Hello Everyone!
To slack or not to slack, Icy muck, Too much wind, Some inbound scenario fixes, Staying cozy & Trudging along!
Alright, I have been slacking the previous few days in regards to my writing routine... and have been sleeping odd hours to boot... which yup means my schedule/routines in general have been equally skewed in the process. If I was not being highly productive working on some coding projects I would be more concerned over it all than I am... but alas I enjoy my 'new' hobby as much as I enjoy my old wintertime activity of gaming.
As far as the coding projects go, I am making good progress and although I still struggle with not letting one project segue into another... it still keeps happening. I guess that there are far worse things than having an overabundance of inspiration... but some days I just want to be less imaginative... and just spend time fine tuning (or wholly refactoring) some of my existing projects.
Overall, it sure is a much better feeling each day to be working on such things rather than idling my time away playing video games... but at times I do miss the 'social' aspect of gaming. As a side note the lack of 'social' interactions has not been much of a 'lack' at all... because over the course of my stay here I have been staying in touch with my friends much more than I am accustomed to doing.
All that jazz aside, the weather has been consistently overcast, rainy, cold and windy to boot... and yesterday I even saw a small amount of snow accumulate on one of the blankets that I have hung up on the dog yard fence. There have actually been several times now that snow was forecast for the area... but thus far... it has not accumulated on the ground... which is not something that can be said about the frost and ice!
Numerous times now, both in the wee hours of the evening and during the day... the landscape has been transformed into a glinting, icy and downright slippery landscape... which yup... is not all that fun to navigate on such a steep slope. Surprisingly, the times that I have found myself slipping and sliding around was from the mud just below the frost... and the frost itself is what has helped me have some traction.
The worst part of the bad weather is still inbound... and based off how much propane that I have burned through in the previous few days... I should probably get the rest of my tanks filled sooner rather than later. I could most likely skimp by with the fuel that I have if it were not so windy... but the wind tends to mess up the whole 'air gap' system that I am using to trap the heat in the tent.
I could assuredly either add another layer of polyethylene... or change the way my main tarp (that is above the tent) is setup... but at this point I would rather not fiddle with things. The reason that I say that, is because I am also capturing my drinking water off said tarp (which is working well) and when the wind ripples the tarp... it shakes all the fallen leaves off of it.
My other big reason is that it is looking like I will be getting a building delivered early next month... or at the tail end of this month... and doing anything to improve my 'camping scenario' does not seem worthwhile. It is still hard for me to wrap my head around it all... but the building itself will be much more square footage than I have lived in for decades now... and it is even already insulated and wired.
A few days back some folks came and visited to see what would need to be done to create an area for the building... and what it would take to fix my wonky driveway... where it has an incline that is too steep for most vehicles. In short, we got a game plan together... and although it is going to take a good bit of heavy machinery work... and lots of fill dirt... it is at least a doable endeavor to fix the driveway, establish a large flat area... and get the building placed accordingly.
Although the building itself will be much closer to the road than where I want to be living... it will at least give me somewhere to store my gear... and have four walls around me for the remainder of the winter. The difference in heating such a large space (opposed to heating the tent) is going to be pretty drastic... so most likely I will either build a smaller room in inside it... or partition off a small area with canvas or polyethylene.
Just getting a structure on site will be a big win though, because not only will it make all the snooty neighbors feel better (yet assuredly not less snooty) it will also make it so that I can get actual postal service. I know that most folks would be excited to have a real shelter... but what truly excites me is being able to start ordering all the supplies that I usually order... and getting them frigging delivered without a bunch of hassle involved.
Getting supplies here has been such a mixed bag... and to compound things... I have not even gotten into the routine of doing my shopping once a month... like I have done for something like a decade now. Heck, just getting out once a month... and being reminded of why I enjoy being a homebody so much... is one of those things that is difficult to articulate.
All that said that 'shopping and delivery service' that I have been using here... has been convenient and in some ways way too convenient... and I have found myself utilizing it more than I ever thought that I would... which yup has been pricey. I do not think that it is all that horrid in the not-so-grand scheme of things... because things have been pretty brutal on my psyche during this 'adventure' and anything that boosts my morale (or just makes life easier) is more than welcome at this point.
On a different note, about a month or so ago when I had that epiphany day (the one when I was getting my propane tanks refilled) I had this sort of 'snapshot' moment... where later in the evening I was exiting the tent and stepping into the windy cold night air to let the dogs out. My 'epic' realization is that maybe I should cut myself some slack... dial back focusing so much on relief efforts... admit that I am camping in much the same conditions as many others are... and that I really need to reevaluate everything.
Not to get too long winded on that topic... but ever since then I have been slowly recognizing just how deeply I myself was impacted dealing with the horrors of all that early relief work for folks in the various disaster zones. Sure the WNC DZ by far got the bulk of my focus... and is where the most things that I can never 'un-see, un-hear, un-know' come from the most... but the entirety of it all spread over all the DZs had/has sure affected me in ways that I am still trying to sort out.
To exert maximum candor... I would say that it all did 'quite the number' on me... and I think that 'shock' is something that I am still trying to shake off. If I could word it down into just a few words it would be something along the lines of: I simply feel like I am out of sync with everything around me and there is a perpetual daze that no amount of extra strong espresso... drank by the cupful... can penetrate or snap me out of and what I really need is music and lots of it!
In the the long run I am sure that I will bounce back from it all... and be better off for my experiences somehow but oy it has been a rather tumultuous journey so far. Mayhaps, when the proverbial 'dust' settles... I will look back on this time and marvel at my own resilience... even though it does not feel like 'resilience' whilst taking one step after another up what is an exquisitely slippery slope by all usages of the term.
Well, I should keep this entry short and wrap things up here the best way that I can... which is by saying that I am still plugging along, I am staying quite cozy in my little tent on the side of the hill... and yup I am obviously still alive and occasionally kicking. I hope that everyone is doing well and all that feel good jazz. Ta ta and ciao for now.
It has been a long time since I cried tears of joy, halfway through your post did it. YOU ARE GETTING A BUILDING TO LIVE IN, HEP HEP HURRAY!!!
Can you put your building on your land backward, where the door does not face the road, or maybe sideways? I am so excited for you.
I am happy that you realize what I have been trying to tell you about slowing down on the DZ. IDK if it was mother's instinct but somehow I knew you were getting overly stressed.
Do you remember Stephen Shatto? He had a stroke and the doctors are giving him a 50% chance of making it, he is still in a coma.
Congratulations @jacobpeacock!
You raised your level and are now a Minnow!
Check out our last posts:
Great !