I'm becoming a little anxious that I might come home to an intervention. That's not really true, but there's a good chance I have your attention now.
The problem, or more accurately, MY problem, is that right now I get to spend small amounts of time on many different projects, and junk is starting to pile up. It's not like an episode of 'Hoarders' yet (in the whole house) but it's definitely getting to the point where my workspaces have to be shimmied through, rather than walked across.
It's the weather. You may have noticed that I rant about the weather a lot. I'm not really complaining right now, it's just a fact... the weather is messing up my mojo. Nights are still getting low 20's or below, so every morning the animals need fresh water. I have waterers that take care of this for me in the summer, but I don't have de-icers for them yet.
It's still too cold to do much else that early in the morning, unless I put on some extra clothes that I'll take back off in a couple hours, so that's when I do my inside work. Pay the bills, make a loose schedule, feed the heaters, turn on the plant lights, feed myself if it's going to be a big day, order whatever parts I learned I need the day before, check the email... you know, life.
By 10am temps hit the mid to upper 20's which is a little more bearable for me with just one layer of long johns, which I'll keep on all day. The problem lately is that there's snow everywhere, and it's been getting warm enough for it to melt, and sometimes it'll rain a bit during the day just for laughs. So after a couple of hours crawling around in the snow while it's drizzling rain, I need to either come in and dry out or change my clothes later.
I hate having to change work clothes in the middle of the day. I don't hate much, but I hate that. So I come inside, hang the outer clothes by the heater, and get just partially involved in an indoor task. An hour later, I'm back out the door to get soaked some more. Wash, rinse, repeat. <-- come on, that was funny.
What does that have to do with living free? I'll tell you this time, and not just say 'nothing at all' and continue on, like I was waving goodbye with my middle finger.
I think most people have strange ideas about freedom and rights. To me, freedom is independence, and rights are things nobody can take from you. In this view, very few people have any freedom, and nobody really has any rights.
When I say independence, I mean self-reliance. If you are dependent on others, you are not free. Since I was about 20 years old, my main goal in life has been to acquire the skills and tools I need to provide everything I want for myself. This is a bit easier for me than most people, because I don't want as many things as most people. I am still a consumer, for sure. Did you hear me say I was getting buried in junk? I am surrounded by gadgets and gizmos in various states of usability, as well as repair parts for some of the less usable gadgets. In fact, that reminds me, I finally got enough pictures of the snowblower to do a post about fixing that up.
The difference between my consumption and that of most people, is that every thing I own is either a tool to reduce my reliance on others, or a tool to provide my own entertainment. Almost all of these things also double as possible income sources. To me, this gives me more freedom.
Of course, true freedom isn't things, it's a mindset. People these days aren't enslaved with shackles, they're enslaved with ideas. Americans think they're 'free' because they can pay their bills and buy their kids cell phones, but if their only source of income is a single skill set and a single employer, then that freedom has a single point of failure. People think they're free because they're not incarcerated, but are just as surely locked into their routines as if they were cages of razor wire.
Now you know I'm full of shit. You've heard me gripe about work, and in this very post I'm griping about my routine, so what is this elitist hypocritical BS I'm spewing? Well I'll tell you that too, because my typing skills are really coming back to me.
The subtle difference, that for me is wider than the ideological differences between sheep and wolves, is that I chose my routines, and I mean that in a way that people find hard to understand. For example, if I decide I'm sick of paying my electric bill, I'll stop. I can make my own electricity. It'll take me a little more work, it'll make a little more noise (until I get solar, hopefully this year), and I'll have to change my usage a little. I'm paying the electric company for the convenience of their service, not because I need it to live the way I want. Same with my job. I LOVE my job, and the things I've been able to do with the money I make at it, but I could walk away from it tomorrow and NEVER stress about whether or not I can pay my bills. I have a wide skill set, a solid work history, and experience in 3 fields that there will be hiring until we're replaced by robots: food service, agriculture, and construction. I also have the tools and experience to start my own business in any of these fields, and a good network of past employers and coworkers who would be eager to help me succeed.
Does that kind of security sound like a dream come true? Wanna know the secret?
Understand what you want, and persevere in that goal.
I say understand what you want rather than know what you want, because knowing what you want is little more than a good start. You have to understand it to know how to get it, how to keep it, and whether or not that will really be worth it to you. Basically, you have to understand something to even really know if you actually want it.
I take this approach to everything I want. If I want a phone, I want to know how easy it is to repair, if it can be configured to other forms of transmission if cell towers fail, if I can connect it to my other media without the internet, if the GPS can be disabled... you get the picture. If I had the free time and resources, I'd be bribing engineers for specs over a $40 LG most people would consider too cheap to buy for the children, just so I won't have to go through the trouble of learning all that about another phone.
TMI? Did you see 'bad-advice' in the tags? Ecency says this is already a 10 minute read, and I feel like I just got started.
What I really meant to say was, be aware of what you're doing with your life, and why you're doing it. I'm certainly not saying you should live like I do, I have a string of exes who assure me through their actions that my particular life goals, upon close examination, are not for everyone. If you want to work in a factory and live in the suburbs, go get it, but stay up on the company news. Know where the other nice factories in the suburbs are hiring. Maybe learn some Chinese in your free time, they have all the factories and suburbs these days.
The first sentence of anything written to be read by others should engage the reader's attention. I know that the first sentence of this post will not have done a good job of that for most people, but I find all you wonderful bees to be more attentive than the general population, so I think I'll get away with it. This used to be the way this post started, but since I recognized that I'm already doing a piss-poor job, I'm going to rewrite the beginning, and let this paragraph fall where it may.
'But Eric, what if what I want is to NOT understand anything?'
I wish you luck, and I recommend alcohol and cable TV.
I'm pretty sure nobody was asking that. If you're still reading at this point, you're most likely asking 'Does this guy ever shut the fuck up?'
I do, sometimes.
But before I do, I wanna give a shout out to @dandays, who is currently leading my top five favorite content creators on here, after this post that is past its payout date, but still deserves a read and a tip. Since I tagged him here, he just might read down this far and appreciate how pointless it was to hype an old post near the bottom of a nearly 1600 word stream of consciousness with no pictures, except to express my appreciation for that read in a way that didn't do a disservice to the many heartfelt comments the post already had.
Do you think I'm nuts for supporting a post that's past its payout? Read the post. If you don't agree I'm doing a public service, I'll apologize for wasting your time.
Keep doing you :)
Best advice anyone ever gave me 😂
Some awesome shit here man. I’ll check Dandays post out tomorrow since I’m past my bedtime lol.
I hear you on people who only have one skill and rely on that for their sole income stream. I get that some folks are comfortable in their life and don’t want to rock the boat. I live by rocking the boat honestly because it keeps us on our toes. I’m always trying to learn something about some stuff. I may not be an expert in one particular thing but I don’t really like being compacted into something like that. When you are able to do many things with moderate success and skill I think you are more versatile and able to survive better than an expert. Don’t get me started on what classifies an expert, just because you do one thing for a long time doesn’t mean you are an expert.
I try to set up the first sentence or paragraph to make the post interesting but sometimes that doesn’t always work. I typically go past the first sentence and do three paragraphs before I determine if it’s shit or not. Read all of it for ya man, sans pictures and the warm and fuzzy stuff that attracts low attention spans!
Thanks for reading to the end! One of the things I love about Hive is that I can pretty much always count on at least one person to read the whole thing. If I get extra free time this winter, maybe I'll work on an "I Read The Whole Post" badge 🤣
Don't get me started on 'experts', I might have a rant for real. If I had a nickel for every time I've had to politely say 'I'm not the expert, but in the real world...' I would already have my solar setup!
it's definitely worth examining how much freedom one really has, and how to become more free if the result of that examination doesn't meet expectations. a few pointers- get out of debt, take full responsibility for your own life and all your actions, explore your spirituality and connection to the universe.
That was a great fucking read. That might be the first time I dropped an F word in the first sentence and I was gonna do that before you mentioned me. Dude! Don't tell anyone I told you this, but I really don't know what to say. 100%, only Pura gets those, I don't know how else to say thank you.
I hope this post receives the most attention you've ever seen.
Thanks, @paradoxtma. I'm so overwhelmed right now I called you cmplxty Cuz I saw his response.
Ah no, thank you, I still bow humbly before greatness, as I felt compelled to do immediately after stumbling upon your feed.
Anyway, it's well deserved praise, you don't have to know what to say or thank me at all, just smile and bask in the praise you blubbering genius.
That praise is a curse that comes with the curse of being good with words, which is why you get asked to speak at funerals. At least, that's why I get asked, and I assume it's the same for you.
Which leads me into the meat of this reply, which is to thank you properly and tell you why I'm so thankful. Your description of Curtis would be a pretty good description of my father, only my father was more like 5'8" and not a president of anything because he wasn't much of a joiner. He certainly was a biker though, and I was doing great at his funeral until all that thunder started rolling in and I thought "This looks like a Sturgis after party, he would have been so proud." I did not keep my composure through what I had to say, but neither did anyone else. Your post was visceral for me, and I'm getting all choked up all over again just thinking about it, and I'm stoned and smiling from ear to ear. There's a lot more I could say about all of it, and maybe someday I'll do a whole separate post just about what that fucking post meant to me. From the reaction I've seen, I'm not the only one. Hell, some of the comments were posts in their own right. Maybe it should get its own community.
Does Easyrider still publish? If so, you should submit that. A lot of people would love to see it.
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STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Sounds like a lot of work to say you are free.. Like you say freedom is a state of mind ..My freedom is not yours.. and visa versa .. Thanks for the rant .. No reply needed ..