The Education of Axel Heyst

[sodatrain]

Okay so this is good news, because this is along the lines of what I want to do. ERE for solarpunks. I've been hanging out in some solarpunk spaces recently and those folks could use some postconsumer praxis and systems thinking, imo.

Potential thread hijack warning...

I had an unexpected experience sharing an episode of the Solarpunk Now! podcast (E1 - Why Solarpunk) - which I think I picked up from you. I was sort of multi-tasking and nodding along. Found the opening/lack of intro for like 15 minutes sort of odd but it was interesting. I enjoyed the second half more where they talked about cities and leveraging the investment already made in cities (vs everyone running to the countryside) etc. I shared it with a friend who's been a homesteader for a few years. Pretty radical thinker. Wow was he pissed about the host conflating the ideas of homesteading (or cottage core as she called it) and the Nazis. His reaction caught me off guard so I gave it a second closer listen. The lack of intro/long pre-amble still seemed weird and they, in ways, said cottage core in strikingly similar path as pre-nazi Germany. But then... "So this is dangerous and horrible... but Solarpunk is the answer!" It felt sort of like a long winded build up to create extreme contrast between homesteading/cottage-core and Solarpunk movement just to make Solarpunk sound amazing and awesome. The host is well spoken and clearly bright. I enjoyed the episode but am left scratching my head a bit over the homesteaders are basically on track to be Nazis thing.

Wondering if you listened to this episode and what you thought about that part of the episode.

And separate from any of the 'nazi bits' of the episode, is their definition of Solarpunk one that resonates with you?

[AxelHeyst]

Going off memory, but, my take:
Luka was critiquing cottagecore as an aesthetic movement, not homesteading as a praxis. Their point was that people ought to carefully examine the political and social implications of the aesthetic movement they pay homage to.

In the same way that a critique of solarpunk is not a critique of urban gardening or decentralized PV energy production, a critique of cottagecore is not a critique of homesteading. I think. While solarpunk is largely urban, there exist plenty of rural people or people who'd like to be rural and homestead, who consider themselves solarpunk.

I agree that their heavy handed crit of cottagecore felt a bit contrived in order to pose a bigger contrast to solarpunk.

Most of that episode resonated with me, although I'd have to go back to find their definition of sp. Since I listened to it, I've had the same experience I've had a few times before with solarpunk: I get psyched on it, dive in, and then become underwhelmed by the quality of content the community produces, and then get turned off by the amount of theoretical circle-jerking that goes on and lack of actually doing anything. It sometimes feels like wave after wave of college students discovering earthships and similar things, getting psyched, and then moving on.

I got turned off by the amount of social/political theory going on. The writing on the wall I see is cognitive insularity and purity purges., Which I want no part of. I have a school bus to bury in the desert and convert into a greenhouse.

[sodatrain]

Aaah. That makes sense. I actually looked up cottagecore just now. I see the connection to homesteading but clearly they are not the same thing. I remember their use of “aesthetic” a lot in the episode and I kind of dismissed their use of it as a currently in favor/trendy-ish word being used in a way I didn’t understand. (The eco-fascist stuff was also interesting but also felt like it was used to pump up a contrast for contrasts sake.)

One difference in the way they talked about solarpunk being more inclusive and sort of a wrap your arms around everyone- to be fair - way to go about things. Painted the cottagecore/homestead crew is isolated and solitary. The homesteaders I know all have a wonderful sense of and value for community!

Guess I’ll focus on your forthcoming solarpunk content!

Anyway - thanks for entertaining my tangent!

[AxelHeyst]

This tweet from Paul Graham is possibly my favorite thing he's written:

When people attack an essay you've written, 95% of the time they do it by making up something you didn't actually say, and then attacking that.

He was referring to a paper titled The Ties that Blind: Misperceptions of the Opponent Fringe and the Miscalibration of Political Contempt, link here.

Dear everyone: that is the end of this topic. Please don't talk about this in my journal. If you want to discuss it, start a thread (and good luck with that) or darknet it.

[MidsizeLebowski]

This schoolhouse greenhouse note has me intrigued... we have a friend here who has a converted schoolie dormitory for lack of a better term for hosting groups overnight - it does indeed moderate temperature extremes nicely. All I see is the incredible difficulty of moving what will become a mass of rusting metal that can only be excavated with heavy equipment in some distant potentially low energy future. I am, of course - a sucker for the novelty of the school bus - have you put significant thought into it? Would love to hear insights!

[AxelHeyst]

Is your friends skoolie buried/bermed? I'm intrigued! I haven't found anyone else doing it yet.

Still looking into it, need to spend more time with the idea to validate if it's good or not. I'm not sure why anyone would dig it up in the future? And it's mostly metal, so... It'd just melt back into the earth eventually. I'd pull the motor, tires, exhaust system, etc out so the only stuff left would be metal and paint, no plastic or motor oil etc.

[AxelHeyst]

Storm killed our internet dish somehow (in addition to closing the pass). Have been without comms since Thursday evening. That, combined with the price hikes for starlink, have me thinking... How hard would it be to build a WoG here with no internet? A rural WoG with no car *and* no internet?

I need to finish a couple projects but those should wrap in March. Maybe I'll do a no internet *at home* experiment in April. Sounds like fun.

[AxelHeyst]

February Update:
ttmCoL: $8,185 (trending down)
ttmFU: 4.6 (trending up)
ttmNW: 16.4 (trending up)
ttmNet Profit: $820

FU is currently a little over my high limit. Per my rules, FU surplus goes to either 'alpha' (tools, materials, skill training, preps...) or dumps into my retirement portfolio. I haven't yet set guidelines for *when* I move FU surplus, but I'll make a call in the next couple months. e.g. I might use some of that surplus for the CNC router. Still working through how I want to think about that stuff.

Having our internet go out *really* got my attention to design something similar for my life and run it on a permanent, not experimental, basis. One idea is to pretend like I don't have internet here on the land, to have to bike into town to the library to get some. The other idea is to go back to my satanic digital sabbath, one day a week of internet.

A hybrid approach between the two would be, I have a day every two weeks where I use the internet here, otherwise, I have to ride into town. I'll continue thinking about this but won't pull the trigger until I'm done with my neighbor's PV build.

...I am *so* done with working on other people's projects. It's the Axel "Mr. NOPE" Heyst show from here on out.

My WoG / Vision for my life continues to become refined and even more exciting. I am both really enjoying my day to day, and really excited for the direction my life is shaping into. I'll have more details soon on the WoG adjustments I've been working on in my internet-free hermitage...

[AxelHeyst]

Further adventures in "Axel decides to take the spirit of a simple slamdunk concept like 'Work five years while saving 85% and then be done with it' and make it more complicated and *add* risk".

1. Achieve VLCOL *via postconsumer praxis* (not through mere/simple/shallow sacrifice-based frugality. The VLCOL must be a result of broad skills and systems thinking, not merely the ability to subsist off of dumpster'd cat food).
2. Accumulate 5-10x FU with ideally another 5-10x in retirement funds (but maybe whatevs?)
3. Validate ability to earn => 1xCoL on short notice without much effort if necessary (important for lifelong white collar workers who don't *know* (kennen?) how easy it is to scrape up some work)
4. Pursue self-directed projects with the aim of 'discovering' what activities align with my deep soul stoke (aka that which feels like play to me but looks like work to most other people). A hunch that these stoke-first interests are possibly remunerative are key to this strategy. If the hunch is that the stoke interests aren't possibly remunerable, it's best to do the 5yrs@85%SR route.
5. As the WoG coalesces around a theme and confidence in the path increases, steadily crank focus, effort, and dedication to the vision to a sustainable 11.
6. Don't give up, pay attention and learn as you go, don't die, read *all* of the books, when fail get back up, never take leveraged risks (avoid exposure to ruin), retain control of the vision, be relentlessly resourceful, et cetera.

Step six is the destination. My theory is that a likely side effect of arriving at and then running step 6 for years and years is financial success and bringing something worthwhile into the world, but I didn't list that as the final step because I think that would encourage fixation on 'winning' where the point is to actually play the game.

I don't think this is good general advice. It's just my current idea of how I want to run my life. It's a highly customized advice package specifically for myself based on my experiences, personality, etc.

I just completed step 3, am at least halfway through step 4 and am implicitly somewhere in step 5. (The 'steps' aren't truly discrete, of course).


eta: upon further thought, the theme of most of my thinking in the past 12-18 months can be described as "how to solve freedom-to out of order of the trad FIRE script" based on the hunch that there are positive effects of doing so 'early', aka the ability not so much to *skip* steps but rather to put them in different locations, with different emphases, using different methods. This isn't an indictment of the tradFIRE/ERE script but rather a reflection of my inability to not tinker with stuff.

[AxelHeyst]

Our internet equipment started working again, then not, and now it's settled into being mostly up but able to handle text only, essentially. It took 28min to send a jpg. Most websites just won't load. New equipment is on the way in another week or two.

The big snow storm for us was end of last month iirc. We were snowed in for a few days, the pass closed. Then last week a warm rain dumped, which melted the snow in the mountains, which flowed down the wash. For the second time in 25 years, the wash is flowing high enough that we can't drive across it with our vehicles. ( A big tired jeep would be fine). And it's dangerous to cross on foot solo, out of the question for my parents. We put one vehicle on the far side of the creek, so we can walk around about 1.5 miles to get to it and drive out if we need to.

The waters will likely subside to safe levels within a week. In the meantime, we have plenty of food, the well no longer require gasoline to pump (#fistpump), and we've got plenty of books. Life is fine.

Scratch that. Life is amazing. The warm weather and longer days, after the longest coldest wettest spell anyone up here can remember, is making my heart sing. I'm falling deeper and deeper in love with this place every day. I built a loft platform in the studio and sleep there now that it's not too cold, and the first thing I see when I wake up is the backside of the eastern Sierra crest.

I wrote down all the things I have to finish before I start my PCT section hike and realized it's a lot, heh. I moved every project tag that's not on the "have to do" to #later or #somedaymaybe to keep it out of sight for now.

The neighbors PV project is going well. I started bolting the rack together today, a big unistrut monstrosity. An erector set for grownups. I validated my design as likely somewhere between 'bomber' and 'nukeproof'. I was concerned - I've never designed a rack or worked with unistrut before - but I think it'll hold.

The Founders podcast has got me turned on to biographies, which for no good reason I've not read much of before. I've got a hunch that seeking biographies of people wired similarly to me might be a valuable tack to take. I've caught flashes of resonance and kindred spiritedness from some of the Founders episodes, and plan to dig deeper in those directions.

I'm also reading Henry Miller right now, Tropic of Capricorn. Good lord, no wonder they banned the thing for so long.

The local volunteer mountain rescue group puts on an "intro to mountaineering" course for locals starting in May. Mostly very basic stuff, but it's a place to meet local mountain people and it's also where they recruit members to the rescue teams from, so I signed up.

Speaking of, I think it's going to be a busy year in the mountains for all the Sierra SAR outfits sadly. The high runoff and slope destabilization is just going to weigh the scales towards more incidents, I think. I'm likely going to delay my start date for my section, or flip flop it and walk south from Shasta, or give up my reservation and do something indie instead (e.g. ride my bike to NM). I can always go another year, unlike many I didn't have to quit my job to walk the trail and don't have transcontinental airfare lined up. In fact, the more I've researched, the more psyched I am to attempt to thru the whole thing, which is already out of the question for me this year.

We'll see. Plenty of time to observe conditions and make a call.

I'm feeling full of gratitude for ERE and this community. I owe how awesome my life is now to y'all. I'm excited for EREfest. I'll be ramping up planning and communication about that in April, in case anyone is wondering.

[Bicycle7]

I'm curious what is orienting you towards a full thru of the PCT?

For me, I've been attracted to a thru hike for connecting with other thru-hikers along the way and the continuity. The section hikes attract me to be able to skip some of the less amazing (but still beautiful) parts of the trail and to perhaps have better timing for certain sections. It's nice you are in a position to patiently observe, think, imagine and plan your PCT adventure and then go when the time is right!

I'm sorry to hear about the bad weather and how that's impacting you and hikers this year in the Sierras. It's awesome to hear your gratitude for life around you, I echo the sentiment that the life around me is great because of the ERE community.

[AxelHeyst]

No such thing as bad weather... Just inappropriate gear and/or lack of training.

From what I've read, I get the sense that a lot of the river crossing fatalities come from lack of easily obtainable knowledge, such as people taking turns to cross singly with no downstream spotters and without checking for strainers when they could easily e.g. cross in triads... If they knew about it! Or being too proud to inchworm crawl a slick log. Being in a hurry to get miles in + lack of preparation= sketchy. But also I haven't been up there yet so I don't really know what it's like.

I'm attracted to a real thru because I keep talking to people who've done it and they talk about transformation. Splitting their life into before their thru and after. I bet part of that is the community as you say - and I guess that LASHers (long ass section hike) don't get as much of that effect. I'm really attracted to experiences where there's no telling how you'll be changed on the far end of it, but it's a near certainty THAT you'll be changed.

This is also why I don't mind the weather here, being snowed and flooded in, the internet breaking. I'm different now in a small way because of it, so: good.

[AxelHeyst]

Our MMG is entering it's fifth cycle and its third year. My theme for this cycle is self direction / self determination. In the past week I've been thinking a lot about the intentional cultivation of self-regard.

As someone who was addicted to external validation via fixing and rescuing, and only recently made the flip to being able to self-validate, I think building healthy robust self regard is one of the most important things I can do. It's a necessary attribute for showing up in the world and getting after my own dreams and desires and not self sabotaging.

There's lots and lots to that, obviously. I'm just going to mention a small experiment I'm running as part of my overall self regard cultivation focus: keeping a very tidy space.

It occurred to me that a messy, or even just averagely kept up, physical environment, could be acting as a signal to myself that all I deserve / am worth is a messy or average space. The flip of that is, if I intentionally raise my standard of picking up after myself and keeping things shipshape, that can serve as a signal that I deserve/am worth a tidier and higher quality space. It also might bleed into other areas of my life positively - I can imagine many positive incidental yields from a highly looked after environment. So I'm going to do this and see if there are any discernable effects.

(Similar dynamics with personal hygiene, beard trimming, clothing...)

If there's something to this, it makes me wonder what other old habits I have that are 'fine', but subtly contributing to a non ideal internal state.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Hey, from dirtbagging to cleanbagging, that's a hell of a ride!

Just poking fun with you, way to go with self-reflection/awareness and changing things up.

[calamityjane]

I like your thoughts re:self regard - they really resonate with me at the moment. I too have spent most of my life dependent on external validation and having a hard time convincing myself to pursue things that don't come with it. One of the main reasons I wanted to step away from paid employment (and academia) was to cultivate a life free from such facile rewards, be they financial in the form of raises/bonuses or psychological in the form of praise from bosses and colleagues. It's tough, though. Much tougher than I expected. For me it feels like a battle between ego and authenticity, and trying to grasp the internal rewards of spark and joy rather than accomplishments or praise. When I don't feel the spark or the joy it can be hard to remember why I'm doing what I'm doing and it makes me question my own instincts.

[AxelHeyst]

It feels like the high of external validation is easy, intense, habituated, and I know exactly how and where to get it. It's easy to get and it's a quick, satisfying hit with a very short half life.

Internal validation is new, more difficult to get, and I'm still figuring out how and where to cultivate it. It's a huge victory that a) I've identified this dynamic and b) figured out how to move towards self validation, but I'm in a tricky zone where my entire lifestyle, habits, relationships, etc haven't yet re-rooted in the self validation life. I have to concentrate not only to avoid external validation hits, but to cultivate internal validation.

It *feels* like the most healthy thing I can do for a time is get myself as far away from my old sources as possible (work, projects, responsibilities, girlfriends, ...), to the point of behaving in ways that will probably appear unreasonable or eccentric.

I am enormously grateful that I've never had to deal with substance abuse issues, *and*, because all my validation sources are socially acceptable and encouraged, my life would be "fine" if I never really progressed much further than this level. But it'd be hollow and I'd die full of regret. There are some things where it's all right to not start, but once begun must be completed.

[sodatrain]

Storm killed our internet dish somehow (in addition to closing the pass). Have been without comms since Thursday evening. That, combined with the price hikes for starlink, have me thinking... How hard would it be to build a WoG here with no internet? A rural WoG with no car *and* no internet?

I need to finish a couple projects but those should wrap in March. Maybe I'll do a no internet *at home* experiment in April. Sounds like fun.

I've recently discovered that I have a life goal of... not noticing/caring when the internet goes down.

[AxelHeyst]

March Update
ttmCOL: $7,305
FU based on ttmCOL: 5.4x
FU based on marchCOL: 8.9x
FullStash based on ttmCOL: 19.3x
Fullstash based on marchCOL: 31.9x





Project Local Handyman
Last week I concluded my relationship with the neighbor I've been doing handyman stuff with for six months. I'd entered into the gig from the idea that I could cover my COL just doing rando handyman stuff around the neighborhood.

Result: I totally can! My idea worked! I made something like 1.5xCOL at nine hours a week, the work was generally pleasant and so is my neighbor.

Also, I'll probably never do anything like that again. On paper, nine hours is nothing. My reality is that between that, the other PV project, projects for my parents, my own projects, and the weather, my winter did not go how I wanted it to. I thought I'd have more time or cognitive bandwidth or something, but I did not. My post about self sabotage is relevant to why not. So, lesson learned.

If needs be, I can totally earn well above my CoL just from doing projects for neighbors. I'll put that strategy on the shelf and hopefully never need to do it. (If my $ numbers are any indication, I won't). If I needed to earn some money, I could improve my processes and style of entering into work relationships to make it more tolerable, but it's just not the *kind* of thing I want to be doing / where I want my life energy going. It doesn't mesh with my ideal lifestyle WoG, although it was worth a shot.

The other neighbor's PV project is going fine, now that I'm not distracted by the other gig. Full steam ahead on that to get it done.

Project NOPE
(No Other People's Endeavors)
Pursuant to the above, I've decided to auto-kabosh any further inquiries about my involvement for other people's project, for a year. Project NOPE is simple: if someone asks me to do anything more involved than help them move a couch, answer's no. No thinking required.

A forumite explained to me that an exercise for neophytes at play parties is, if someone makes a request of them (e.g. "Can I touch your hand"), the neophyte is to check in with themselves and really try to feel what their authentic answer is... and then say no. This is to build the practice and ability of boundaries. Project NOPE is like that. The idea of having an entire year where I have no responsibilities for other people's project is exhilarating and terrifying. I'm excited.

Summer Plans
I'm leaning more and more towards bailing on the PCT and instead putting some climbing gear in the panniers on my bike and heading up the Eastside.

Our internet is still broke. I'm internetting today because I rode 25 miles to the library. I actually quite like not having internet at home. I plan on pretending that it never gets fixed even when it does. I don't have all the logistics figured out on that one, but in general I think "no internet at home" actually nicely tightens up my WoG. It cuts a couple sources of friction, focuses a few nodes that could use it, and doesn't introduce any serious energy dumps. Nothing about my life demands a tempo faster than a week or two.

[Crusader]

Good that you are figuring out your needs, Axel. Also, that TTM expense graph is very inspiring!

[mountainFrugal]

Ride my bike to friend's places to do 'vacation' solarpunk construction pushes.

Get your own projects done first, but next year I have a few projects you might find interesting. If not, still ride your bike for a visit (anytime) and we can endlessly move furniture. .