Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 678-679)
Hello Everyone!
A late night, Avoiding discomfort, Storage extremes, Making shelving, Tidying before the storm & A writing dilemma!
The day is dragging on and having never written anything yesterday I best dive in here and see what emerges. So far today has been a bit on the wonky side because I was up way later than usual last night... and of course slept in late also.
None of which is all that big of a deal (including failing to write anything) because I assuredly need a break from time to time and have no regrets in that regard even though I have been trying to keep my 'days off' to Sundays. Having gone on a supply run during that 'day off' time frame the day was far from relaxing even though I enjoyed going on said supply run... so yeah I needed a break.
All that jazz aside, it is worth mentioning that I once again awoke (both yesterday and today) with only minor discomfort in that pulled leg muscle and I believe that it is actually on the mend. Part of my recent strategy is immediately repositioning that leg (whether I am sitting or laying down) when I feel even the slightest twinge of intense discomfort.
That particular strategy seems to be working well and the most significant aspect of it seems to be doing so when I am either laying down to fall asleep or if I wake up in the middle of the night or during a nap. I was actually really surprised to realize just how often not doing that repositioning lead to the discomfort ratcheting up rapidly.
As with most things... once I notice it I can actually do something about it and work towards creating the necessary routines to turn my response into a full-blown habit. In other words I am slowly 'drilling it into my head' that as soon as I notice things like the above... to act swiftly... repetitively... and consistently!
Anyway, yesterday I mainly focused on getting the inside of the cabin sorted out better in regards to storage and essentially tried to create more space where there is no extra space to be had! For the most part I simply shuffled a bunch of stuff around and racked my brain on how to create some temporary shelving or ways to hang stuff from the walls and/ceiling.
I never mentioned it but the other day when I was trying to cram all the new groceries into the cabin... I wound up running out of storage space, screwing some deck screws to one of the walls and hanging bags of groceries from them! I am sure that some rows of coat hooks or something similar would work way better but I just used what was most convenient at the time.
Okay, it is now much later in the day and although I am slightly frazzled from the days activities (and fatigued to boot) it was nonetheless a productive day. That said though... if I do not start writing soon then I am going to put it off yet again!
The main thing that I worked on today was getting more shelves installed in the cabin and sorting through a bunch of the cabin's contents, packing it into boxes and then storing them on the new shelving. Of course it was nowhere near as straightforward as that because I had to shuffle a bunch of stuff around just to be able to do the tasks at hand and do a heck of a lot of dust cleanup along the way... but meh!
Another thing that I did was screw several more deck screws into the wall across from where the groceries are hanging and used them to hang some bags of clothes, my winter jacket and a bunch of other random stuff on. I really have no idea why I did not think of doing that earlier because along that same wall I already had several things hung in that fashion for well over a year now.
After I got all the storage related projects finished (and got everything put away) I spent a good bit of time cleaning out the cabin, swapping out its main rug and generally tidying the place up before the bad weather arrives here in the next few days. Basically I had to clean it all the best that I could before the rains come and me and the dogs track a bunch of grit inside again!
On a different note. I have recently switched to sharing these entries in the Hive Homesteading Community and I have to say that I have some rather mixed feelings about it. Mostly said feelings amount to enjoying posting things to my personal blog and the idea of posting into a Community that I happen to have founded... still leaves me feeling like I am spamming it.
When I began doing it I told myself that I would do it for one week and see how it goes but after three posts I already found myself overthinking it way too much and wanting to go back to just posting to my personal blog. Oddly enough my reasoning on that front has been because I like meandering all over the place in these entries and dislike feeling as if I need to conform it all to a single topic.
I also adamantly enjoy (or am just devoted to) sharing my own personal struggles, failures, victories, successes (or whatever) and am really uncertain about my willingness to do so in a public forum of that manner given that there is an actual theme to it. Sure homesteading encompasses a lot of things and is a rather broad term to boot... but nonetheless I feel a compulsion to change my writing style and content because of its destination.
Do not get me wrong because I absolutely believe that folks should share their personal journeys and perhaps especially so in regards to homesteading or any alternative lifestyle. In short the reason I bear that sentiment is because said 'journeys' are at the very heart of what makes writing about life (and reading about other folks lives) worthwhile to begin with.
It is just that for me personally I am unsure where I stand on it all given how far outside my comfort zone that it puts me and like I said it starting to influence what I choose to write about. Obviously I am feeling rather conflicted over it all and am in no way complaining or anything but if my writing begins inadvertently shifting too far away from my personal story... I may have to go back to my previous method of sharing.
The main thing that I try to always do in these entries is include at least one thing that folks might learn from and do it in a way that is neither forced nor overly polished to the point of shallowness... or just devoid of a personal touch... or in a way that is force-feeding a narrative onto folks. Well, aside from the narrative of my own life!
My point being that for me this writing thing (and the sharing) is something special and deeply personal and going back five years ago or so I was completely incapable of writing about everyday things in my life. Believe me I had no problem filling journals with my personal feelings, thoughts, hopes and whatnot but I could not write a single sentence on even the most mundane of daily routines... let alone a paragraph... or many paragraphs!
Obviously my experiment of 'sharing my life' that I began five years, seven months and seventeen days ago (not that I am counting) has gone way off the rails. My hopes of success at breaking free from the feelings of alienation and isolation were beyond 'marginally small' and yet here I am still spelling out one word at a time to the best of my abilities.
I have assuredly learned a lot along the way but I guess that one of the biggest things has been that much of said alienation and/or isolation was rooted in just how different my lifestyle was from other folks that I knew. Not only that but just how fundamentally what I 'want from life' (and what I want to spend my life doing) differed from that of others.
What I am driving at there is that without making the choice to begin sharing my life I would never have met the folks that I have along the way that... wait for it... also live or have lived 'different' lifestyles. Finding folks that have encountered many of the same judgments, presumptions, pigeon-holing or whatever else from friends, family and 'society at large' sure was an eye opener and yeah made me feel a heck of a lot less alone in the world... so go figure!
Just to put things in perspective there. In the not-so-grand scheme of things the current acceptable models of lifestyle choices (living in suburbs, apartments and high-density housing in cities and such) is a rather new advent compared to the rest of human history... and yeah honestly I think it is abnormal as heck to live that way... hence all the alienation!
Alright, I am going to derail myself off that topic and get to wrapping this entry up because I am fading fast here and do not want to overly struggle during the editing, proofreading and posting portion of my evening. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
