Hello Everyone!

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day !

The Grit Is Real, Some Thoughts On Homelessness, Not Quite A Year In Review & How A Blockchain Changed My Life

All sign of that big storm system was gone by the time that I woke up this morning but whoa did it leave the dog yard a slippery mess. As much as the gritty sand here often gets on my nerves... in this instance I am pretty happy for it because it provides a reasonable amount of traction on the steeper portions of the hillside. It is still slippery and of course I still have to be careful nonetheless but that extra bit of grit has reduced how often I take a tumble which is pretty damn nice given that I am not exactly 'getting any younger' as the saying goes.

Anyway, I was kind of looking forward to another rainy day spent indoors because it would provide me with the perfect excuse not to celebrate the coming of the new year with an outdoor fire or really do anything 'special' for it. Even without the excuse of rain I have not done any celebrating nor made a fire or anything so go figure. Heck, I do not even know what I would be celebrating for at this point given how damn grim the scenario on good ole planet Earth is looking. All that said the weather today is very much like a nice summer day (I will gloss over the fact that its the dead of winter here) and looking like it will have roughly the same evening temperature so it sure is tempting to 'enjoy it while it lasts' before it gets bitter cold in a few more days. Having quit the whole 'partying' thing many years ago I thankfully do not have any sense of 'missing out' or anything like that so I keep asking myself why I keep thinking about it. Once I got beyond the 'obligatory celebration' part of my thinking I was not left with much to really wrap my head around beyond that one question: What would I even be celebrating for?

There is certainly much that I am both grateful for and thankful for each day and I am quite proud that I do not take very many things for granted (like having frigging running water and even hot water on tap) and while my life is not some super prosperous affair filled with luxury, security blankets and safety nets it damn sure does not leave me much to complain about. Yeah, it sucks that if an emergency arises that requires 'extra money' that often comes at the cost of having enough food to eat or whatever and hence any health issues I have occur I generally wind up putting off until they absolutely require attention. Such is life though and its a reality that the majority of the folks on the planet face everyday regardless of whatever spin folks want to put on the real situation of inequality going on but hey I really want to avoid getting off on that tangent today.

What I was initially getting at there is that I know that regardless of my own rather low socioeconomic status (by this country's standards) there are plenty of folks here (and abroad) who have a much more challenging life and a very much larger challenge with attaining a decent quality of life. This is especially true with folks who are homeless because if you think its hard to 'get ahead' in life when you are surrounded by the things you need to do it (a vehicle, a home, the support of friends and family etcetera) imagine trying to do it with none of those things and all the while getting looked down upon by the majority of the society that you are desperately trying to remain a part of. Having been homeless more times than I can recall in life let me be blunt here and say that it is absolutely a brutal experience to start with and magnified a thousand percent with every dirty look that is given or slur that is tossed. It is an experience that is rife with directly experiencing the cruelty of others with no safe haven to retreat to and the longer it goes on the less 'rejoining society' even seems appealing besides the notion of having a warm bed, a consistent food supply, access to clean water and somewhere to lock the frigging door and feel safe at... All of that is not to say that there is not also kindness that occurs but by and large that is the anomaly and not the overarching rule.

I was trying to avoid getting into this vein of thought but here I am so I may as well keep peeling this onion and see what I find closer to its center. There are all sorts of reasons that folks become homeless and while freak accidents, bad choices, circumstance, natural disasters and a slew of other things can bring it about (much faster than anyone can possibly be comfortable with) I am to this day unsure if the reasons even matter. What does matter is the society's treatment of such folks and by that I mean 'people at large' tending to hinder such folks instead of actually helping them. I am not going to get into all the weird justifications that folks make for mistreating other humans but by and large how the less fortunate are treated says a heck of a lot about a society. Over the last several years there has been a steady rise in homelessness in this country and I have to ask myself at what point does it become a big enough 'problem' that we as a collective society says: Whoa we should try to fix that! Its actually a symptom (not a problem) but meh I need to stay on topic here. The thing is that it will more than likely never be addressed because helping others is cough 'socialism' and while its fine and dandy that the entire political spectrum enjoys the benefits of cough 'socialism' via government backed health insurance as well as many other 'perks' it is not befitting to bestow that upon the rest of the populace... because why? Oh yeah Its Socialism!

Anyway, I got off track there. Yes its a crooked game and yes its 'the only game in town' so folks keep playing it and meanwhile the division between the proverbial 'haves and have-nots' continues to widen and at an alarmingly accelerated rate given the events of the last few years. Again, I am not into playing the blame game here with 'why' things are the way they are because I am yet again stuck in the mindset of facing it for what it is and asking myself what the heck can actually be done about it in a way that does not result in it being merely fodder for folks political jibber-jabber which often leads to no solutions and a heck of a lot of useless strife to boot and the further marginalization of those who are supposed to be being helped in the first place. That was a mouthful but what I am getting at is there has to be another way to approach this than relying on institutions that have no real interest in fixing the issues let alone addressing it like the humanitarian crisis that it truly is and the larger one that it is rapidly becoming.

Okay, I gotta get off that soap box for a moment and get back to the thread of thought that I was initially tugging on which is that there is a lot of potential for change to occur by utilizing cryptocurrency to do what the aforementioned institutions fail at miserably: Relieving poverty! Much in the way we can see it happening through HIVE in some places. I actually do not have to point to 'other places' and can explicitly point at my own scenario and how it has accommodated a sort of baseline that I can (almost) count on earning each month given I actually participate that month! Going from not being able to count on (I use that phrase lightly here) anything as far as earnings go to being able to count on 'something' was not so much a financial 'win' (whatever the fuck that is) as it was a mental win in regards to my own peace of mind. Gaining even a small semblance of financial security was an incredible breakthrough that dulled the stress of finances just enough that I could 'breathe' a bit and really address other things that bothered me like my mental health... which low and behold most of my depression was actually rooted in financial insecurity and as a direct result 'food insecurity' via scarcity so no surprise there! While it has never been a massive windfall (not that I would know what to do in such a scenario anyway) between the writing and the eXode cards (they are NFT(s) really but its easier to say cards) I have miraculously arrived at a point where life just is not as damn hard as it once was. As a side note if you have had anything to do with those things Thank You!

Back to what I was saying. So, I do not need to point at outside sources to highlight what I am driving at here and can say (non-evangelically) that the tools that are in place work, the structures/systems to use those tools is both diverse as well as highly vetted. Its absolutely awesome to be a part of it and while the price of HIVE in particular spiking is cool and all I think that the reasons behind that 'spiking' is what is more valuable in the scenario. Adoption is happening, the wheels that were set in motion are still turning and the blockchain itself still gives zero fucks about your feelings (or ideas about the world) and continues to do its thing in a precise, irrefutable, immutable, unalterable fashion. For those that maintain the underlying systems that 'make it all work' good job and for those who participate in putting those systems to work good job! That is about all the 'back patting' that I have in me but I hope folks take it to heart how thankful (and grateful) that I truly am for all the effort by all the minds that make it possible. I know I should show that appreciation by participating more in the governance and proposal systems as well as posting and curating but at least its not apathy that keeps me from doing so!

I should get to wrapping this up now because it is getting close to dark outside and I need to feed all the critters and knock out the few chores that I have left to do for the day. I am unsure if I got to fully explore where this post was taking me so perhaps I should muster a few more words even though this has already taken me an incredibly long time to spell out. This year has not been particularly hard for me or anything outside my usual ups and downs and alas I started the year off doing a bunch of physical stuff and ended it doing a bunch of mental stuff. Overall it was not the most productive year I have ever had even though it may well be one of my more stable ones as far as keeping myself clear of my own particular pitfalls go. A big part of that assuredly has to do with my level of isolation from other humans and largely being left to my own devices. That has been nice but damn I sure have been slacking this winter and I would be full of shit if I said that I had achieved everything I said that I would do which unfortunately could also be said for things that I never mentioned. Having just come out of a pretty busy yearlong push of doing stuff before that I can see how perhaps I was a bit more burned out than I initially suspected. I am not big on 'new year resolutions' but I am an absolute fan of making small daily resolutions. Believe me they are way less frigging disappointing and easier to give another try at the following day than some lofty yearly goal!

Although I definitely did not do it alone, this year was not all that bad considering I (we) got a cabin built, got real electricity ran to it, got both cold and hot water ran to it and generally made a habitable situation out of things. By any standards that is pretty frigging awesome especially given there is such a nice dog yard and all the critters are happy living within it together... including me. Please do not hold me to that 'happiness' because it is a fickle damn thing and who knows what could append it at any moment given how moody I can be of late. Seriously though, once I got out of living in the tent and into a real shelter my motivation to continue grinding away at things evaporated. It kind of snuck up on me though because at first I was just taking a break and then the frigging summer was just brutally hot and it was really difficult to work outside which is saying something given how much I enjoy the heat.

Then I went down the rabbit hole gaming and just when I was coming out of it the remake of my favorite game came out and I suckered myself into trying that one out which is actually the point at which I guess it could be said that things got murky. I am glad that I gave it a try but like I told a buddy of mine that plays it also: With the amount of electricity it consumes I would be better off mining crypto than playing that game! Which is absolutely true and I have been considering plugging a computer with the game on it into my kilowatt per hour meter and seeing just how much electricity it is actually drawing. I am not actually 'mining crypto instead' but it sure is tempting! There will undoubtedly be time for that later once the solar installation is finished if I decide to go that route with the mining. Either way I think it would make for some interesting metrics to compare not just the game running versus potential mining hashes but also finding out just how much more electricity that it consumes compared to the original game.

Well, it is time to wind this down to a close and perhaps have that one good beer that I have been saving for months now just in case I wanted to drink it on new year's eve. I sure did not want to try to have it before spelling out today's post given how difficult editing is for me to start with and how it might get me gushing in all the wrong directions. Having not gone on a supply run for several months now it is a wonder that I still have anything left at all but I guess that is what I get for failing at being an alcoholic. Sometimes I question why I even bother anymore given that I might drink a quarter of a beer and then wind up pouring the rest of it out later. Taking the winter off from drinking for all those years in a row sure played a number on my relationship with the stuff... which was kind of the point so go figure!

Okay, I have to get to editing this post and getting everything wrapped up and posted or I will just keep clacking away here! I hope that folks have a good new year no matter what their current circumstances in life are at the moment and keep in mind that while there is no certainty that 'things will get better' there is and always will be the possibility of it! Much love and all that feel good jazz that keeps us putting one foot in front of the other.

Yup another picture of the trees in winter!

Thanks for reading!

That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!