Sorry about the “lite” posting. I’m deadlining this week and next, so “lite” may continue for a while.
Tomorrow I’ll be going on an expedition with a friend as part of the research for the BHM hide-a-gun article. Packing up the rubber boots, shovels, and camera now.
So I thought I’d leave you with something worth pondering for a few days:
What are the five major things you’d like to accomplish in 2013?
Realistic things, I mean. (“I’d like to personally restore the Bill of Rights” doesn’t count.)
I’m a bit stumped on this myself. I’ve come up with three, two of which aren’t things I’d care to tell the world. The other (3. Cut by half the time I spend on the computer) isn’t so much an accomplishment but a laying of groundwork for accomplishment.
So here you go. Hope this helps inspire you toward your own goals in the new year. Maybe you can give me some ideas, too.
1. Improve my health. For the most part, health problems I have can be vastly improved by lifestyle changes. This would also allow me to improve physical condition, stamina etc.
2. Improve family resiliency. I know times ahead are going to be rocky, need to prepare with skills (not just stock piles of stuff) to see us through. Skills to do things ourselves, improved job skills etc.
3. Figure out how to succesfully garden in a lousy and small environment.
4. Spend more time teaching my family to take care of themselves and become less dependent on society.
5. Spend more time with family, friends and tribe members. We all have things to teach each other.
Cliche as it is I’m trying to cut way back on drinking and other vices, do more to meet my physical goals, all that lame stuff. I did this really well in 2010 but at the beginning of this year I almost totally just said fuck it. So start fresh I guess…It should be somewhat easier this time since I have somewhat less problems now and at least till halfway through the year all I really have to screw it up for the most part is a really pathetic bar that closes at 10pm on weeknights and doesn’t even have real cups. (Seriously, everything is in solo cups and they serve up shots in those little plastic containers that restaurants serve ranch dressing and stuff in…) I rarely get more than 4 hours of sleep, most of the time not even that…After the first few days here when I was going to bed tired and early and sober and waking up without feeling like jumping out the 4th story window…I’m trying to keep that going. Oh and I’m trying to spend less money on stuff I don’t need, but that’s a more easy goal for me.
~ Improve health through diet and holistic practices.
~ Establish residence in another town.
~ Establish DTP business.
~ Increase gardening knowledge and skills.
That’s enough for one year…
1. Get C to finally abandon the job culture (we’re sooo close Claire:)
2. Physically relocate to a less totalitarian state
3. Provide C’s mom a place to live with family
4 and 5. I got my secrets too!
Goals for this year include”
1. build co-op greenhouse
2. get second lot here ready for building son’s house
3. return to regular sewing and leatherwork
4. finish one or more of the novels I stared this year
1. Lose weight/improve health.
2. Publish my book/write two more and publish them, too.
3. Be more frugal. Which would involve less time online, lol.
4. Wag more, bark less.
5. Finish our trailer and move out west. We found a place we both like. Hoping that 2013 is the year we can relocate.
One goal, same one I’ve had for the past 2 or 3 years now: Get back to Colorado and stay put. I’ve been extremely lucky (ok, I also like to think smart has to do with it too) to have survived the gypsy life all this time, minus the few annoyances along the way. When I compare the rest of the situations around me to a few years ago, I doubt that good luck will continue in 2013. And in 2012 things got a whole lot worse than years prior to that. Since I move around so much, I have no hard numbers to back up my noticing there’s double the amount of homeless people I see on the streets lately. “Regular people” now out there. Families, too. It would surprise most people who have a home, just how many there really are out here that no longer have anything left except hope and determination.
Bonus points for now knowing that when the world ends as everyone else knows it, it’ll be business as usual for me after this having these experiences.
So, yeah, it’s time to head back and maybe be “normal” for however long it is until everything hits the fan.
Excuse the typo, one “this” snuck in there when it didn’t belong there.
1. 3 new novels (redundant?) by 10/31.
2. Blue Ridge Marathon on 4/20.
3. Help my daughter improve her reading (so she can finish a book on her own)
4. Get the soon-returning 18yo ex-foster kid straightened out & on his own.
5. Dunno. Something.
Just one. Get through 6 months of chemotherapy with a successful result.
Nevermind — That one is pretty damn worthy. I wish you all the best with that.
#1. Somewhat secret. I could probably mention it here, but … you never know.
#2. Better health — the whole thing, weight, diet, exercise, etc.
#3. Finish the bare-bones prep stuff. Well, my definition of bare-bones is probably more extensive than many people’s, but I want to have the bug-out drill fully in place, and I have more stuff to buy. And training to get done.
#4. Get out shooting more. I really need to practice, and tune my hand loads, and get going on ammo.
#5. This could be any one of a number of things. Have to just let life percolate for a while.
> Perfect time travel
> Make some money
> Find (or re-find) a hobby
> Sing more
> X (Secret and quite probably self-destructive)
1. Build a fence between the plowed an unplowed sections of my land.
(A neighbor has been farming part of my land since before I bought it, and there’s never been a fence there. It was never a problem before, I just positioned my garden where I thought it was far enough away that the tractor wouldn’t get to it. Worked out fine, until said neighbor got a new hired hand this year . . .
I only lost a few inches off the edge of the garden, and Neighbor apologized up and down for it, but I’d still feel better with a fence there.)
2. This one’s an either-or. Either I find a new job, or I move out to my land and garden full-time. And to be honest, I’m kind of rooting for both.
3. Find a manufacturer for my designs. I keep getting more ideas, and I keep having to shovel more and more of other people’s stuff off my sewing table every day. The two don’t go well together. Add in the fact that I’m just not fast enough to produce things as more than a hobby. Albeit a fun hobby š
4. Build a pedal-powered lawn mower. I’ve had the designs in my head for a while, and gas prices keep going higher….
5. Go an entire year without some new health issue cropping up. It’d just be nice for a change.
@Ellendra said: “Go an entire year without some new health issue cropping up”.
I can identify with this as I was just diagnosed with asthma last week. On top of a laundry list of other aflictions.
1. Train 15% more shooters than in 2012.
2. Find a paying job.
3. Finish three more of my novels and edit three for others.
4. Find a new publisher.
5. Private family matter.
My primary goal for 2013 is to live near people who share my core values. Iām thinking of a phyle, tribe or community that could maintain cohesion with human powered mobility ā like walking. Today I depend on my Internet connection, an unlimited long-distance phone plan and a full tank of gas to compensate for ever increasing isolation from the violent, politicized culture. Going retro on social organization could at least provide moral support if communications and gas just vanish like they did in the 2012 Sandy storm.
All my other projects for 2013 have to support my search for community or at least not be a distraction. I hope to start earning an income again. Looking for work is a good way to meet people and learn about their world view. I will continue to take on-line courses for database, web design and photography. I plan to attend some events at the local photography and gun clubs. Looks like a busy year.
1. Prepare to move. Haven’t decided where yet but California hasn’t wanted me for a long time and decisions will have to be made. I’ve lived in this house since leaving my last wife in Oct 05. I didn’t leave with much, my books, computer and dressers worth of clothing. Now the place is jammed packed with stuff. Time to get rid of old clothes I don’t wear, etc. Bring it back to easy to live in. In other words, clean up and clean out my life in preparation for starting a new one.
2. Health stuff in all it’s forms. I need to get ready for what’s coming.
3. Get serious about preps. I’m ready for a few months but that’s way down from what it used to be and I have not been motivated near enough even though I’m pretty sure 2013 is going to suck.
4. Clean up my messy personal life.
5. it’s not a secret… but to make it simple, take the road to where I want to go.
Since my ADD kicked in after 2…
1. Physical…my progress has sort of fallen off a bit. I’m trying to refine my plan with lifting, I’m adding swimming a few times a week and I’m doing way more Cardio. This is like the main focus for the next 6 months…
2. Drink way less. This goes with the above in that it’s pointless to go to the gym and then just go get drunk till 4 in the morning. Progress requires more food and sleep than that. And I’m just trying NOT to carry on family tradition so much.
3.Spend less money on things that aren’t all that necessary. (I have other, more important not always that necessary things that I want this coming year like a Harley, a new handgun, rifle optics, anot to mention a finished left sleeve, among other things…) Fast food binges and frequent bar trips have already gotten the ax.
4. Personal, spirtitual, etc. Nuff said.
5. [REDACTED]
OK, I’m having a hard time dealing with my PESD (Post Election Stress Disorder) I can not escape the thought that this president may actually do all the things he said he wants to (the day before the Des Moines Register endorsed Romney, Obama told the editors that he WANTED to go over the cliff, a trillion in spending cuts he could book, and an increase in revenue…). So, in the midst of this depression that I’m suffering (caused, I believe, by the knowledge that I’m watching the end of the “American Experiment” and the train wreck of the coming centrally planned economy and run away inflation…) here are the things on my agenda: Oh, and therapy; it goes with everything…
Double or even triple the size of the garden, add a couple hundred feet of asparagus, and experiment with potato “tubs”. I have enough good ground to start a market garden… Just steal a little from the beef calves.
Get the chicken coop and the rabbit hutches fixed up and filled. (My work schedule now has me getting home after dark, so I didn’t re-stock the broilers, and the breeding rabbits went to my niece for 4-H). And, build a new green house (would love to attach it to south side of house, but zoning…)
Purchase (or barter for): (1) an old 4 row planter with plates for sweet corn, beans, etc., (2) an older gravity grain wagon or hoist type that’s cheap but serviceable., (3) kerosene heater for “powerless days”., (4) a “new” gas/propane range for the outdoor kitchen (canning and butchering). (5) A back-up energy source.
Get The Big Red Dodge put back together (who knows, might get involved in a tank battle and BRD is definitely a tank!!!)
HOARD! HOARD! HOARD! but sensibly…
ps Kent, you are already time traveling, it becomes more evident the farther along you get,- about when the main fear in your life changes from mortality to hoping it just doesn’t hurt too much… š
EN – Thanks for making it simple with your phrase, “take the road to where I want to go.”
I’m going to post those words where I see them several times every day.
Thank you. It’s something I need to constantly work on.
1. Reaquire (sp?) And then further develop my character.
2. Maintain my honor over the next twelve months.
3. Get back into peak physical fitness.
4. Lay groundwork for increase in annual net income by at least $20,000.
5. Celebrate Easter 2014 with my family.
Your reads have made some really good goals. Here’s what I came up with.
1. Save at least 20% of my income.
2. Give at least 10% of it too.
3. Help someone else achieve an important goal.
4. Finish getting our food stores and emergency supplies ready.
5. Try to get a little more done each day, this means less computer time.
Let’s see how we do. Save this blog entry and we can revisit in about a year and see how we did.
1) Empty last storeroom ( emptied one this year )
2) Run gas to rest of house and install gas stove & water heater
3) Paleo my diet and exercise ( counts as one )
4) Teach daughter to shoot
5) Get rid of 80% of the “stuff” I own.