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 331!

Breaking Down And Applying For Food Assistance, Solving The Storage Snafu And Doing Some Hiking.

I still cannot seem to break this 'waking up at nine in the morning' cycle that I have been in no matter how much that I tell myself each day that I want to wake up earlier than that. It is not like anything really hinges on me waking up earlier in the morning other than my own 'self image' (morale, pride I do not really know what to call it) but damn I cannot help but feel like I am missing out on the best part of the day by waking up so late. At this point I do not even feel all that depressed (contrary to the clear signs of depression that I see in my daily habits) so it is not even like I can blame it on depression.

I definitely have a good bit of 'disinterest and despair' about my life (and the world) currently which coupled with a lack of inspiration just amounts to this perpetual sense of lacking any real purpose. Maybe all this existential stuff is just me floundering during a moment when I should be doing anything but floundering. I mean hell I have lived my entire life knowing that the times I am now in were coming and although I assuredly did my due diligence along the way to prepare myself in every way possible (especially mentally) now that the time is here I just feel underwhelmed and sort of 'ho-hum' about it all because nothing in my life has really changed during all of this besides my financial scenario getting more dodgy than it was before.

As far as the financial scenario goes I finally broke down today and applied for some government assistance in that regard which is something that I have literally starved before instead of doing because I feel so strongly about 'making it on my own' in life and that others undoubtedly need the assistance more than me. So I filled out all the paper work, jumped through all the hoops, blithely ignored the amount of personal data I had to share and submitted my application for review. I do not even know if I will get approved but just the 'idea' (possibility) that I will not be quite so hungry all the damn time in the near future reduced my stress level a bit even though I feel like utter crud over having to do it in the first place.

On a different note, a friend of mine offered to make me a loan for the money to build some storage for my stuff and solve my storage snafu. It took me the better part of two weeks to take them up on the offer and today I ordered all the materials that I would need and hopefully in the next week or so they will get delivered and I can get the storage situation solved. I cut as many corners as I possibly could with the design of the structure which is basically a trapezium shaped room that I am going to add onto my existing shelter. I keep trying to figure out which side of the shelter that I should attach it to because one side would be good to harvest rainwater with it, another side would be good for sun (solar power) and the other two sides are just bad ideas that will undoubtedly cause me problems down the road due to the water shedding off its roof.

Anyway, late in the afternoon I went on a hike to clear my mind a bit and to also look for mushrooms but I still have yet to see any mushrooms worth eating besides those red chanterelles growing near the creek. It is still a bit early in the year for the types of bolletes that I like to gather but I keep hoping each time that I go out hiking that I will find some! Hell I do not even know if they grow around here or not but that has not stopped me from either hoping or looking!

It would be nice to get a few big hauls of mushrooms, dry them all out and store them away for soups during the winter. I hate to say it but I have this feeling that the winter is going to be a rough one and every instinct in my body is screaming at me to be ready for pretty much any damn thing which is kind of ludicrous because I do not really have the resources to get any more prepared than I already am and I just spent a bunch of money that I do not have on building materials which will undoubtedly affect how well I can prepare for the winter.

My perspective on things is that 'the world' (and my life) is a mess and as much as I would like to candy-coat my intuitions/perceptions to myself (or anyone) I just cannot do it at this juncture so maybe my long practice of 'bullshitting myself' has come to an end which is a whole other can of worms that I am not going to delve into at the moment. Instead I am just going to wrap this up, call it 'good enough' and do the part that I dislike the most... editing and posting! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night/moment.

Some red chanterelles growing near the creek.

Thanks for reading!

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