Early Retirement Extreme Forums

After my exercise I worked for a couple of hours, and then I was going to sort out the things in my room but instead I got distracted learning about Japanese art of furoshiki after I saw a reference to it somewhere else.

I hadn't heard of it before but you can use it to make a variety of different types of shopping bags using a large square of fabric combined with square/reef knots. Easily deconstructable once you finish using the bag too, so you can use the fabric repeatedly for different things. You can also use it to wrap gifts. So now I know how to make a perfectly functional shopping bag out of a 1m square piece of fabric.

The video I found about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74Dwe2BDFw

The furoshiki requires no sewing or permanent alterations to the fabric, btw, it only uses folding and tying knots.

Was just talking to a neighbour who had been doing some gardening, and she said that she usually pulls up the dandelions in her garden. Maybe next year if she's still living there I'll ask if I can pick them for her (and therefore get some free salad).

the video was so meditative
nice

I've found a book here with a much larger number of furoshiki techniques: https://archive.org/details/wrapping-wi ... f-wrapping

I'm still not enjoying the job that I'm planning to quit. I can't remember if I said this above, but I'm planning to give my notice at the end of April, which will trigger a three month notice period. This will ensure certain things get done that could be done with not being done by someone who just got the job. Honestly the day I plan to quit can't come soon enough.

One thing I thought I'd miss moving out of the countryside was the scenery, but actually there are a couple of city walks locally that have really nice scenery. There is a river that runs through the city and there is a beautiful walk down in that area which is well-used and completely separated from traffic. There are plenty of tall trees around in the parks. The weather is nicer too, because before the village I was in was at the top of a hill and this city is at ground level, so it's a couple of degrees warmer and less exposed when there's strong wind.

I'm thinking of rereading the ERE book to see whether I have a new take on it by this point, if I get time.

I'm definitely starting to feel like mentally I'm at around Wheaton level 6. I'm definitely getting pretty into thinking about other sorts of capital such as skills, social, cultural, and have been for the past couple of years, and I've been reading about permaculture even though I only have a rented paved-over yard at the moment. And one of the big reasons for moving to the city is because I'm thinking about how locations will evolve in the future and the resilience of the location under different circumstances, as well as the beneficial effect it would have on multiple areas of my life. I definitely don't think I have the smooth-ness and connected-together-ness of level 7 yet.

I myself love the challenge of linking parks and trails together in urban settings to create an outdoor challenge and appreciate the often overlooked spaces amongst the brick, mortar, steel, glass & asphalt. Beauty and serenity exists if you put in the time to discover it.... Also there is this for those on a mission (loved this documentary by the way)...

https://youtu.be/jy_W5qsjB5U

I have myself requested ERE from the library again, I too want to reread it again 7 years later now. Time shifts perspective

Wow, that's a really cool project in that video! He must really know the city a lot better now. San Francisco is a lot bigger than my city, too.

I think once I sell my car I'll really start to get to know more of the city. I already walked into the city centre once, and I've been a couple of other places, but once I'm using walking to get from A to B I think I'll start to find routes that I might not have otherwise gone. I think you see the world differently when you're on foot than in a car. In a car you drive past things quickly, you don't remember that certain buildings are there, you don't experience the vibe of a place in the same way. But when you walk through a place you feel connected to it, for better or worse, and I think that's powerful.

BookLoverL wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:38 pm

I think once I sell my car I'll really start to get to know more of the city.

wheeeeee! congrats. i came here after seeing mention of this in another thread.

we did the same thing, not looking back.

and you're in the land of bromptons! i'm so jealous...

I don't know who the bromptons are, I'm in a small city in England. xD But I'm enjoying city life so much more than country life already, even with half of the things being shut due to COVID.

BookLoverL wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:39 am

I don't know who the bromptons are, I'm in a small city in north west England. xD But I'm enjoying city life so much more than country life already, even with half of the things being shut due to COVID.

oh haha, brompton is an english maker of small foldable bicycles designed for cities. those little bikes beautiful and well engineered and fold perfectly, seem to be made to last forever. they're hard to find in america.

and yeah, cities are made for living, of course. i tried living in the sticks, but among other things it was terribly dull.

Oh, the folding bicycles! I don't have one of those but I've seen them. Probably I'll just end up getting whatever bike I can find second hand though.

I was getting extremely lonely in the countryside. I think my village had experienced a sort of hollowing-out - the main groups of people there were pensioners, and snobby middle class commuters with primary-school age kids. Mostly I tried connecting with the pensioners, but I'm 27, single and childless, and likely to stay that way for a while. The city feels so much more vibrant, and has people of every category. And there are actually things to do there even if you don't know people.

I feel like if you're going to move to the countryside, either you need to be the type of person who is good at fitting into typical rural social groups, or you need to have already settled with someone so that you're not there alone, honestly. And the risk of loneliness and boredom is higher if your house is not *in* the rural settlement but instead half an hour or more's walk outside of it.

yes, my wife and i moved to the country from a nice city to homestead, but we in fact did not fit into the rural social groups, even though she grew up in the area...

she's always struggled between the dreams of "going back home" and "getting the hell away from here"

me, i enjoy experimentation.so i went in for the learning.

being peacefully alone in the homestead with the chickens and the barn cats was nice... but we need more "culture" to breathe well. we thought of starting an artists colony but the logistics were a nightmare.

we always said if we had to be single there we'd go crazy-- the dating pools and gender politics and other aspects of single life were not a good fit for us.

the brompton (pricey!) is a bit of an aspirational fantasy for us, given that we're 2 people with no car living in a small apartment. so every square foot counts. she's got a cheap folding one that packs small, but it's way too heavy to carry, and... then we have 2 others

walking is #1 though.

On my walk today, I was trying to pay extra attention to different plants that I walked past. It's the same route I've been before, in the city, and I spotted so many different types of plants, including at least 10 I couldn't identify! So that's exciting.

I'd like to learn to identify plants better as part of working towards permaculture/gardening/foraging skillset. The problem right now is that I always forget to take either camera or plant-identifying-book with me, so by the time I get back in I've forgotten what the new plants looked like except approximately, which isn't good enough for identification. But it made me so happy to see so many plants around.

I gave notice for the job I don't like last Friday!

There is a three month notice period, so my last day will be the end of July.

After that hopefully I can find a different part time job that fits better, without the qualities this one had that's made it so frustrating for me.

Congratulations! Seems like a good time buffer to get prepared for any changes, too. Here's to hoping the new job fits better.

The end of my current job is getting closer, especially since in the second half of July the person taking it over will be doing most of the stuff. So I definitely feel like I'm on the home stretch now.

I still haven't even started looking for a new job, though. Thinking I'll try to take a few weeks off in August, and then look. It'll eat into my reserves a bit more but I don't feel like I've had a proper holiday from responsibility in a while because of how much time I spent thinking about the existing job even while I wasn't doing it.

At some point I guess I'll have to start applying for things, though...

Now that I'm in the last stretch of the job, I can definitely feel the weight of it lifting. Despite the low hours it's been on my mind way too much, and it seems like now it's on its way out I'm finally able to think around it and allow myself to relax again. Strange how it works like that.

Hoping that with that being the case I can get started with some of the personal projects I've been putting off.

I'm so happy right now! Mum and I went on a walk to a park in the city that we hadn't been to before, and it turns out it has a whole miniature nature reserve in there! It's just a short walk too! There are wetlands with a pond where we saw a heron, a brook surrounded by woodland, lots of properly long grass... and all the kind that feels properly wild too, not the kind that feels managed. I'm so happy I found this place so close to me. Before I moved I never imagined there would be a wild space like this right inside the city, and it's all completely open to the public too.

I'm definitely going to go there extremely often now I know it's there.

According to the signs there they are deliberately using the space to help conserve rare and decreasing species too. It's such a great space honestly, I can't believe it's been so close to my new location the whole time and I didn't even realise.

I love it when I happen upon something like that! Time to do some nature sketching?