Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 751-755)

Hello Everyone!

Laundry in the rain, More outdoor fires, A crumbling porch & Plenty of off-topic meanderings!

I awoke rather early this morning and although I have yet to get outdoors and begin doing stuff I will need to soon before it starts raining. Hopefully I can get the tub of laundry that I left soaking overnight in bleach water hung up on the fence just in time for the rain to give it a good rinsing.

Getting the laundry done lately has been quite the bear because it has been overcast, humid and rainy which makes the drying process almost impossible. By the time things do get dried out (after several days of hanging on the dog yard fence) they usually smell bad, have mold and/or mildew growing on them and need to be washed again!

Okay, it is now late in the afternoon and I once again made a fire first thing in the morning and spent the bulk of the day tending to it in an attempt to get my main blanket dried out. I think that it was three days ago that I washed it and last night (thinking it was dry enough) I had brought it indoors only discover it was still quite damp around the edges and stunk like something fierce to boot.

What I wound up doing is using that piece of fencing that I have around the big flower pots in the dog yard as a drying rack near the fire. All in all I dunno if it was the heat or the smoke from all the yellow pine I was burning that got it dried out but I finally succeeded just as it began sprinkling rain. The smoke also got rid of the smell so go figure.

I swear my luck/fortune of late is total trash because as I was bringing the blanket inside the little makeshift pallet 'front porch' I have been using for the cabin buckled under my weight. Thankfully it was just one corner of it and after lots of shoring it up with blocks of wood and removing a bunch of newly exposed nails... it is 'solid enough' for at least another few days.

The big question now is what to do about the porch because although I definitely need one I also do not want to contribute anything else to this place. In short I already have plenty of things to be resentful about and dislike the notion of doing anything that might add to the intensity of that particular feeling.

Alright, more time has passed and although I have worked on this entry a heck of a lot I wound up deleting it all. Per usual when that happens it makes me question just how worthwhile my writing endeavors really are if I cannot share them without fear of reprisal, retribution, misunderstanding or some such nonsense.

Over the last few days the weather has turned a good bit chillier and although I have been having a fire nearly every day of late... today I chose to avoid the weather and remain indoors. Regardless of the drizzling rain I probably would have had a fire anyways but I have burned through all the firewood and the idea of scavenging around for more is unappealing.

Failing to stack up any firewood for the winter was of course a conscious choice but now I kind of wish I had done it regardless of how precarious my stay here might be. Thankfully I only need it for making ashes for the compost and the occasional ambiance/warmth when I am spending time outdoors doing stuff in bad weather like I have been the last few days.

There is assuredly something soothing about standing around a fire and 'staring off into space' as I have been doing while tending the various fires the last few days. As much as it was an effort to clear my mind... making a bunch of ashes seems to be the only real outcome because whoa my mind is anything but clear.

Well, it is another morning here and I awoke to thinking intently about the current housing insecurity aspect of my life. Since my mind has been preoccupied with it for months now that is nothing new but as I was laying there half-awake I could not shake the thought of how absurd it all is.

I mean hell, in this country alone there is something close to two and a half billion acres of land and the vast majority of it is vacant and/or undeveloped. To put it in perspective if all the 'developed' areas were condensed into a single location it would be a mere drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the vastness of the undeveloped land.

Unfortunately inhabiting said undeveloped land is not an option and attempting to do so (without the proper legal authority) is a recipe for disaster. Given how everything is either owned by individuals, companies, corporations, the state or federal government or some combination of those various entities... the idea of 'heading off into the bush' is (to be blunt) a pretty bad idea.

Having written numerous times on that topic I will not re-cap the folly of it all yet again but suffice it to say that I know how dumb of an idea it is and yet faced with no other tangible options... it keeps looking like a better idea all the time. It sure would be better than living in the squalor of a homeless encampment or even worse winding up being jailed for vagrancy, trespassing or some other frivolously 'criminal' craziness that the homeless get subjected to in this country.

For a while there I had been trying to negotiate the purchase of this place but the reality is that unless I can make an offer on it in the next week that particular option ceases. If the 'you can buy this place but you only have two weeks to come up with the money before we sell it for drastically less to our other friends' sounds like pure horseshit... I agree. Especially after every reasonable offer had previously been rejected out of hand without ever entering an actual negotiation phase.

The thing is I have not tried incredibly hard to either come up with the money myself or find others that might be interested in it. Call me crazy but I do not have much desire to help folks that have screwed me over even if the result would be me having a place to live. I am well aware of how petty that makes me sound but it is damn sure a 'pettiness' that I feel I am entitled to after all the work I put into this place... not to mention the horseshit that I have put up with along the way.

Meanwhile having all this housing insecurity scenario to deal with has massively impacted my willingness to write (largely due to things like the previous few paragraphs popping up every time I start writing) and as a result my monthly income has damn near flat-lined. Of course there is also the halt on working on projects which generally has a strong correlation with the content I create... so yeah it is safe to say that: Every aspect of my life is floundering at the moment.

Generally when faced with so much internal (an in this case also external) strife I do what I have been doing for months now and withdraw deeper and deeper into myself until I can find some semblance of peace of mind. Knowing that doing that without any kind of social interaction leads to too much of 'believing my own bullshit' I often temper that 'withdrawing' with gaming online.

Well, I did that for quite a while there and would probably still be doing it (considering how much social engagement was occurring) but I just could no longer stomach running that 'virus of an operating system' just to play the game. At the heart of that sentiment is the sickening feeling that everything that I do on that operating system is being spied upon... and there is not even the 'illusion of privacy' given how interwoven the spyware aspect of it is with its core components and functionality.

Just imagine being someone who genuinely values and enjoys their privacy to the maximum degree possible having to cope with literally every action being somehow recorded and more than likely sold off to one advertiser or another... without ever having to leave the comfort of home! Sounds to me like a surefire way to insure that I grow more and more neurotic over it... which is why I stopped using it altogether (even for coding) weeks ago.

The result though is that my tiny amount of social interaction evaporated and I have yet again lost interest in my coding projects. Even though they (mainly the game modding ones) are by far the most interesting thing that I have found to spend time doing in a very long time. Heck, just yesterday I wanted to do that new hobby so bad I did an old hobby instead and made a mixtape track just because I would not have to change operating systems to do so.

Ha! No sooner had I typed all that out than one of my long-term online gaming buddies messaged me about missing me in the game and needing some help... so I wrapped up what I was doing and jumped on there to give them a hand. Not to get lost in the details here but yup the experience reaffirmed everything I had just been writing about.

Alright, it is yet another morning here and I have been staring at the blinking cursor for quite some time as I sip the sludge that I fondly call espresso and think my ponderous thoughts. Most of which revolve around my lack of options to have a decent life. It seems like no matter how many words I peck out on a keyboard I still cannot seem to manage making more than a paltry amount of money each month.

While that has never stopped me before and sans that paltry amount I would be really screwed... five years and eleven months later I have to acknowledge how fucking insane it seems to be so unsuccessful... and not 'throw in the towel' and give up on it all. Perhaps if 'making money' was all I gave a damn about things would be quite different but alas the likelihood of that occurring has about the same odds as most other folks not having that as their core tenant in life.

I best avoid that particular rabbit warren of thought this morning and wrap it up by yet again reiterating that not only are 'some folks so poor all they have is money' but that many of those very same folks have absolutely no means by which to measure the depth of said poverty. Honestly, if it was not such a pathetic mindset I would mayhaps deign to have a shred of compassion for them beyond what I harbor for all living critters.

Some day I hope to see a world in which 'making health' is favored over 'making wealth' but currently it appears that anyone who deviates from the latter will simply ensure that they never achieve the former. Something tells me that humanity as a whole is not quite ready (or even mature enough) to make such a fundamental change.

That said... I do believe such a change will be forced by the very circumstances that we now see playing out in the world around us. The big question is what kind of world are we making if by and large the bulk of humanity is barely scraping by each day (or falling through the cracks entirely) because not to alarm anyone but as populations continue to increase... so will the aforementioned scarcity.

Having spent so much time now subsisting on very little and staring up at the poverty line I have done the best that I can with what I have to work with (as a person) and as convoluted as things may come across in these writings... my core tenants are still love, faith, hope and truth. All of which undoubtedly encompasses many a shade of grey... but that is part of why they are worthy core tenants... so go figure.

Not to get off into any woo-woo hippy-dippy malarkey (and to be utterly clear) those tenants are first and foremost applicable to myself in a 'functional' way and not merely some garbage esoteric ideas. Wording such things down is tricky at best but in short I will often ask myself questions in regards to those tenants... in an effort to find the ones I have lost sight of within myself and by extension my ability to see them in 'all' else.

Anyway, I should wind that topic down by saying that adopting such methods of measuring my human progress and having them as my guide, my foundations, my 'compass' has by no way made anything easier in life. The only real exception to that would be that it has accommodated me with the ability to recognize those things within myself, acknowledge their precious value, foster, share, grow and above all else put them to good use... at every opportunity to do so... by any means necessary.

I guess a lot of that stuff works its way 'through my system' via creating something even if it is merely a construction project, art, music, writing or whatnot and while sure I could 'apply myself' a bit more here or there to really hone such hobbies... they are after all hobbies! Of course the therapeutic 'silver lining' to much of that is highly qualitative but alas I best avoid delving too much further into this topic lest I grow enthralled by it!

On a similar note. I have been feeling as if the times that I am in dictate that I not forget to take a breath every now and then, look around and be thankful for the relative calm of the moment and not let my morale disappear altogether. Between all the extreme food rationing, the meager earnings from creating content, the trickle effect of past crypto investments and a streak of determination a mile wide... I am still here spelling out my ponderous thoughts and hoping that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night... so maybe that is enough.

There have been plenty of grey days lately!

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