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.

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 323!

Day 323. (TFC Depression Sucks & Other Not-so-illuminating Thoughts)

After spending much of the night tossing and turning over the prospect of what to do about my storage snafu I surprisingly woke up an hour earlier than when I have been waking up. I nearly fell back asleep because in the dream that I was having I had just 'reset time' so that some friends and I could once again attempt to outwit (and out maneuver) some nefarious folks who were doing some harmful things to folks. It was a pretty surreal dream and in the dream I was explaining to my friends that I was about to 'reset time' for the third time because each time we had failed in our mission yet again and although they would undoubtedly not remember any of it I was proud of them for their efforts nonetheless.

I did not dally overly long doing stuff on the computer this morning and spent my early hours doing some chores around the shelter area which mostly amounted to shoveling up all the dog shit from the dog yard and cleaning out and re-filling my outdoor bathtub. I was thinking to do some other stuff afterwards but it started thundering and of course when that happens the dogs get frightened and the best thing that I can do is just go inside the shelter with them, turn the music up and get them to settle down. Failing to do that just amounts to them growing more and more stressed which in turn stresses me out and the last fucking thing I need right now (or any time really) is to feel more stress.

On a different note. I have been entertaining this idea to rent a large dumpster, having it delivered and just throwing away the majority of my worldly possessions and just be done with it altogether. There is not much wisdom in doing this but it is a solution that I find quite appealing because honestly I doubt that I will ever have a real home for the stuff and most of it has been boxed up for several years now and been a hassle to move and store each time that my living scenario has changed. It is not that I do not value and cherish my possessions but when it comes down to it it is just 'stuff' after all. It would be a massive waste but given the lack of options that I currently have for storing it I do not really see what else that I can do. Sure it is an expensive/wasteful route to take but hell I do not even have the means to take it to the landfill.

This entire 'storage snafu' arising right as I am battling my way free from the worse bout of depression that I have had in several years makes me hesitant to trust my decision making process especially since I repeatedly keep thinking that if I throw everything away that I have less things tethering me to this world and in turn less for folks to clean up after I off myself. Which always brings me face to face with the reality of my own inclination to just end my life and be done with all this horseshit.

All of which sounds fine and fucking dandy to me until I consider what would happen to my dogs in my absence and in that moment all resolve crumbles, all my thoughts of dying evaporate and I grow alarmed and even angry at my selfishness and albeit my 'weakness' in that regard. If I could not think those kinds of thoughts (suicidal ones) I assuredly would not but they pop into my head with no provocation (or encouragement) on my part. Thus is the conundrum of mental illness... no one wants it but everyone has it to one degree or another.

All of that is probably too much damn honesty about what I am going through but there it is and as with most quirks of my character I do not really give a shit what folks think about me for feeling that way (or sharing those feelings) one way or another. At this point it all amounts to asking myself just how much longer can I successfully bullshit myself that life is actually worth living.

Well, I have taken a nap since writing all of that and part of me just wants to delete it and start over and just say 'hey life is awesome and I am doing fine' because after all folks seldom want to read about the difficulties folks are facing especially when it comes to things like all of the above which often just stifles any discourse about such topics. There will undoubtedly be folks who project all sorts of 'meaning' into my words to invalidate them and I say 'go for it' because it is not like that is going to change a single word that I have written nor my intent in writing them.

At this particular moment in history I am inclined to distrust anyone doing 'mentally well' and just write them off as some heartless shitheel that lacks any sort of compassion for humankind but hey maybe by the time all this has finished 'playing out' we can call it 'human-unkind' which would probably be a much more fitting description of the species.

Anyway, I am going to halt myself from writing anymore today and wrap this up. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night or at least a better one than I have been having.