Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1154)

in #hive-11430810 months ago

Hello Everyone!

A seven year anniversary, The long slog continues, Permethrin treatments, Securing the coop & Draining the water system!

Alright, I am on time with the writing routine again... and have been sitting here waiting on the espresso to cool down a bit... so that I can get a few sips in me before diving into things. Considering that this is my seven year anniversary... or two thousandth five hundred and fifty sixth day...(not that I am counting) of my little experiment with sharing my life... I should try to make it a good one.

I say that I 'should' do that but honestly I would rather not do that... and just meander on much in the same manner that I have been doing of late. Seriously it is not like making hundreds of videos, dozens of podcasts, sharing thousands of images and spelling out a few million words has 'vastly improved my life' or anything like that... so... meh.

It has all been an incredible slog that has undoubtedly grown more disproportionate when I pause, look at things and apply my 'effort versus earnings' metric that I have grown so fond of referencing of late. In other words... the longer that I do it, the better that I get at spelling things out... and the less that I actually want to spell things out... given how out of balance my time invested versus the earnings actually are.

None of that is to say that I am not appreciative of the meager earnings that I do make... or that I am ungrateful for my long time supporters... but ugh the entire affair sits like a stone on my heart more often than not. Again, I dislike having to point it out but those are observations... not complaints, gripes or some round about way of shaming folks into showing more support... or any simple minded horseshit like that!

Honestly, I am so far beyond giving a damn about those things that I do not even try to gain more supporters, promote my work or do anything at all... besides the one aspect of it all that I actually like doing. Which of course is indulging in my 'worst vice' which I affectionately call: The writing.

Heck, I barely even want to take a picture each day to 'fluff out' these entries... because at the end of the day it just amounts to more time that I have to spend on it all. Not to get lost on that particular topic... but ugh it is a hassle even when one or two of the pictures that I take come out 'good' and then have to do all the post-processing required to share them.

Occasionally, I do miss making those daily videos (along with a brief blurb of writing) but again the hours it often took to upload them over some dodgy cellular connection was its own damned hassle... that was much more aggravating (and time consuming) than making these entries... so go figure. It also meant that I could not do anything else with the internet connection during that time... which yeah just made everything even more of a headache.

Believe me I know how most of that 'reads' (comes across as) but for my long-term readers I think that it is abundantly clear what I mean by it all... and no 'defending myself' or even 'inserting disclaimers' is really necessary for them to see my point. For anyone else that happens to fail to grasp it all (and its true context and meaning) well... it is not like the last seven years of my life is not here (publicly available on the blockchain) for all to see.

Obviously, I have been mulling this 'seven year milestone' over quite heavily the last few days (and also over the previous weeks preceding it) and when it comes right down to it... I still do not know what I really think about it all. What I do know, is that every step of the way I have given it my best, kept putting one foot in front of the other... and have (as of yet) not given up on it all.

In some ways it has been really good because I went from having a complete inability to write about my day to day life... to excelling at spelling out my day to day life with very little internal friction involved along the way. As I have said before... my job is to make the boring everyday things seem interesting via the medium of words.

After all I also have to read all this... to do the proofreading and editing... and for me personally there is nothing more painful than having to read (and gasp) edit stuff that absolutely sucks from a reader's perspective. So, perhaps it could be said that if I cannot find enjoyment in reading it myself... then it is not worth writing in the first place... which as an aside is something that I wish more folks did.

Now that I have gotten a smidgen of that off my chest... I should get on with spelling out my day and what all that I did or did not do... as the case may be.

Anyways, I awoke once again a little before dawn but the dreams that I was having were rather fantastic (even though they were bizarre) and I let myself drift back off to sleep so that I could see how things played out in them. Which was a bit of a mixed bag because although they were mildly enjoyable... they later took a weird turn where I became homeless, got caught up with (and befriended) some odd individuals doing some psychic hacking on me... as well as watching a hearse (driven by Death) run over one of my dogs while they were looking at their phone... and only briefly shrugging an apology as they drove away.

I awoke and went back to sleep a few times during and after all that... but I better not get too involved with spelling all of it out or I will get a bit too wrapped up in the parts that were actually weird and/or peculiar about it all. Suffice it to say that they were absolutely the kind of dreams that I pay close attention to... and do my best not to overthink as they slowly become cemented into my long-term memory.

Once I was up and about for the day I did my usual Hive engagement routine... but once again I was feeling rather lethargic and did not give it a whole lot of effort. There also was not much in the way of content that I wanted to engage with... which made me extra appreciative of those who were engaging with my own content. I am still unsure if spending four to five hours a day on that is worthwhile... but at least I am giving it a try.

Since it was what I would call 'brisk and chilly' outside I did not spend a whole lot of time outdoors... but I did get a few routine chores done early in the day as well as finally washing my frying pans so that I could cook with them again. I have no idea how long it has been since I actually cooked anything... but I made a big pan of potatoes and onions... which had me napping in short order... after eating nearly the entire pan of them.

The nap only lasted for about thirty minutes before I jostled myself awake... and treated all the dogs with some permethrin drops. Honestly, I spaced doing that for well over a month now... and am glad that I remembered to do it before any fleas could start hatching from all the bedding that I have yet to let get frozen on the infrequent 'below freezing' nights.

Later in the afternoon I did my best to secure the tarps and blanket that I have the chicken coop wrapped with... because I noticed that the wind was causing them to flap around when it was gusting. I probably could have done a better job of it overall... but basically I wedged a long wooden pole up against them where they meet on the backside of the coop... and called it good enough.

Tonight the temperatures are set to plunge below freezing again... so I went ahead and got the water system fully drained. This time I even did it before all the hoses were super stiff (from the cold) and I also did it before the temperature began to plummet... so that all the hiking around was not uncomfortable to do in the wind.

Well, I guess that is enough effort invested on this entry. I hope that folks are well... not spending too much time dwelling on the traumas of their lives... and are being thankful for the millions of small miracles... that makes life possible on this rock as it hurdles through space at a whopping sixty-seven thousand miles per hour... with no one at the helm. Ta ta for now.


More of those mushrooms that look like Brick Caps have started popping up!

Thanks for reading!

Please check out the Homesteading Community!

Cheers! & Hive On!

All content found in this post is mine!

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I wonder if your dream of death running over your dog while she was on the phone, is from you being afraid of losing her? Dreams are crazy, I wish I knew why we have to have them.
It is good to hear that you got the water drain before having to deal with cold and stiff hoses.
!ALIVE

It was my boy dog. I just woke from another one where he got stung by a bunch of wasps and was dying in your yard.

@jacobpeacock! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @ myjob. (2/10)

The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want, plus you can win Hive Power (2x 50 HP) and Alive Power (2x 500 AP) delegations (4 weeks), and Ecency Points (4x 50 EP), in our chat every day.

Great to see your getting real upvotes with value man! Times flown by ahhah

Yeah it took forever! I also got 'pressured' (persuaded) into posting into the Homesteading Community which helped a lot. Apparently most of the curators focus on content posted to a Community these days. So if it is your thing... look around and find one or more to post in and see what happens.

Happy Anniversary! Today I am celebrating an anniversary too.

I totally get how 7 years of daily content creation can get old and feel like drudgery. Right now I don't do anything every single day except for cooking and washing dishes - and those two things do wear on me but, that is part of my work in this world, and I really love food so, a necessary evil :)

At this time I aim to write an article or work on my other writing projects 5 or 6 days a week, but some days aspects of surviving must come first.

Anyway, I like the mushroom picture at the end, I think it is worth it to add a picture to help people imagine your surroundings as they read the words. Maybe one day you can include a pic of your cabin or the dogs, if that seems right to you, of course!

Thanks and happy anniversary to you as well.

I have included those kinds of pictures before. There are pictures of the entire build process of the cabin if you dig back far enough. I cleared the site, built the dog yard fence and constructed the cabin at the beginning of this particular series.

I have three full series where I do that or something similar. They are all on this blockchain.

These days I am less ambitious with the images and have pretty much quit making videos and podcasts altogether.

Always nice to read your words.

I will go check those out!

Do it!

It's almost 2AM here on the east coast, and I was bored so I decided to look for something else to read besides checking my own stats after watching Extinction on Netflix. Congrats on hewing through 7 years of tall trees here in this vast blockchain forest.

I'll celebrate my own 7th in july, and trust me, it's been one wild ride! What keeps me going is knowing that my work will live on the blockchain long after I've been flattened like a pancake by an out of control cement mixer (I always joke that one of them is gonna get me).

When the aliens finally do land, I picture at least you will be out in the hills somewhere safely away from the big cities, unlike me who's dangerously close to NY, and Philadelphia (They'll take the big cities first, and then liquify us one by one). :)

That last line of yours was killer, and made me wish I'd wrote it myself! (just the way a writer would think, right?) Congrats again, and maybe someday I'll actually get off this "wrong coast" that I was born on, and out west filled with wild forests, high mountains, and endless vistas to satisfy the heart, mind, and body.

@evernoticethat Ha! I drifted off to sleep just before you posted this.

Congrats on your seven years when it arrives. I had started 'sharing my life' about a year or so before I discovered blockchain blogging and went back (after the fact) and posted everything that I had made beforehand to the chain in an effort to preserve it.

I like the idea that it will all be around long after I am gone as well... and often think of the Github archive (it is the entirety of Github) stored in the arctic which hopefully includes everything on this blockchain.

Occasionally I think of going out west also but I really love the east coast and particularly the south east. I think that all too many of the 'great minds' fled to the west coast during the beatnik era and we were poorer culturally for it.

Yeah, that last line is one I am fond of as well and have done several variations on it over the years. It generally fucks with people who love to think that someone is in control of the planet.