mountainFrugal Journal

[OutOfTheBlue]

----
Flowing over uneven ground

Thank you for this poetical piece of writing that points to a place of immediacy beyond words. The rendition itself failed so gracefully!

And also for sharing again about the ritual of journaling and its importance in your own process.

And thank you @ertyu for the addendum, inspiring to say the least!

[mountainFrugal]

Thank you for the addendum @etryu. I actually put that qualifier in there thinking that you might call me out if I didn't. Those topics are sensitive and while I have experienced depression before, it is has not been lasting and very deep. I like the comparison to doing your own electrical work.

The rendition itself failed so gracefully!

Thank you. The best that we can hope for with words. . I have been working on that style of writing recently for various zine projects. Writing non-fiction in this way makes it much more interesting to work on. Instead of just describing figures and ideas in dry language (which has an important place!) the cadence of poem/verse makes it flow a bit easier and potentially makes it interesting for a different group of folks (while also turning off others I suppose).

[OutOfTheBlue]

I have been working on that style of writing recently for various zine projects. Writing non-fiction in this way makes it much more interesting to work on. Instead of just describing figures and ideas in dry language (which has an important place!) the cadence of poem/verse makes it flow a bit easier and potentially makes it interesting for a different group of folks (while also turning off others I suppose).

Dropping the title of book that might be of interest (it was referenced by Plotkin!), just in case: " Stephen Harrod Buhner - Ensouling Language: On the Art of Nonfiction and the Writer's Life". And if you haven't yet, definitely check out David Abram's work (Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World)! His writing is just exquisite (and the topic right up your alley)!

[mountainFrugal]

Thank you for the recommendations. Becoming Animal has been on the list for a while. I do not recall the Buhner reference, but also added.

[mountainFrugal]

DW and I have been switching off cooking/cleaning up after dinner every other night for the past few years. The other person could work on whatever they wanted and have a free evening. Bigger evening changes have come in with teaching, taking classes, and doing evening art events at Darmera. I have re-instituted doing a large cooking prep for the week ahead, but now on Tuesday evenings. This is making a meal plan, shopping (if necessary) by hiking to/from the store, doing all the prep work (chopping, spices, etc.) for slow/pressure cooked meals later in the week and also making a fresh dinner for Tuesday nights. A good time to catch up on podcasts and/or audio books. Between these meals and planning on making enough for leftovers, DW only has to take care of dinner Sunday and Monday and bake sour dough when we need it. I usually do not eat breakfast and only eat after working out so our morning/afternoon meals are on our own already. So far so good, but knocking off some of the rust from back when I was doing this on Sunday afternoons/evenings to prep for working insane hours on my start-up during the week.

[bos]

With the popularity of journals around here I was surprised to learn that some folks I chat to offline do not keep a regular personal journal.

I restarted the habbit of writing daily after I read your post. I use the following format in Obsidian:

# On my mind

# Beautiful or interesting

# Tasks

The journal should not just be used in difficult situations though

I notice this when reviewing my older entries: I only write when I'm facing a difficult situation that needs to be worked out on paper

[AxelHeyst]

+1 with the journal love. My box of journals starting at 12yo (1998) are the only physical thing I'd be really bummed to lose.

I've never kept a strict or structured method. I have recently switched to a morning routine where I wake (on the rear deck of serenity, because summer) and spend the first ~hour of my day with a coffee and journal watching the stars fade and first sun hit the peaks. I'm enjoying it vs getting on a screen first thing.

[sodatrain]

If I may jump back a bit in your journal... I'm re-reading Chapter 4/5/6, and paying close attention to this wonderful help you have provided on Reverse Fishbone Diagrams (RFDs?) / WoG etc.

I have a question about the different forms of capital, the skills, and how they relate to the RFD and WoG. My primary objective lately has been to spend time on the RFD and WoG. I've also been wanting to add the other forms of capital to my "money tracker" spreadsheet to have it become a broader Capital Tracker. This starts to feel like a way to identify the skills/goals/activities I will under take and how to prioritize and invest (divest) in them in a broader context (Future State WoG?)

Below you start us on the journey.. draw RFDs. And then in step 4, I got to the link that shows this diagram

https://ibb.co/X5kffHG

1) Fish Bone Diagrams as a *first pass*:
- Go through each of your goals or activities or skills one by one.
- You cannot do just one thing, and everything is a tradeoff.

...

4) Can I cluster my goals and skills? I can have individual goals with measurable outcomes that might feed into one another. These are easier to learn if you are doing them in tandem (viewtopic.php?p=277205#p277205).
- Example 1: Drawing and painting from life both use overlapping observational skills.

And from the linked, post:

Panel B- @jacob initially defined 7 forms of capital. They were economic, ecological, intellectual, technical, physical, emotional, and social. Although the orders of these capitals are ultimately not important, they turn to out be important initially. The order and even where on the space to start shooting once out of the cave will likely be determined by personality (i.e. MBTI), temperament, abilities, preferences, etc.

Panel C - Now we are adding a layer of complexity here. For each capital there is a large number of skills that one can go from complete beginner to master and beyond. This is referred to as the CCCCCC model of skill development. The more skills the player has for each capital, the larger the number of holes that appear in that dimension. The greater the mastery of the skill, the larger the hole. Additionally, if skillsets are adjacent to one another, they may have underlying base skills thus making learning another adjacent skill (Skill 2) easier if another skill is already mastered (Skill 1). On the CCCCCC scale, Skill 1 > Skill 2 > Skill 3.

This all makes me what to create a hierarchical list of the forms of capital, and then the my (current/desired/targeted for improvement) underlying skills in each category.



- Financial
-- Budgeting
-- Investing
-- .....
- Ecological
-- Growing Vegetables
-- Growing Mushrooms
-- Identifying wild berries
-- ...
- Technical
-- Building with wood
-- Building with metal
-- Programming in Ruby
-- ...

These skills are the same things that we create RFDs for, right? And are also the modules (specifically using the work module) of the WoGs?

I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, but it feels like there is some potential structure/framework to build here. Or perhaps its another way (List skills in each form of Capital, then optimize) to get to a WoG.

Are there any flaws or inconsistencies with my thinking here?

[mountainFrugal]

Your thinking is on track here. I was trying to both summarize and point out the gotchas with these illustrations and the posts. Also, it is just a mental map that is not set in stone and can be iterated on. Thank you for taking the time to think through what is unclear.

A few thoughts based on my mental model of your mental model.

I think that if there was an ultimate "goal" to all of this it is to become a fully realized Renaissance Human. This would require figuring out the combination of individual skills within each capital and be able to consistently align those skills across multiple forms of capital resulting in a majority of your time leveraging all of them as a human. This also takes into account your personal temperament. In many ways the financial side is the easiest part because it is easily quantifiable. If you (collective you) are coming at this from FIRE, it leaves all the other capitals more or less untouched and under explored. If you do not develop these other capitals you are likely to just go back to work because work fulfills at least some of them besides the financial part.

For your financial capitals it is easy to see how budgeting can lead to more savings that can then be invested. At the same time, investing can lead to gains that can be harvested to live continuously on a given budget. This cluster of skills are closer together and therefore potentially mutually reinforcing. In relation to my illustration they would have overlapping holes that make it easier to shoot through.

In your technical example it is harder to see how learning Ruby and woodworking skills overlap. It is not that every cluster of skills for each capital needs to overlap one another. However, you get "efficiency" gains with how you are spending your time though (shooting arrows). I am sure you can come up with some way. For example, build a website/app using Rails that tracks your woodworking skill progress?

The ecological skills also already have a significant overlap with one another. How will the knowledge of growing vegetables and growing mushrooms help you identify wild berries? (there is an answer here I am thinking of ) A slightly more specific question... how will the knowledge of growing vegetables and growing mushrooms help you identify habitats where wild berries grow?

What holds true for skills within a capital also holds true for the different capitals. You can exercise multiple capitals at the same time. The classic example which I think that you are doing is cooking a meal for others. You are working on the technical skill of cooking, preparing a healthy meal, saving money by not going out, building social capital with friends, learning social skills, etc. Where are the other overlaps in capitals? This is also why it is much harder to be effective across different domains/capitals if you leave one or a few of them completely undeveloped or allow some to sufficiently atrophy. As an example, if you make a hierarchical rank of the capitals it might have you more apt to work on your strengths while disregarding your weaknesses. As long as that is a conscious choice in your strategy I think it is okay, but realize that further up in the integration of skills/capitals the items that are de-prioritized will likely come back to haunt you.

All in all you need to figure out what works for you given your own constraints and this is why after WL6 it is basically choose your adventure. This is also why I am being somewhat vague as there is not a single step by step process. This is also why @jacob does not give specific financial/investment advice. Part of the journey is figuring out your own path that is perfectly suited for you as the traveler.

Add: In the same way that one moves through the CCCCCC model for each skill, one also moves through an analogous CCCCCC in integrating different capitals to form a WOG. It is a meta-CCCCCC scale.

[sodatrain]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, @mF. I appreciate it. I think I'll keep building it out and see where it goes. Will report back if it ends up being valuable!

The skills/relationships I gave are examples.

The ecological skills also already have a significant overlap with one another. How will the knowledge of growing vegetables and growing mushrooms help you identify wild berries? (there is an answer here I am thinking of ) A slightly more specific question... how will the knowledge of growing vegetables and growing mushrooms help you identify habitats where wild berries grow?

Defining the skills will take some thought. Given the overlap of "growing veg" and "growing mushrooms", as you indicated, maybe the right skill is "growing food". "preserving food" vs "caning", "smoking", "pickling" etc. Part of the thought experiment yet to be undertaken.

Hmmm. I wish I had the skills to answer your question! I cheated a little... I think your answer has to do with developing observation skills. I think you cite this in your posts for drawing/painting/nature stuff.

[mountainFrugal]

@sodatrain - you are very welcome. Enjoy the ride.

---
Well yesterday I completely nuked my Obsidian/Notes organization. The links are still intact, but I needed to integrate and simplify. The sub projects were getting spread over the different areas (MAKE-THINK-LIVE-EXPLORE). I still think this organization is valid, and roughly maps onto what I am doing, but I have simplified it towards the goals, progress and maintenance I am working on. The older framework is also somewhat of a carryover from doing paid work. I have 2 weeks left on my contract so I thought I should mix it up for notes and organizational purposes. This is also true because I have shifted some of the paid work projects into creative projects. The lines are become less defined...

The point of the projects below is not that there is actually an end to any of them. Through real world experience I know that this collection of projects would keep me intellectually and physically engaged for the next 5+ years without a problem. One big project.

They were originally illustrated here:
viewtopic.php?p=284213#p284213

All of these goals are folded into below.


0-Planet
DW and I's personal and social life. This goes without much more explaination.

1-ArtLevel8
I want to continue to progress in drawing and painting. I have many avenues to do that. One is teaching, one is coursework, one is making final drawings/paintings.

2-SequentalArtMasters
I have started world building for a story that involves nature, bicycles, art and human relationships. Write what you know and all that. Except now feel like I am good enough at art to portray that in a graphic novel. This is also a catchall for all exploration and adventure activities that I do in real life to be used as source material to more accurately tell the stories.

3-MechanicalEngineering-Bicycles-Book
This houses the DIY undergrad degree in mechanical engineering focusing on all aspects of bicycles, their maintenance, and the tools required for maintenance. The DIY masters will focus on suspensions. I am going to sketchnote all the concepts further working on design drawing. There is also the masters in exercise physiology that will be related to bicycle riders.
Study --> sketchnotes/illustrations --> blog posts --> Zines as collected posts --> New Zines --> editing --> Textbook.

My second quarter Zine goal for the skillathon was a bicycle repair zine. It is already printed and in route back to my house in physical form.

I see a gap in the information in book form that is out there. There are some okay engineering focused texts with terrible design and really bad visualizations. There are some good "coffee table" books with good design and graphics. There COULD be even better engineering texts that also have good design and visualizations.

3.5-Science Writing Masters
Not sure this even really deserves its own category, but it nicely fits in between the MechE-Bike-Book and LBET. I like the idea of the craft of science writing and applying it to my projects.

4-Let'sBeEcologistsTogether (LBET)
This collapses all of my ecological, natural history, and natural history illustration into a nice project. "Let's Be Ecologists Together" is a phrase I said to late DW when we first met. I still have this goal, but now it is specifically focused on the watershed (source to sea) where part of her ashes are scattered. I have visited the upper sections many times. Now it is time to turn this into a zine/comic/illustration/narrative/memoir frankenstein project.

5-DIY-MBAs
This is really just running my personal art and bike repair business and the gallery/classroom/studio business. It is actually nice that I do not have to rely on these at all for income. It can be a side effect of a well run business. There was a moment of realization this month that there are not any investors and board members breathing down my neck. I want lifestyle businesses and that is what I have.

[mountainFrugal]

Back to physically tracking my daily inputs of time. Did I or did I not put time towards this today? A simple YES/NO. Shooting for no two days in a row where I did not touch a project. If more than 2 days then the quick daily review and setting up for the next day should catch that. Since I reorganized my projects most of the review/setup time is finding files and resources.

These are roughly outlined for a typical day that tracks my mental energy. If I get into a groove, then the rest of the day (besides planet and chores) can be put off. Same if I had some sort of deadline. I hope this ensures I am always inching towards goals and produces higher quality work by revisiting it often. A time affordance I now have. .

On a separate sheet I have the top three things for each project. This reduces bandwidth with larger task switches. The larger switches occur mostly when dealing outside entities/actors because all of below is just really blending into "project living". I have a tendency to prioritize thinking about something as a way towards finishing a project. It is usually through thinking deeply over many sessions I can more easily finish a project once I start acting. However, with physical things like the technical skills of art and bike repairs... these reward doing more. This is not to say mindless doing, but not overthinking. Festina lente.

Daily
- [ ] Push-ups
- [ ] Sit-ups
- [ ] Meditation
- [ ] Coffee

- [ ] Think
- [ ] LBET - Read/Sketchnote
- [ ] Write/edit - 1 pomodoro
- [ ] Tidy Pomodoro
- [ ] Move - Run/Bike/Weights
- [ ] Lunch/Shower

- [ ] MechE - Read/Write/Sketch
- [ ] Code - Blog or Sims

- [ ] Sequential Art Read/Sketch
- [ ] MBA - Pomodoro (mainly email/admin)
- [ ] Plan Pomodoro
- [ ] Physical maintenance Pomodoro

- [ ] Level8 Art - Compose/Shape/Value/Color/Paint
- [ ] Planet
- [ ] Dinner

- [ ] Read
- [ ] Sketch
- [ ] Sleep

[mountainFrugal]

I finished up the beginner oil painting class at Darmera. My business partner is an excellent teacher. My art fundamentals translate very well across mediums. I did two 1-2 hour oil paintings to get used to mixing paint so this is my third attempt. 11.5 hours of actual painting went into this with 2.5 of a charcoal shape/value study prior to even touching paint. I usually do 1-2 short sessions on any drawing/painting so it was also fun to set-up/take down the doe skull week after week and spend more time on a single painting. Oil painting is WAY more forgiving than watercolor because you can sculpt the paint and work it while it is still wet. There is a lot less planning involved with oil painting because you do not need to go from light to dark.

Shape --> Value --> Color --> Repeat

Water color only really allows one or two fixes and that is only if the fix is a darker value.

The next 6 week session the class is focusing on Alla Prima (wet on wet) single session still life paintings. This then directly translates to Plein Air painting in oil in the field. I am stoked!

[Mousse]

The Power of Journaling - Meta-cognition magic

With the popularity of journals around here I was surprised to learn that some folks I chat to offline do not keep a regular personal journal.

Start here:
- Freewriting your thoughts
- Make lists of things that are top of mind
- Journal about something that happened, how you felt about it, reflect, repeat.
- Write about something you are truly grateful for and how you will show that gratitude that day

The journal should not just be used in difficult situations though. It really comes into its own when you use it regularly in non-stressful situations. Just like training in the dojo before sparing before an actual attack/threat. Do this as a meditation for better daily thoughts over time and to be better able to deal with the inevitable shit of being a human.

I don't want to quote your whole post, and hope replying to something a couple of weeks later isn't too much of a faux-pas, but I wanted to say how incredibly useful I found this post when I came across it, and how it got me to open my journal again with near daily regularity since then. Paper for me so no sentiment analysis but I've definitely been guilty of only journaling in difficult times in the past few decades and it's time to include more variety of thoughts now, and thinking through more things! Thank you for taking the time to share this.

[mountainFrugal]

@Mousse - welcome to the forum. I am glad that this post was helpful to you. There is no faux-pas of bringing up old posts. In-fact that sort of behavior is encouraged around here if you are adding your own ideas (here, in your introductory post, and in your future journal). Start a journal so we can see how you apply it to your own situation.

[mountainFrugal]

# WINS
We celebrated one year of marriage this month by going out for pizza at our favorite place that is part pizza truck and part plant nursery.

Inspired by @chenda (and many others here!) May 29, 2024 was the last day that I will consume any alcohol. Once I stopped being a baby about being social without it everything became way easier. I have an ambitious next five years of making some RAD FUCKING SHIT and exploring some RAD FUCKING AREAS and learning RAD FUCKING SHIT. The side effects of disrupted sleep and therefore less physical/mental recovery even for a single night, are no longer worth it. A occasional social crutch no more. I purposefully sought out even more social events this month to put myself through the ringer. No ill effects. NA beers if necessary. They are tasty enough.

I tabled at a zine fest. It was good. See up-thread for the description.

# IMPROVEMENTS/INSPIRATIONS
tUnE-yArDs - bizness - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ1LI-NTa2s
Music, dance, and cool video. A very creative Bay Area artist.

Drawing fundamentals are proportional to painting fundamentals.

# NEW DIRECTIONS
I am working through this up-welling of tension between learning and creating. Filling the cup as fast as I am making new stuff. This is why sketchnotes are a great medium.

I developed a new semi-automated pipeline to take my scanned sketchbooks, clean them up, and automatically process them to get them ready for assembly for print. I made the first Bike Wrench zine this way.

# DRAWING
30/30 days (technically I have 2 more days, but I will)

See pipeline above.

# OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
Various stats.

I volunteered to course setting half of an ultra-run course. I drove my van out to a remote trailhead with a buddy. We marked the course while ascending in elevation carrying 4.5 gallons of water plus course marking materials and our personal stuff. We set-up a remote aid station with the water while being swarmed by hundreds of black flies at 2440 m (~8000 ft). There was not a breeze up there and my legs got lit up. Some escaped with a blood meal but there were many corpses left behind after the battle. After setting up the aid station we climbed another 350 m to the turn around setting the course through snow fields. I got to visit my favorite grove of gnarly sub-alpine trees.

We ran back to the van where I geared up my mountain bike with signage, more flagging, and bags of flour to bomb down the remaining course. The flower is used to make temporary arrows at very important trail junctions so that delirious runners do not get off track. Crossed a spring run-off creek and then got back onto forest roads and rode back to town. A mini-adventure to help other folks have a Type II fun/sufferfest the next day.

# WORK
Today was my last day of full-time employment. Earlier this month I was going to give some academic summary stats, but fuck that. Old me. I celebrated with packing for a backpacking trip. Full time adventure artist starts tomorrow!

# SOCIAL
DW and I have been visiting with the older lady across the street. She was an art teacher before she retired so we have a lot to talk about. The most surprising thing is that she is my source of what tech-bro self-help podcasts I should listen to. She is a bit of a connoisseur. haha.

The first artist talk at Darmera happened this month. Two artists in the community wanted to see something like this so they could practice articulating their art and process in a coherent way. They both do art much more on feel so once again my scientific presentation skills can help them linearize, at least temporarily, something that is ephemeral and elusive for them. To start I came up with a large list of guiding questions that I emailed to the artists. The first talk went really well and the audience asked really good additional questions. The artist, also showing in the gallery, was very engaged. I could tell he did not get to talk like this about his art at this depth very frequently. This is exactly the type of thing we envisioned when we were making this space. I will do a solo show in October and also give an artist talk.

DW and I are headed out! PEACE!

[Western Red Cedar]

That oil painting looks amazing! It is really cool to see your artistic progress over the last couple of years. Happy anniversary and congratulations on yet another layer of freedom.

[grundomatic]

For some reason I thought you were already done with FT employment...maybe it's all the other cool stuff you do. In any case, congratulations on that!

I don't miss drinking at all. NA beer serves the purpose when I need the "nostalgia" of cracking one open with a friend.

When I paint from white on my minis, it's easy enough to just paint any errors white and try again...probably not able to do that on canvas or paper with watercolors, huh? That sounds rough. Your oil painting looks great!

[AxelHeyst]

Hell yeah, awesome stuff!! You might have just nailed the coffin closed for good on alcohol for me (I've had ~3 drinks in 18mo, not including the month in japan), because the only real lingering thought I had was "well @mF still drinks beer and he kicks ass, so maybe it's not so bad?" No time for b33r, to much rad fucking shit to do.

Enjoy your trip!

[guitarplayer]

Yeah about alcohol, it's more a bother than not. Though I am mindful there are situations when it can make sense to drink it. Like in broadly taken diplomacy - mind boggling as it is for my everyday self, for some people it is an inflection point in a relationship that I would have a shot of liquor or a beer with them. Not saying these are relationships I seek but you never know where you will find yourself at some point.

I am gonna show that painting to DW maybe it'll rekindle her painting spirit !