Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: Hi I am Jacob.

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 383!

A Rainy Day Of Naps, Too Much Thinking & All My Rainwater Holding Tanks Got Filled

After taking that long nap yesterday afternoon I was up pretty late last night and managed to mostly use the time productively doing some research and writing out yesterday's longish post. So I figured that I would sleep in some this morning and not beat myself up about it too much but when I first woke up and saw that it was raining outside I was like 'hell yes' and fell right back asleep! I woke up shortly after that and let the dogs out but since it was raining and I did not feel like making espresso in the rain I just went back to sleep again and got even more rest. It seems like if I am not wearing my body out each day I somehow manage to wear my brain out and I still do not know which of those things (or if it is the combination of the two) that so often leaves me feeling bone weary tired.

Even though I probably could have been productive today in one way or another I did not even try and just did my best to relax and not binge out reading the news. As far as the news goes it is like a fucking never ending barrage of absurd shit mixed with some downright disturbing things that when viewed even from an even marginally objective viewpoint amounts to one thing: Things are rapidly spiraling downward in this country. It is assuredly difficult not to stare at what is going with morbid fascination and wonder how the hell it has come to this but sadly enough it is pretty obvious how it has come to this when I consider the major factors involved which are greed, corruption, apathy and arrogance.

I wish that I had solutions to the problems that folks are facing but hell I have my hands full trying to figure out solutions for the problems that I myself am currently facing and the ones that I might potentially be facing if things keep going the way that they have been going over the last many months. As much as I would like to assure others (and myself) that everything will be fine... I just cannot in good conscience say such a thing at this point. I do not want to sound depressing here or anything but folks should not take the unfolding situation lightly nor brush it off altogether just because it all seems so damn inconvenient for their life.

All that existential stuff aside, I checked on my rain water harvesting systems today during a period when the rain had slacked off and it all seems to be working well. All the small holding tanks are now full of water which is pretty cool. I know that it is not all that big of a deal but I now have about twenty-five gallons of rain water which is a heck of a lot more than the zero gallons that I had previously before setting it all up. It is definitely a good start but I am looking forward to getting my larger holding tank and even the barrels setup so that I will have a storage capacity of around five hundred gallons just in holding tanks. I am still debating on the wisdom of setting all the larger tanks up just before the coldest part of the year and having to either freeze-proof them or drain them each time the weather is going to get below freezing but I will burn that bridge when I get to it.

Well, I guess that is about all for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

More about me: 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.