Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 423)

avatar

Hello Everyone!

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 423!

Taking a day off, Keeping an even pace, Pragmatically setting the bar & Skillful is as skillful does!

Somehow I woke up at six thirty-eight this morning and actually stayed awake instead of drifting back off to sleep. Since it was super cold outside there was absolutely no way I was going out into it to work on stuff and decided to spend the morning catching up on the news and reading stuff online instead. I gotta say that by the time that the sun was fully up the news had pretty much exhausted me mentally but that is a whole other topic and not really worth exploring. While I was vegging out for those hours I realized that it had been a few weeks since I actually took a day off and perhaps that was why I upon initially waking up I found myself feeling exhausted and with all too many aching muscles.

Over the last few days I kept suspecting that maybe it was time for a day off but I had not actually planned to do it today or anything. I do not think that I even made it until noon before falling back asleep and sleeping quite soundly until just an hour or so before dark. I was a bit surprised that the entire day had basically slipped away while I was napping but that sure was the case. By that late in the day the temperature outside was already dropping so I did not even bother to do anything besides bringing the water system back online and tending to the critters.

As far as the 'taking time off' thing goes I have to really get back on track with watching how many days in a row I go without doing it and begin taking at least one day off every two weeks. That seemed to work okay in the past even though it does seem like my bare minimum to keep the burn out at bay. It is tricky stuff trying to balance working on projects, utilizing the favorable weather and getting in the needed breaks along the way. Once I shake off the thoughts of needing to 'make up for lost time' (from whatever downtime that I have taken) things smooth out a bit but I have not been back to doing stuff long enough to get there yet.

On the bright side of all that jazz I have been pacing myself much better than I have in the past as I re-enter 'work mode' so I feel quite accomplished in that regard. Looking back over the last several weeks I cannot recall a time when I felt like I had pushed myself too hard to get stuff done. I assuredly pushed myself hard enough to get out of the downtime rut but not to the point where I felt frazzled or all that manic (or neurotic) about the projects that I have been doing so I guess that is a massive improvement.

What has helped in that regard is that I am not working on anything all too complicated or that requires a bunch of tools, materials etcetera. By just doing simple things (that I enjoy doing anyway) I find myself actually wanting to take my time with those things and just do them well or at least well enough that they are not done in a half-ass way. It is one thing to set the proverbial 'bar' low but it is a whole different affair to lay it on the ground... like just 'having' the bar is good enough. Personally, I set the bar pretty high initially and lower it as need be according to what is pragmatic as far as labor, materials and time goes and try not to take any damn shortcuts just for the sake of taking them.

Anyway, the more that I think about it the more that I am leaning towards using the sticks (branches and logs) to form the 'basket' of that new compost. What I am thinking to do is to use some of those poles that I was going to section up into firewood to create a split-rail fence type of enclosure around the three posts that I have setup for it. If that does not seem to be sufficient for the task then perhaps weaving a bunch of grape vines into it will do it. The vines need to be cut down from a nearby area anyway so it would make for a good way to 'dispose' of them. As a side note, there sure are a lot of vines and I will most likely wind up with numerous coils of them that will undoubtedly get squirreled away in storage for making other stuff with.

On a different note, I have remarked a few times about the mass movement of folks here doing the homesteading thing for the first time, beginning to live off grid and any number of variations like living in vehicles or camping or whatever. I lack the words to adequately group all these activities together to paint a broader picture but it is a broader picture of folks seeking a simpler and albeit a more self-sufficient lifestyle. There are also those that are just straight up prepping and simplicity of lifestyle has nothing to do with it but they are a part of this larger trend that I am describing that also includes gardeners, hikers, survivalist, bush craft enthusiasts, hand-made crafting folk etcetera and on and on ad infinitum. In other words, there are a lot of folks doing a lot of cool stuff and I definitely never thought that I would see folks doing stuff along these lines in such numbers... but here we are and whoa am I seeing it.

Although I try to keep my interactions to a minimum I look over (read and watch) a heck of a lot of what other folks are doing and most of the time it is well worth it because I get to learn stuff along the way. There are an incredible amount of common threads with any number of lifestyles of this genre but I think that one of the largest such threads is I guess what could be called 'a commitment to resilience' which in short could be said as: No matter what life throws at me I will bounce back. Which is an admirable trait an all but it is also useless without being capable of maintaining morale and having the fortitude to 'weather the storm' per say.

The crucial part for me seems to be whether I can be bluntly honest with myself in regards to whether I have succeeded at something or failed at something. Asking myself what I have (or can) learn usually only factors in later and I do not want to get sidetracked here so I will gloss over it. Sometimes the more significant questions are why did something fail and more often than not of late why did something succeed. I think folks (including myself) get stuck on the perceived failures and entirely miss asking: Hey why did that succeed? Well, generally things succeed due to proper planning, adequate project management and any number of things that were actually done right but whoa even one minor (or major) failure totally obliterates having any excess attention to place upon the successes no matter how damn numerous they are.

Trying to measure overall success is a messy affair to start with and 'some folks being so poor that all they have is money' pretty much sums up how often we use the wrong (or just an inaccurate) metric to measure something like success which I guess can only truly be measured by a person's happiness. Which is an entirely different messy affair to attempt to quantify especially since some would even avow that 'contentment, comfort and convenience' would be better metrics to use. Even others would say 'peace of mind and security' and others would of course use different metrics but what I am getting at is none of them actually work. I think that when it comes down to it... it is a question that we can only ask ourselves and only answer to our self alone.

In other words the only possibly true metric is our own measure of ourselves and there is a heck of a lot that could influence our own lens in such regards so it amounts more to asking the perpetual question and listening to the answer knowing that it will be dynamic at best and incomplete at worst. Not to be blunt but if folks are 'alive and kicking' then maybe they should not be too hard on themselves and cherish just being alive, being capable of making choices each day, of having experiences and doing stuff they enjoy doing. I think folks lose sight of this too much and along the way somehow misplace their basic humanity not just in regards to how they treat themselves but how they treat other people.

Okay, to tie all that together and wrap this entry up. What I was getting at is that the folks that are making changes and doing anything in the a fore-mentioned fields of interests, lifestyles, hobbies (or whatever you want to group it as) are sort of 'lighting the way' for a lot of other folks to do it also. Yeah, not everyone takes it to the extremes of going fully off-grid in the bush or anything (and nor should they) but even one person gardening in a neighborhood will most likely inspire someone else to do it too. The same can be said for a bunch of things that often get described as skills or even hobbies but my point is that all these people doing all this cool stuff now is going to inspire a much larger wave of people that are just now catching on that maybe they should alas be doing something as well.

Alright this will be interesting to edit. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

IMG_20220112_164238_5.jpg

Yup another wintertime tree picture!

Thanks for reading!

woodbanner.png

That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!



0
0
0.000
0 comments