far as lifestyle choices go I undoubtedly could have chosen much worse!

Well, I once again do not have much to write about and am going to wrap this up and get on with my day. Sorry about the odd posting times of late but I have been extremely busy each morning working online and have been focused on that stuff instead of writing as soon as I wake up each day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

IMG_20200513_190040.jpg

All the leaves have mostly returned to the trees now!

Day 257-261. (TFC Taking A Little Break From Writing Each Day, Focusing On Helping With Game Development, Thinking About My Overall Health
& Building A Chicken Coop)

The weather has been really nice all week and besides a small rain shower during the night a few days ago it has not even been raining. It has been rather cool at night but in no way has it been chilly or anything and most evenings I have been able to sleep comfortably without the use of a blanket. At this point it is probably safe to say that the cold weather has passed and the warmer days are finally here to stay at last. Like I have said before it was a rather mild spring but whoa all the flip-flopping that it did between warm and cold just made me want to scream 'make up your damn mind one way or another and either be warm or just be frigging cold!'

The last many days I have been in a hyper-focused state with my attention mostly riveted to everything involved with that eXode Hive blockchain game that is currently being developed. As a side note the game name is actually spelled 'eXode' but I like spelling it EXODE in all capitals just because I like how the word looks spelled big like that. If I had written each day about my endeavors it probably would not seem so daunting to me to have to try to re-cap things in a way that makes them understandable (and that makes some damn sense) as to what I have been doing and why I have been doing it.

Like I have said before I just sort of stumbled upon the game when I was perusing my Hive follower feed and decided to look into it further to see what it was about, make sure it was not some scammy scheme, see if it was something that I might be interested in and basically give it (and its developers) the due diligence that I give any project that captures my attention. What followed has been an interesting journey and as I have detailed in other posts over the last few weeks my 'due diligence' panned out in such a way that I found myself writing articles about the game, buying some of the game's digital assets (my first ever real investment) and then later setting up an account just for buying and selling the packs and the cards of the game itself as an experiment to see if I could successfully operate a 'novel store' without driving it so far into the red that it would ultimately fail which was something that I was quite concerned about.

To backtrack a little here, I knew that going into this newly emerging gaming community that I really needed to give it my best and develop a good reputation as a reputable bug tester, digital asset seller/reseller, fan of the game and in general as a person. That last bit was not all that hard given my last few years of activity being written to a blockchain where others could look at it all and know that the information written there is unalterable and absolutely transparent for anyone to look at and see for themselves what I have been up to. In other words the big part of the reputation building was actually just a matter of me using my real name in the game's chat room so that folks could directly associate me with my account on Hive.

Something that I quickly learned about the game's chat room was that during certain parts of the day the (game's official reps and developer) were sleeping and the way the time zones work out it is during the period in the evening when I am usually the most active online. The other thing that I noticed early on (a few weeks ago) is that most of the folks involved (both official and unofficial alike) were mostly new users to the Hive blockchain and the myriad of frontends and tools (decentralized applications) for interacting with it which amounted to me doing my best to educate others in such a way that they could then educate others as well and also me working with a bunch of folks on an individual basis to help solve whatever problem(s) that they were facing.

Basically I found myself voluntarily being 'tech support' during the time when all the officials (in the other time zone) were resting. Lets face it no one likes to show up to get help with a game (or anything really) after they have made a purchase, encountered difficulties/problems, go through the trouble of finding an avenue for getting help just to find out everyone is sleeping and that there is no one to talk to. Since I was already staying glued to the store (selling the card packs) it was no biggie to help folks and was/is something that I would do anyway just because I actually do enjoy helping others.

Along the way of my journey with this gaming community I have had a lot of laughs, learned a lot of things about the game, found a lot of bugs in the website, helped troubleshoot problems, made a bunch of user experience modification suggestions and found that many of them were rapidly done by the developer and the site quickly updated to reflect the changes, I got to teach folks about Hive, I got to meet new and interesting people, I made an unofficial fan badge and issued it to all the people that are card holders for the game and I also made a heck of a lot of memes for the game! I wound up even making a downloadable 'meme pack' and sharing it online which was a first for me and during the process I learned a few new graphic arts techniques which is something that I have never been all that awesome at. Making art is always fun one way or another but sometimes it is good if absolutely no one cringes at the quality of it!

In other words what I am saying here is that I went way down into the eXode video game rabbit warren and of course very little of it has had to do with any actual real gaming because the testing part of the game's playable alpha is not where my focus with the game has been because I have mostly worked on the user experience with the card packs, the website delivery page, the website collections page and the user market on the website. I have been keeping up with what the game's alpha testers are doing and the developer's continual roll out of improvements, fixes, ideas and announcements and whoa I dunno how one person could do so much and simultaneously be so present (and responsive) in the chat room(s) that are devoted to the game. Hats off to them because they do it all rather gracefully and all the interactions that I have had and witnessed have been very sincere and even candid!

Along with doing all that stuff for the better part of eighteen hours a day during the last many days I have also been trading a good bit of cryptocurrency around which worked out pretty good because I was able to use the small profits that the trades made to bolster my game store's inventory as well as sell some discounted assets just to help out new players who could not otherwise afford to do so. As much as it was helpful to others I also wanted to test my ability to manage the game store account, start building the store's reputation and learn whatever I could by interacting with those using the store in a way that it would make doing it in the future easier on all parties. After all I am just a fan of the game and I have to know where my customer support ends (as an asset seller/purchaser) and the game's customer/technical support begins so that solutions can be found via the appropriate channel.

Given that everything is written to a blockchain it is pretty damn easy to all agree on what transactions have and/or have not occurred in an absolutely trustless fashion that is irrefutable in its authenticity. That single component (the blockchain) makes communicating and dealing with other humans a heck of a lot easier because fear, suspicion, doubt and distrust does not hold a whole lot of traction when everything is being permanently recorded in an unalterable way to a publicly viewable public ledger!

All of which is not to say that there is not (nor will not be) frustrations along the way and especially for those that are new to utilizing the technology because blockchain transactions take time to complete. In a world where everyone is accustomed to just 'clicking through' (or tapping through) everything they see on a screen and instantly something 'happens' they fail to have the understanding that blockchain transactions take time to be broadcast to the blockchain and then completed!

If we want the rewards of having an authentic irrefutable permanent record of our transactions/interactions then we also have to give it a little patience as it 'does its thing' in the background to ensure everything is legitimate and written to the immutable ledger. I just look at it all as a 'practice in patience' and it gives me the time that I need to double and triple check what I am doing for errors and now a few years into doing it the 'delay time' of blockchain transactions does not strike me as anything odd or out of the ordinary. What does strike me as odd is my previous inclination to just constantly 'click through' everything and not truly take my time along the way so go figure!

On a different note, the corn gardens across the creek have been pretty much wiped out at this point. At first the plants were growing rather slowly because the trees regained their leaves and the area of the gardens stays very shaded now but I figured at least some plants would make it and might even produce some stunted corn. What I did not anticipate was some critter (or many of them) going through the gardens, plucking up the germinated corn kernels, chewing off the tiny corn plants and leaving them to rot whilst either eating or running off with the kernels. There were literally hundreds of tiny corn plants that I found that was done to and honestly I felt pretty damn sad to see it because now it does not look like those gardens are going to produce anything unless I find something to plant in them that the critters will not eat or steal. I am thinking that beets might do well over there in those gardens because they are rather shade tolerant and hopefully will grow too large for the critters to steal. Honestly I am a bit discouraged about those gardens but I knew that planting a food plot like that in the woods had its risks.

Since I will soon be getting those four chickens (once they mature a bit) I decided to set to working on building a chicken coop for them in the dog yard and so far I like how the coop is coming along. I am using all the remaining decking boards that I have left (from that pre-built deck that we dismantled) as the framing for the coop and am thinking to cover the framing with the remainder of the old roofing metal that I have. Since the roofing metal is full of holes and I want to keep the inside of the coop dry I am thinking that before I install the roofing metal I am going to cover the entire structure in either tarps or in some plastic that I have stored away.

The chicken coop project has gotten a little out of hand because for now my shower is incorporated into it and the initial A-frame building that I made for the coop looks very appealing for usage as a place to put my big batteries, run my solar power to and setup a WiFi repeater in it so that I can perhaps solve some of my connectivity issues. There is still plenty of room for the chicken coop to be a part of the building but I am still debating on the whole thing so there is no telling how it will all turn out.

Although it has been nice to be getting outside and working on stuff between the time I spent doing that (and all the online stuff) I did not leave myself much time for my usual daily writing. After three odd years of doing the daily writing it really nags at me when I do not do it and I always feel like I am letting folks down and have precariously deviated from a routine that I have found enjoyable and even healthy for me.

As much as I have been enjoying doing my writing in the mornings and not at night when I am fatigued I should really stop doing it because it is eating up too many of daylight and I am just not nearly as productive outdoors as I need to be. I have to pick a time each day/evening to write and just stick to it because doing it that way (and consistently publishing around the same time each day) is something that I like to do for myself because I like the 'stability' and routine of it as well as offering some consistency to my readers. Always feeling the inspiration to write each day at the same time is a bit slippery but I have managed to do it before so hopefully I will do it again!

This week's break in writing was not intentional at all because I really just got in the zone working online, my wake/sleep cycle got all skewed and right in the middle of it I got waylaid by those damn hemorrhoids flaring up and making my life pretty miserable (and uncomfortable) for a thirty-six hour period which happened right in the middle of the previous five days. I kept telling myself that I would 'get it together' and do some writing regardless but every time that I got even close to following through on it I found myself taking a nap instead.

The stuff with my health concerns me and all that I can come up with to really do about it is to eat less of the types of food that I cannot chew, drink more water and hope that my digestive system (and those damned hemorrhoids) will sort themselves out. At this point it has all been dragging on too long and the effects upon my body and mind are pretty noticeable to me and not in a decidedly healthy way. In other words one way or another I need to get my body healing and keep it that way.

Meanwhile I just sort of find myself going along with life as a sort of bystander and not really feeling all that passionate about working on my homesteading goals which is not that big of a deal really because pursuing and fulfilling many of those goals has taken 'center stage' in my life over the last several years and now that I have a nice little shelter and mini-homestead inside the larger homestead here I just kind of want to enjoy it a bit and not create a bunch of self-induced pressure upon myself over the projects that I am either working on or want to work on.

A small step back from it all might actually do me a bit of good and offer me the chance to re-evaluate what my priorities are and ignite a little inspiration in myself along the way so that I can continue to evade having any kind of 'burn out' from my life being so heavily enmeshed with my chosen lifestyle and all the sharing that I do about it. The sharing itself is a job in and of itself which goes well beyond the tasks of writing, editing, taking pictures, storing media and posting because there are technical aspects to all those things as well as follow-up commentary and communications with other folks along the way. I love it and I love it enough to know not to burn myself out along the way so I doubt that I will!

Anyway, I should probably just wrap this up even though it only contains a small bit of what has been going on and not everything that I originally was thinking of writing about but hey 'it is what it is' and one thing is for certain I will keep doing it to the best of my abilities one way or another. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

IMG_20200517_131212a.jpg

My little chicken coop project is coming along nicely!

A few things that I did this week on Hive:

Thanks for reading!

woodbanner.png

Please check out the Homesteading Community:
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created

My new Hive Survival Guide Fifth Edition can be found here: https://peakd.com/hive/@jacobpeacock/hive-survival-guide-fifth-edition

Please consider becoming a patron on my Patreon page!!!
https://www.patreon.com/jacobpeacock

woodbanner.png

That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!



0
0
0.000
2 comments
avatar

This post earned a total payout of 6.826$ and 3.413$ worth of author reward that was liquified using @likwid.
Learn more.

0
0
0.000