mountainFrugal Journal

[theanimal]

I really like the look of that weathered beam. The new paint really makes that freshly polished floor shine. It's looking better and better with each update.

[mountainFrugal]

@7 - I will post some photos when the art is up. Our first show is themed "Life by the river" and opens Saturday May 4th.
@theanimal - thanks!

I finished a commission last night. Art biz now completely pays for itself and all art supplies. I rode down to the studio this morning to work and to receive a package. My new plein air easel! . I had to order one before we find out about the grant so I can get my teaching from an easel figured out prior to taking students out.

30:08 down, 51:45 up.

[Western Red Cedar]

I'm enjoying following along with the progress on the studio and your photos, as they add a lot to the story. It was also great to see your illustrations in @theanimal's new book. Love to see the ERE collaborations bearing fruit. Keep it up!

[mountainFrugal]

Thanks WRC! The collaboration with @theanimal was really fun. Here is the most recent gallery/studio photo.



Trim is nearly complete! I can only claim sealing the trim and the beam with boiled linseed oil. It darkened the trim a bit, but once you have some light on it, it shifts back to more of a warm gray. The actual trim work was completed by my business partner. IMO he crushed it! Most of the vertical vs horizontal joints on the panels are not touching. The rasped and rounded edges casts a shadow and tricks the eye. This also allowed him to have up to 1/4 inch of play on either end when mimicking the non-level ceiling and/or floor. The panels are very level, but if you actually do the trim level it looks very bad because of how not level the ceiling and floor are. Old buildings. Ha!

[mountainFrugal]

# WINS
We finished up painting, trim, and classroom set-up (shelves, etc.). I spent this past weekend scrubbing the floors to remove any residual concrete dust and to blend in a few paint spots (silly dog and human tracks). We submitted a $20K grant and I applied to be in my first zine fest. I hope to hear back about both of these this month.

# IMPROVEMENTS/INSPIRATIONS
A cup of hot tea as a base of happiness, contentment, conversation starter.

Musical Inspiration: American Sharks - Iron Lungs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htm61Z6r8rc

DW and I have been working through prototyping my upcoming schedule change with the gallery opening and me spending more time out of the house at the studio. Nothing groundbreaking here, but some adjustments for both of us.

# NEW DIRECTIONS
We had a small wild hair and briefly imagined what it would look like if we tried to farm crickets and mealworms for protein on our very shady 1/4 acre lot. Finding ways to embrace the shade and convert our kitchen scraps into a more concentrated form of protein. No immediate plans on this, but are also considering specializing in compost and red worms to trade with friends for eggs.

We eat a decent amount of avocados and found a local fiber crafts artisan that can use the pits to make a pinkish-red dye. He primarily makes hats and we are discussing a natural dyes workshop at Darmera.

# DRAWING
I had to do some adjustments to my Zine ideas based on pricing feedback/research. My original idea was to have 32-60+ page zines so they could have a spine. I think it looks good, but this nearly doubles the cost per print. Zines in the $18-25 range are less likely to sell at shows and on consignment. My new plan is to break them up into 20-24 page saddle stitch issues following a comic book model and sell them for $12 (3 for 30). Once I have a collection then I can bundle them and reissue as a hardcover. This is common and seems to work well for indie-comic creators.

I finished up another commission. The non-profit liked it so much that they asked if I wanted to do all of their graphic work going forward (~1/mo). Of course!

Business partner and I (along with our partners) took an afternoon off from the remodel to scope out a great plein air spot we hope to take clients. I worked on gouache and watercolor and he and his girlfriend worked in oils. They are both really good. I cannot wait to learn from him by taking his oils class. DW hung out and wrote.

# OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
Various stats. I had two mornings early in the month that were perfect for skate skiing. I nailed the waxing both mornings which helps tremendously. Set separate 25K and 30K PRs.

# WORK
Art now fully pays for art (and then some).

I finished up a newsletter and worked on a summary presentation of my research and sci-comm work that I will present on campus in May.

A bit of a "wrench" in the working at the bike shop plan. . After taking the Advanced Bike Repair class I had some concerns around liability insurance as a mechanic, pay, hours, and suspension-specific tooling that I could not come to an agreement with the owner about (mainly that it was going to be on me). Additionally, I was unavailable on the weekends until the remodel is complete. I decided that I was going to just start my own repair business using my van/garage if I had to figure all that out anyway to fit my schedule. I have DIY tenure dammit! The world bends to my ideal schedule!

It turns out that he did not want to figure that out because he was in the process of selling the business! Good for him! The shop is now closed until sometime in May when the new owner takes over. I have spoken with the new owner. I would be up for contracting there on suspensions and wheels, but I am not interested in working there if I also had to do all the service writing, parts ordering etc. for normal repairs. At that point the larger collection of tools are the only thing that would be the advantage to working there as opposed to on my own. I will do basic repairs for friends and previous clients by appointment only out of my garage for now and then "sublet" a small area in the studio to make a more permanent shop. This solves many problems and frictions. I keep learning the lesson that insourcing is often easier especially if other people's ideas of money and scheduling are involved. The bike repair business will be under that same LLC (with separate insurance) as the zines/freelance art company thus doubling my hipster cred overnight.

# SOCIAL
We had Business partner and his girlfriend over for dinner and game night. We played a color matching game called "Hues and Clues". When it is your turn you have to give short verbal clues about the color of the card you selected. The other players put a piece next to the color they think it is on the board. Surprisingly hard even with artists!

DW and I had two intentional conversation date nights. We put the phones away and just focused on discussing ideas. I love her.

[Scott 2]

Something stands out to me with your endeavors. Money isn't really a constraint, but you don't subsidize away annoying parts of reality. IE - just pay for the premium zines, but sell at standard prices. Or eat the insurance and tooling cost for bike repair, so you can play without the other overhead.

Is this conscious boundary setting, or an automatic habit from when resources were constrained?

[mountainFrugal]

Is this conscious boundary setting, or an automatic habit from when resources were constrained?

This is 100% self-imposed because I think it is more interesting. I already played the VC backed start-up game and learned all that I needed to know about how far stupid amounts of capital injection can get you. Now my current game is in making robust small businesses from a small capital base and growing them from there.

I am happy to onboard the bike repair in the mix because it actually simplifies externally imposed time demands. I am happy to pay a small overhead premium and control all of my time. Thinking about it only in terms of money...Is $25-50/hr (depending on repairs) the best use of my time when I have to service write, order parts, maintain customer interactions, manage customer expectations, and do all the repairs? I should just do all of that and pay myself $70/hr (regular shop rate, 20/hr overhead), $150-200/hr for suspension rebuilds, work on appointment only, and spend more time with DW on the weekends when she is also off. The old owner has been riding and wrenching on mountain bikes for 20 years. He had a lot to teach me. The new owner is not like that. I only choose how I spend my time if it serves multiple goals or if I can learn from an expert. DW has been getting into gravel racing the past few years and so I will be her (gravel)road mechanic.

The longer game with the bike repair business is that I can use it as an additional carrot for ERE folks that want to come for a visit. I can teach. They can learn or we can learn together. If it is set up as a business they can make a small income while visiting. This will be the same for some of the admin overhead for Darmera once that gets up and running. Jobs that I don't mind doing, but can have a standard SOP written for folks (ERE or otherwise) to follow.

WRT to the Zines...shorter and cheaper zines sell more at shows. This was explicitly stated in the application to the zine fest. Shorter is actually less overhead to assemble the text and images in each issue. The issues can come out more frequently. It is not just the cost.

[theanimal]

Something stands out to me with your endeavors. Money isn't really a constraint, but you don't subsidize away annoying parts of reality. IE - just pay for the premium zines, but sell at standard prices. Or eat the insurance and tooling cost for bike repair, so you can play without the other overhead.

These graphs in Ch.4:The Renaissance Ideal from The Book come to mind:





One of the big components of ERE is building a resilient and robust lifestyle. One of the ways this is achieved is through establishing multiple yields. In this example, making the zines a profitable endeavor allows @mF to increase his robustness and add a pillar to his proverbial table instead of just relying on investment income as would be the case for the person in the first graph, or your standard FIREe (<WL6). In this case, one of the yields happens to be financial in the form of (potential) profit. However, it very well could be that @mF could decide to operate the business at a loss financially, but obtain further yields like community building, mentoring others, or learning additional skills, to name a few examples.

Another component is closing loops and figuring out how to do away with waste. Figuring out how to turn your hobbies or regular activities from money holes to income producing assets is one way to do that.

And I can't speak for @mF, but my last point would be that the low cost, profit seeking approach is far more rewarding than subsidizing a money losing business. Doing the latter keeps one sharp, establishes constraints (which can bolster creativity), and better ensures one maintains status as a "live player".

[mountainFrugal]

Thank you @theanimal for this great additional explanation. As a follow-up to scott2's observation here is a more detailed answer that expands on @theanimals points in how I am thinking about things.

I no longer need to work for money, but money can come to me as a side effect of how I want to be spending my time. Darmera and Montology are two lifestyle businesses that I aim to fully express myself through. I do not need a penny from either of them, but they fulfill complementary roles personally and across many forms of capital. The illustration above has both time and money capitals that are both somewhat realistic. The end goal each month is $1200 in net income doing things that interest me. I have to do a lot of things because my brain does not shut off. If I did not do all these things and do excessive amounts of exercise I would become depressed. There are many ways to skin the proverbial $1200 cat (no cats harmed!). The easiest road is savings. That is boring AF to me and is only a back-up if these other ideas do not work out. Anything over $1200/mo goes into a community project fund. This can be hosting events, having dinners, building our pizza oven with the bricks I scored last year, etc.

Darmera
Teach art classes for 4 hours a week, 16 hours a month - $400 (active as of May)
I want to get REALLY good at art (DIY masters in painting, illustration, design drawing). I am going to break down my classes the week before and practice 10x what I am going to teach. Each time it is going to be a new to me variable. 11x will be when I teach the class live, then I can record the lessons and eventually make some YouTube income (minimal, 4 hours editing/month, $100/mo goal). These final pieces become originals I can sell. Let's call that 3 hours of overhead for the sales for $200/mo goal. Throw in 16 hours a month for overall company maintenance and writing grants at $25/hour and we have another $400. Seasonally we will be guiding plein air classes. These are more spendy for spendy out of town folks. $300/4 hour session. Let's say 1x/mo. Anything I paint can be used for zine material or can be sold as originals.

Montology
$400/month in illustration commissions taking about 8 hours with client time built in. This is what I have averaged the last 4 months with 0 advertising. With my new non-profit graphics gig at ~1/mo all I need to do is find 1 other (or more likely they will find me).

I am making a bunch of zines. It is really, really fun to assemble past artworks in a coherent way and tell a small little story. Ballpark here as I just made an Etsy shop, but $150/mo with about 8 hours of work on assembling/managing/shipping etc. I draw A LOT. Any and all of my art or sketches is fair game for a zine as far as I am concerned. I also write a decent amount. Ditto that. I want to use this to collectively write the equivalent of a DIY masters in science communications.

Bike wrenching can be 2 major overhauls a month with customer interaction, ordering, and actual wrenching for $400 or 8 hours/mo. Ramp up or down from there based on season. I am working on a DIY bachelors and masters degree in mechanical engineering for bikes. If I see two bikes a month intimately it will allow me to sketch various components that are new to me (DIY masters in design drawing). I can research how they work WRT physics and engineering towards those degrees. I can get it tuned to the riders' unique preferences and riding style (social capital, physiology).

Alpine Hut
This job is seasonal and pays $15/hour. This season I have 3 full weekends and a few random other dates, but I can do many more next season. $500/mo or 8.5 hours a week. I can do more or less based on what else I have going on (up to 8 hours for each day). I can run or bike to the trailhead from my house and get paid for it. When I get to the hut I can paint, draw, write, and generally advertise my two businesses if tourists inquire. I want to do a DIY masters in alpine ecology to augment my knowledge base. Reading about the alpine while being there and deeply observing it through painting is perfect.

In money terms, if everything is running at full tilt - $2050/mo for 63 hours or about 16 hours per week. If I throw in the guided plein air and hut care we are looking at an additional $800/mo for another 9.25 hours/week.

Potential non-specialist incidental income up for grabs with my WOG is $2850 from June-September and $2050 for the remaining months.

All of these projects touch on most if not all the capitals @jacob outlines in his book. Economic, physiological, social, emotional, technical, intellectual, and ecological. If we are talking about adding the spiritual dimension then I think that flow states are about as good a baseline level as we can hope to achieve on a regular basis as humans. There are certainly higher levels, but all of these activities mentioned above have consistently invoked flow states in the past leveraging my years of meditation experience.

[mountainFrugal]

My first word of mouth bike repair customer is coming by tomorrow evening. 2 road bike tune-ups, one will need a drive train replacement based on customer photos.

Unloaded gravel ride this morning - PRs down to studio and back: 30:01 down (few seconds, but had to wait at intersection for long time) - 60.7 kph top speed (add: this shorter steep section is paved not gravel). Hard zone 3 threshold effort back up - 46:52. I need to switch my pedals back to the egg beaters that were on there before I lent it out. This will help with the climbing.

[Scott 2]

@theanimal - fair points, understood. I am specifically interested in @mF's motivation, in that he's built several "bolt-tightening" skills to the deep specialist level. And he has a significant and diversified portfolio of capital to draw upon. He's already robust and resilient, likely in ways that are durable beyond his lifetime. There's a chance his opportunity cost of the new skill development, is greater than the resulting capital yields.


@mountainFrugal - Thanks for the insight into your motivation. I appreciate the candor:

I have to do a lot of things because my brain does not shut off. If I did not do all these things and do excessive amounts of exercise I would become depressed.

The community development is admirable. I figured it was more than running old habits on auto-pilot, and you delivered.

[mountainFrugal]

There is an opportunity cost to keeping the skills sharp, but my explorer/curious mind will not let me do otherwise. I am a "master it" scanner in Barbara Sher's words. I have to go where my curiosity leads me. I can come back and brush up on things if I need to.

An example:

I have grown tens of thousands of plants of 7 different species (maize, wheat, soybean, Arabidopsis, Brassica rapa, tomato, Cannabis) for experimental and breeding purposes. A majority of the experimental growth conditions were along some axis of nutrients (e.g., Nitrogen, CO2) or environmental pollutants (Ozone). I nearly always looked at interactions of variables because that is where true new understanding is rather than along a single axis. I have scientific work involving plants that spans quantitative genetics, genomics, cell biology, physiology, canopy scale, and farm field as ecosystem scale. This work also includes designing and engineering several measurement devices to answer specific questions. When I became bored with all that, I focused more on developing various statistical and plant growth modeling methods. Although I see the value in growing a vegetable garden, having also done that successfully during grad school, I have essentially 0 interest in doing that. My curiosity has been completely satiated in this realm and I can think of a hundred things I would rather do than maintain a garden. Although if I had to, I would of course! Most recently, I have been focusing on ecosystem plant and insect population responses to wildfire. This is a much larger scale. This has led to an expanding interest in various modeling techniques for other large and medium scale ecosystem processes and how I developed a collaboration with avalanche forecasters.

(*) See https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310368 ... the "second rank scientist" described on page 13--14 of the pdf

I am and will always remain a curious second rank scientist. Ha! In fact if I had 50-100M I would do a dream project of hiring a number of the most competent people within plant biology to do a think tank of sorts. It would be aptly named "The Plant Biology Middle Author Institute" because that is where you find a majority of the competence in most scientific projects/papers these days.

[jacob]

I am and will always remain a curious second rank scientist. Ha! In fact if I had 50-100M I would do a dream project of hiring a number of the most competent people within plant biology to do a think tank of sorts. It would be aptly named "The Plant Biology Middle Author Institute" because that is where you find a majority of the competence in most scientific projects/papers these days.

Me too. I'm of the opinion that the "competitive professionalization" of the sciences sacrificed the long-term potential of novel ideas for quick short-term turnip-squeezing gains. "Publish or perish" bringing death to anything but incremental research. However, I don't think 50-100M is required. A tenth or a hundredth of that might do well enough. 1M is enough to pay for 20 or 30 postdoc years. As long as the right postdoc or combination of postdocs can be found (via a better metric), this might make a difference that makes an actual difference.

[mountainFrugal]

1M for just doing the thinking part of the think tank I agree, but money does not go as far as when you were a postdoc. There would have to be other incentives as not everyone would be coming in with a huge ERE skillbase:
https://www.science.org/content/article ... ostdoc-pay

A majority of that money from my vision would be for taking the knowledge of the plant biology think tank and conducting the field scale genomics trials necessary to make sure we were actually making climate resilient varieties of food staples and vegetables. The problem is multiple climate change factors colliding all at once. A vast majority of our food crops are breed for relatively narrow tolerances and a majority of the RandD is in row crops that go into processed foods, not foods we can consume directly. There are people working on this of course, but not at the rate that we actually need for non-big-ag crops. Not that I personally need because I will be dead, but the rate that the generations of my non-existent children and grandchildren etc. would need.

[jacob]

1M for just doing the thinking part of the think tank I agree, but money does not go as far as when you were a postdoc.

Are you calling me old? I'll fight you

You know a bit more about my academic whereabouts than most people on the forums. It is conceivable that I was missing something, but learning how the cost of my position was 20% salary and 80% overhead led me to suggest [to various bosses] that it might be a better idea just to rent an offsite McMansion across the street for a bunch of select postdocs than bringing them in and paying for overhead.

Perhaps I was too theory-oriented to see what the extra 80% was going towards beyond paying "lifer bennies" for mostly unneeded logistics and support personnel. Maybe I missed the bigger picture. But ...

Given how cheap "brainpower on a mission" is, finding a way to find it while avoid corrupting of the selection process by Goodhart's law, might make establishing such a think tank much less expensive. Maybe we should start paying select people to move to ERE City... you see the strategy, right?

[zbigi]

Given how cheap "brainpower on a mission" is, finding a way to find it while avoid corrupting of the selection process by Goodhart's law, might make establishing such a think tank much less expensive. Maybe we should start paying select people to move to ERE City... you see the strategy, right?

If somebody would outlay the capital, you might even generate results that the government would pay for? Of course, the "might" part would be hard to swallow for the funding party, unless they'd be doing it for kicks anyway.

[mountainFrugal]

Are you calling me old? I'll fight you

You know a bit more about my academic whereabouts than most people on the forums. It is conceivable that I was missing something, but learning how the cost of my position was 20% salary and 80% overhead led me to suggest [to various bosses] that it might be a better idea just to rent an offsite McMansion across the street for a bunch of select postdocs than bringing them in and paying for overhead.

Perhaps I was too theory-oriented to see what the extra 80% was going towards beyond paying "lifer bennies" for mostly unneeded logistics and support personnel. Maybe I missed the bigger picture. But ...

Given how cheap "brainpower on a mission" is, finding a way to find it while avoid corrupting of the selection process by Goodhart's law, might make establishing such a think tank much less expensive. Maybe we should start paying select people to move to ERE City... you see the strategy, right?

Your words, not mine. I am not scared unless you were to buy a fighter jet.

I do see where you are going with the strategy and I am figuring out my version of that with Darmera. Like can I make a bunch of "patent clerk" type jobs for smart people to do on autopilot while they spend most of their brain power towards other interesting endeavors with other smart people. It is arts based with a strong ecological bent. It does not have to be limited to that of course. My business partner* and I already have plans for specifically what buildings we would buy to expand into that would include apartments above. I think that model can work, but I only have a limited number of days on this earth and I am not waiting around to come to a consensus on ERE city.

Universities are businesses. WRT to postdoc pay I think you are right that it is mostly overhead. Many universities including the UCs, now have post-doc unions that have equal pay for postdocs across all disciplines. Grant overhead is 40-50% paid to the university to pay for bloated admin layers. I have seen many labs get around this by "sponsoring" visiting postdocs and in extreme cases having an entire lab of these folks. These are typically postdocs from Asia where their home institution pays ERE level wages for them to work 80-100 hour weeks in a lab in exchange for being on publications with US institutions. Ideal or not this is the current reality.

add: I am not advocating for any of this just so it is not taken out of context. It is just a reality of the current academic system. These are mostly bench scientist molecular biologists. The more time at the bench the more "productive".

So how to bring the postdoc level curiosity and talent on a fraction of the wages? I am not sure I have an answer yet, but I think I will eventually have a model that could be replicated elsewhere for a more arts centric community in the mountains. I do not suggest this as an ERE City per-say, because there is wildfire risk, it is cold/rainy a lot, and a number of other semi-deal breakers in your summary thread. I will freely share any information though about what works and what doesn't. I think that having a small business mindset for the community to focus on producing something for the wider world is better than just completely self funding it.

@zbigi - if you show the results you could get to a place where you could apply for and eventually win governmental funding.

*very smart polymath that never went to college and does not need to. Lived in an abandoned barn one winter after he totaled his truck on an icey road. He is gritty as fuck and I love it. Currently, co-owns a very successful construction business at 26. He is a very good painter, skier, fly fishing guide, the list goes on

[Ego]

Universities are businesses. WRT to postdoc pay I think you are right that it is mostly overhead. Many universities including the UCs, now have post-doc unions that have equal pay for postdocs across all disciplines. Grant overhead is 40-50% paid to the university to pay for bloated admin layers. I have seen many labs get around this by "sponsoring" visiting postdocs and in extreme cases having an entire lab of these folks. These are typically postdocs from Asia where their home institution pays ERE level wages for them to work 80-100 hour weeks in a lab in exchange for being on publications with US institutions. Ideal or not this is the current reality.

I have some experience dealing with two people in this situation. It is interesting to compare/contrast their circumstances with the undocumented folks I know. I find it fascinating that the supposedly smartest among us have found ways to systematically enslave their peers from other countries and continue to go to the office everyday, working beside their slaves without having it crush their souls.

By contrast, the undocumented are remarkably interdependent and are far freer because they work at the fringes of the system where the supposedly smart people are afraid to go.

I know I am preaching to the choir here.

[mountainFrugal]

I have some experience dealing with two people in this situation...

I know I am preaching to the choir here.

Yeah. These situations are usually horrible for the "visiting scholars" and the knowledge outcomes are incremental at best (Turnip squeezin') as @jacob mentioned earlier.

[7Wannabe5]

I have grown tens of thousands of plants of 7 different species (maize, wheat, soybean, Arabidopsis, Brassica rapa, tomato, Cannabis) for experimental and breeding purposes.

Like Carol Deppe! Super cool. She is on my Top Twenty List of Women Even Older Than Me Whom I Admire along with Catherine Deneuve and Margaret Atwood.

My curiosity has been completely satiated in this realm and I can think of a hundred things I would rather do than maintain a garden.

Have you ever considered creating a whimsical ornamental garden? I can see how Square Foot Backyard Vegetable Gardening would be totally boring amateur hour compared to what you've done, but gardening in general is almost an infinite field. "People with Dirty Hands: The Passion for Gardening" by Robin Chotzinoff is a very amusing collection of portraits of avid gardeners with highly varying styles and obsessions.