@wrc Serenity is the cargo trailer - safe and sound and my daily domicile on the family land, and going nowhere anytime soon. The truck is Jeremiah. Still an emotional thing - it feels wrong somehow to separate the two, since they’ve been together for so long.
@7 - I don’t think above average physical ability is a prerequisite at all… I assume it just channels one’s focus and efforts in different areas. In one sense, if my WoG depends on physical prowess, that’s a fragility, because my health can be taken away by one bad fall or other whim of fate.
It occurred to me that almost all of my capx has been in the pursuit of shelter. All the way back to 2020, most of my >1jafi expenses had to do with either driving around looking for a place to build something, or actually building something. I’m not proud to admit that I was irked that basouragami
outed me at 2.2jafi in Viktor K’s journal, because that figure includes the cost of building most of two tiny houses, *plus* an out of pocket surgery. In my view that proves Scott 2’s point that you can’t put those numbers side to side without factoring in what they’re accounting for. I’ve been living at <1jafi since September, and as soon as I figure out this whole alternative shelter business it’ll be smooth sailing. [edit: see post below. I'm not actually mad at Basuragomi]
But, to Basuragami’s point, I am *actually* spending 2.2jafi. That is how much actual usd left my accounts. If I don’t watch it, I’ll keep building 80% of a tiny house, then abandoning it and moving on, forever. If that goes on long enough, I’ll no longer be able to fool myself that it’s a capx - half-building tiny houses is just my weird, mildly expensive hobby.
So I need to get more strategic about it. What are the factors that lead to these expenses?
1) Time pressure. This is the second build where I’ve put us (DGF and I) in a somewhat uncomfortable living circumstance where we’re waiting for me to finish The Build in order for our lives to improve. It’s difficult to ascend a competence S-curve under a tight deadline, particularly when one of the Stakeholders is the person you snuggle to sleep every night, and so I fall back on the construction methods I’m competent at, which involve lots of trips to the conventional hardware store. This runs right in to factor #2, which is
2) Relatively high $/sf. It’s on the low end of conventional, but I’d like to be on the low end of “wait HOW much did he spend on that??” Like, three figures for a studio/bedroom. I see this as at least two S-curves: alt building methods such as earthbag, tire wall, rubble trench, cob, even vernacular, and low-cost/free salvage materials acquisition.
3) Insufficiently mature minimalism. Part of the reason we need space is because we have stuff. We probably don’t need all this stuff. But since we don’t have any space, all our stuff is in boxes spread out in nooks and crannies all over the place. Getting serious and really culling all the stuff will help me be able to design appropriate spaces / not overbuild.
4) Uncertainty / indecision about where to build. There’s no perfect place. We only recently decided to commit to the family land for our west coast base of operations, with a possible initiative to build something in the Midwest at a future date. Before this decision, we were really scattered and that caused lots of $friction muda.
Most of these factors should be eased after the completion of this current build. The easing of tight deadlines, and the commitment to not accept another tight deadline in the future, should give me the space I need to ascend the S-curve of very low cost construction methods. The tighter decisions about location should mean we won’t be abandoning current investment of time and money, and spending $friction schlepping stuff around. The next year or so of frugal slow travel should tighten our minimalism game and make us more comfortable in living situations we used to find distasteful.
