DustBowl's journal

[dustBowl]

@dustBowl OOI what model ThinkPad did you resurrect last September? I think they are the pinnacle of maintainability, portability and economy in computers. Always great to hear of one being given another lease of life with an SSD and Linux.

It's a T480. Swapping out the SSD was incredibly easy, which is a credit to the thinkpad designers. I especially appreciate it because I made the swap right after trying to DIY fix a modern macbook, which is designed in about the most DIY-unfriendly way you could imagine.

I ended up switching back to windows from Linux though. All the small stuff I had to do to get linux working in the way I wanted just drove me nuts. I would spend all day trying to get some package configured at work, then come home and do the same thing on my own machine... not fun. I felt like the proverbial chef who comes home and just eats ramen because he's tired of cooking.

Also, despite the fact that the thinkpad does everything I need just fine, I still find myself eyeing macbooks from time to time. As much progress as I've made from deprogramming myself from consumer culture at large, apple still has its hooks in me...

[dustBowl]

February 2023 Retrospective: ERE wins and sins

Wins

• Re-read chapters three and four of the book, discussed with MMG2
• Sewed a strip of velcro back into the wrist of a jacket after it ripped out
• Baked sourdough loaves weekly, refining the process each time. Included pic of the current iteration at the bottom of this post
• Made homemade butter (extremely easy if you have a stand mixer)
• Used buttermilk byproduct from butter-making process to make buttermilk pancakes. Ate homemade butter on said pancakes
• Offered soup to my neighbor when I ran into her in the hall, because I knew she was returning from a long trip out of the country and had no food in her apartment. We ended up eating and talking for a few hours
• Walked for an hour to go get coffee with a friend I hadn't seen in a while
• Began somatic meditation practice after watching this presentation on The Stoa
• Worked out six days / week
• Slept 10 hours / night. Went to bed and got up at the same time every day

Sins

• Paid $1900 in rent
• Paid $75 for a new video game when there are so many great, cheap games available
• Rode on an airplane
• Watched many hours of mindless youtube autoplay videos
• Lusted over new macbook that I have no need for

Up next

• Learn how to most effectively sell old stuff on FB marketplace / craiglist / etc.
• Use proceeds to buy instapot
• Learn how to make yogurt using instapot

------------

Current sourdough iteration

[ertyu]

that sourdough is picture-perfect!

[Western Red Cedar]

Congrats on walking away from a toxic work situation. I'm not sure what kind of ties you have to Seattle, but I know it is a very pricey city. Perhaps the end of the lease is an opportunity to embrace a sabbatical and find some creative, cheaper options to whatever is next?

I love the loaf as well!

[grundomatic]

Sourdough bread is a project that has been on my radar for years, but haven't pulled the trigger. Nice work on that bread!

Funny how the buttermilk and butter were recombined after being separated.

Yogurt in the instant pot is super easy. Push the button. There's a thread on the forum about it. A little more work if you are picky about the thickness.

What site to for selling things seems to be very local. I don't like CL anymore, and just use FB marketplace and only deal with people that seem real. I like ebay for things that are light and small.

[mountainFrugal]

My partner who is the master sourdough baker in the household approves! We really like the symmetry on your loaf.

[ertyu]

[*] Began somatic meditation practice after watching this presentation on The Stoa

Will you elaborate on what you do and how it's going for you so far? Sounds interesting

[dustBowl]

Aw, shucks. I'm blushing behind my keyboard at all these nice comments about my bread. But I mean, keep em coming. I will accept any and all sourdough-based validation

@WRC
Yes, I'm increasingly leaning toward leaving Seattle when my lease is up. I've built up some connections here, but not enough to balance out the cost of living if I'm not working a high-paying job.

Working on finding some creative cheaper housing options definitely feels like the right area to focus on next. I'm decently far along the S-curve in the realms of food and transportation, so figuring out how to do housing cheaply and well is that last key that would unlock a really low-cost lifestyle and all the interesting options that come along with it.

The problem is, I'm discovering that some significant part of me still believes you either work full time in a job you hate and pay for an expensive apartment or you're I don't know, homeless or something.

Obviously, that's not at all true, as evidenced by all the people on this forum who are doing interesting stuff with their living situations.

(Except it might be slightly true-ish for me since as mentioned I don't have any of the skills required to live cheaply and well in the housing realm?)

Maybe I just need to do the early-era Jacob thing where I go super hardcore, accept that there's going to be quality of life reduction for a little while, and then build my QoL back up as I develop my skills.

I don't know, I want to be less black-and-white in my thinking on this topic. Clearly there are all kinds of options between 'work 60 hours and be miserable in your expensive apartment' and 'be homeless.' This is one realm where I'm finding I have very deeply internalized salary-human-type thinking. I need to spend some time talking to my inner salaryman and see if I can get him to chill out a little bit...

@grundomatic
Yeah, this forum is actually what inspired me to try yogurt-making.

In case anyone else is interested in this topic, the specific threads that got me thinking about it were Salathor's journal and this Anyone make their own yogurt? thread.

Also, would you mind elaborating a little on why you don't like CL any more?

[dustBowl]

Will you elaborate on what you do and how it's going for you so far? Sounds interesting

Sure, though a lot of what I'm going say here is taken straight from that video I linked. I would recommend checking it out from the ~5:30 mark to about the ~19:00 mark (you can skip the example guided meditation from ~10:30 to ~15:00)

The theory
Basically, somatic meditation is body-based meditation, as opposed to the thought/head-based meditation a lot of us are more familiar with.

So, for example, instead of working with prompts like 'Observe your thoughts and then let them go,' you're working with prompts like 'Observe what's going on on your big toe. Can you feel your heartbeat in your big toe? Imagine you're drawing your breath in through your toe. How does that change the sensation? Now do the same with your second toe..." and so on.

It seems like a small change, but it turns out to result in a totally different experience of meditation. River (the guy giving the presentation I linked) describes it like this: "You spend 20 minutes in your big toe and suddenly you realize you haven't had a thought the entire time. And that was just intoxicating. This was the first meditation program I found that I did for the sake of it. I wasn't forcing myself to sit and do it every day." (<-- this matches my experience)

Presentation guy also says that after doing this practice for a few months, his internal monologue that had been torturing him for his whole life just kind of went away without any intentional effort on his part. I can't vouch for that since I've only been doing this practice for a couple of weeks, but it sure sounds cool.

At a higher level, there's a whole philosophy behind this that has to do with getting in touch with your body / grounding in your physical form / 'listening to to what your body has to tell you.' Ideally, you want to completely disengage the linguistic / structural / compartmentalizing / categorizing / filtering part of your consciousness and simply experience 'raw' reality without any of the intermediary brain processes we normally have running 24/7.

I'm hesitant to talk about this aspect of the practice too much because 1) It gets into some pretty 'woo' territory and this forum is mostly a 'woo' free zone and 2) I don't understand it that well yet. I will say that it keeps reminding me of the body/nervous-system-based approach for PTSD treatment described in The Body Keeps the Score (which is a great book, I should write a post on it). More to come on this topic in the future most likely.

My experience + who I think will like somatic meditation
I suspect that a person will like this modality if they relate to the following quote (paraphrased from linked presentation): "I lived my entire life in my head. Lots of twisting, turning, chewing, pretty much my entire life... and if I didn't give my head something to chew on at all times, it would start chewing on me." Presumably other types of people will also like it, but if you relate to that quote, I'm pretty sure you'll like somatic meditation.

That quote describes almost exactly what it's historically been like to exist inside my consciousness. Especially when I was struggling with severe insomnia, it was like my brain was my torturer and I just couldn't get it to disengage no matter what I did. It would just loop and loop and loop and loop and loop and loop and loop and loop and loop further and further in on itself and I couldn't turn it off.

This type of meditation seems to be the first thing I've found that resembles an actual off button. And that just... feels good. Other meditation practices I've tried didn't have the same effect.

***The important caveat is that it's still early days for me with this stuff. Maybe it's just the honeymoon phase with Shiny New Thing I Think Is Going To Fix All My Problems.

But at the very least, I can honestly say that I enjoy the moment-to-moment experience of somatic meditation more than other types I've tried in the past. As for whether I experience any of the longer-term changes, I will report back in a few months.

Okay, but what does this actually look like in practice?
I bought the book mentioned in that presentation, which is called Somatic Descent (I should have checked if they had it at my library first). The book has a few short chapters on theory at the beginning, and then it dives into the specific steps of the Somatic Descent process, which are basically a bunch of guided meditation practices.

It also comes with a set of audio tracks that are a mix of 1) guided meditations and 2) explanations of what the meditations are meant to achieve mixed with some philosophical background based in Vajrayana Buddhism.

So what this actually looks like for me is:

1. Read the part of the book that explains a specific step in the Somatic Descent process
2. Listen to the audio preamble for a given guided meditation that explains the theory and goals the upcoming session
3. Do the meditation
4. Repeat the next day
5. Write about your experience on the ERE forums (optional)

[ertyu]

Found the book - no audio, but I'll do without.

When I do this, my attention tends to be attacted by all sorts of sensations all over my body. I don't "stay in my big toe" and I was wondering whether I should make myself stay in my big toe.

The same author seems to have another book on somatic meditation called The Awakening Body. I will check that out as well. Thanks for the pointers! I hope the meditation brings you the results you hope for.

Edit: ha, one of the people the book is dedicated to is Eugene Gendlin, whose Focusing I have been getting into lately. Synchronicity. Nice.

[dustBowl]

Found the book - no audio, but I'll do without.

All the audio is available for free on the author's site, which is here (well, technically it's all on soundcloud but that page lets you navigate to each track more easily)

Edit: ha, one of the people the book is dedicated to is Eugene Gendlin, whose Focusing I have been getting into lately. Synchronicity. Nice.

Nice. I'll have to task a look at Focusing

[seanconn256]

I can 100% recommend the instapot. You can cook dry beans without soaking them overnight, and they cook in like 40 minutes. I used to be on the instapot yogurt train as well, but lost interest after a while. It is quite easy. You can make greek yogurt by just straining the yogurt in the fridge overnight.
Also, nice bread.

[Western Red Cedar]

I don't know, I want to be less black-and-white in my thinking on this topic. Clearly there are all kinds of options between 'work 60 hours and be miserable in your expensive apartment' and 'be homeless.' This is one realm where I'm finding I have very deeply internalized salary-human-type thinking. I need to spend some time talking to my inner salaryman and see if I can get him to chill out a little bit...

I recommend spending some time on this. I know I often get stuck in black and white thinking, particularly when it relates to housing.

If you decided to stay in Seattle, there are lots of cool people living alternative lifestyles. I'm guessing you could probably find a cheaper solution that involves some kind of roommate or shared accommodation that might even improve your life. Sometimes it is as simple as putting a few feelers out and asking around.

My brother was pretty convinced he wanted to live alone after college, but ultimately found himself increasingly isolated. After a couple years he moved into a large house in the International District with friends of friends (but nobody he knew). He ended up making a bunch of lifelong friends and was able to use his location and relationships to make some early professional moves. Of course, he still had to deal with the hassle of a lot of roommates, some of whom would change regularly and he didn't know, but breaking out of the black and white thinking and doing something different was actually a big improvement in his life.

It was a lot of fun for me as well because I could walk there from the train station, crash on his couch and see concerts, Mariners games or Sounders games .

[dustBowl]

March 2023 Retrospective

I've been pretty all over the place this month. Inspired by some of @Axel's writing, I've been experimenting with trying to create a workflow that's more stoke-based than willpower-based. So far, that looks like bouncing around to a bunch of different things all the time and not accomplishing much of anything. But given that I've been in grind mode literally for as long as I can remember (at least since my early teens) I think it's natural that there would be a learning curve to trying to work in a different way. So I don't feel discouraged, and I plan to continue experimenting in this area.

I've also been consuming a bunch of doomer content this month. In that vein, I've been vibing more with ERE-as-stealth-peak-oil-and-anticonsumerism-blog than ERE-as-tool-for-FI.

Despite the aforementioned doomer content consumption, life is good. I wake up in the morning with the sun, make some coffee, and go drink it on my balcony. I play guitar. I read thought-provoking books. I discuss interesting ideas with my ERE friends in MMG2. This has been the first month since I left work back in November when I started to feel like my brain was coming fully back online. That gives us a burnout recovery timeline of four to five months, which seems to be in line with what others have reported, though of course there's a lot of individual variability.

Also, I'm thinking about bikepacking down the pacific coast highway to ft dirtbag for ERE fest when my lease is up at the end of July. I'm not sure if that many hours a day on bike would be viable with my herniated disc though... I need to experiment with some longer rides first.

Most relevant brain inputs this month:

• Seanconn's (and others') explanation of their food system design(s)
• ERE chapter 5 + associated MMG discussion
• Jacob's second stoa presentation
• A bunch of episodes of Advanced Retroadaptics (I especially enjoyed the episodes with @theanimal and @mooretrees)
• A bunch of episodes of The Great Simplification podcast
• A bunch of bikepacking content on youtube
• Digital minimalism (re-reading)
• Pain Free
• 1984

Most relevant practices this month:

• Keeping a consistent sleep schedule and sleeping for 10 hours / night
• Daily physical therapy routine based on Pain Free
• Daily workouts or walks
• Daily meditation
• Daily guitar practice
• Buying a bunch of bulk staples and transitioning to an ERE-style meal prep
• Implementing the practice suggested in Digital Minimalism of leaving my phone on do-not-disturb and only checking it once per day at a set time

[AxelHeyst]

Inspired by some of @Axel's writing, I've been experimenting with trying to create a workflow that's more stoke-based than willpower-based. So far, that looks like bouncing around to a bunch of different things all the time and not accomplishing much of anything. But given that I've been in grind mode literally for as long as I can remember (at least since my early teens) I think it's natural that there would be a learning curve to trying to work in a different way. So I don't feel discouraged, and I plan to continue experimenting in this area.

Let me know if you figure it out. I'm still bouncing off the walls / feel like I'm at the noob end of the S curve on this as well. The hunch still feels right, though.

Bikepacking down the PCH sounds fantastic. Easy enough to bounce over to the 5 and catch the amtrak if you wind up needing to bail or speed up.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I'm very curious how to create a stoke-based workflow as well. Unlocking that seems like the secret to happiness. I know for myself, every time I've done that, it turns into a much of random hobbies that don't often get completed. Perhaps prioritizing stoke as a critical dimension inside of a web of goals might be a useful way to follow stoke AND get everything done?

[ertyu]

I've been having the thought that "the project is completed" is another one of those essentially salaryman things one might need to question and decenter. "The project is completed" is the essential salaryman task: we have been given our task, we have achieved our task. Success.

While a completed project is good (one cannot publish and sell a half-written book, for instance), it could be that project completion is actually much less important in life as a whole. Sometimes, you pick up skills A and B getting started on X thing, then you drop it and move on to Y thing and pick up skills C and D, and then you drop Y because oooooh serendipity: really awesome thing Z thing has appeared and it requires combining skill A and D, and isn't that neat!! And so on. Maybe there's projects that are important for the learning -- both of skills, and of insight about oneself -- even if they don't necessarily get Completed to a certain standard. It also could be skills ABCD didn't matter but the fact that you learned how to do stoke-based work -- a larger, meta-goal -- did.

[dustBowl]

April retrospective
Monthly updates, in no particular order:

Bike
I bought a gravel bike on facebook marketplace. My lease is up at the end of July and I've been thinking about bikepacking down the pacific coast to ft dirtbag for ERE fest. The problem is that I have a herniated disc that causes discomfort if I stay in a position involving forward flexion at the hips for an extended period of time.

With that as the context, I've been working up to longer and longer rides. Part of the work on that front has been sticking to a consistent physical therapy routine, and part has been learning about how to set up a bike correctly. It turns out that there are actually a lot of factors to play with when you're trying to make long rides comfortable on a bike.

Examples:

• I was getting hand numbness after an hour or two -> adjust the seat height to change how far you're tilted forwards, which changes how much weight is distributed through your hands
• I was also getting some toe numbness -> adjust the cleat position on the bottom of my riding shoes
• Now I get some discomfort / nerve-tweaky feelings in the left side of my neck / left trap after an hour or two -> not sure what the fix is for this yet

Anyway, I've been able to work up to about two hours on the bike before it gets uncomfortable enough that I really want to be doing something else.

Given how far off two hours is from the eight+ hour sessions required for the trip I want to do, it's looking increasingly unlikely that bikepacking will be a viable way to get down the coast. Still, I've gotten a lot out of this process. I'm reminded of what Jacob said about designing ERE with positive failure modes in mind. Even if I'm not able to do the my trip, the failure mode of 'prep to bikepack the coast' looks like: learn how to set up a bike properly / learn more about human biomechanics / get in better shape / explore more of Seattle via bike. Still pretty good!

Music
I practiced guitar every day this month. My morning routine is to get up, make some coffee, drink it on the balcony, and then settle in with the guitar. I'm working my way through JustinGuitar's beginner course, which I've used on and off over the past decade. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the best free things on the internet.

I'm also mixing in some piano here and there, though I'm less motivated towards it than I am towards guitar. Which is interesting, because the last time I was off of work, the inverse was true. I'm not sure why that is.

Digital minimalism
Not a good month for digital minimalism. Fell back into some bad old habits, especially around watching low-quality youtube videos. Frustrating, since I had been making good progress on this front. I ended up just blocking the sites I was wasting the most time on (reddit and youtube) on all my devices. I also instituted a self-ban on porn consumption.

I find that without these stimuli, my brain feels itchy all the time. It's hard to focus on e.g. reading a book for any extended period. Meditation, working out, and getting out on the bike help the most.

Curriculum
The two topics that I've been thinking about most this month are epistemology and math. Learning about those topics (and a bunch of others) would fall under the umbrella of a project I've been thinking about designing for myself. It would be called something like "Improve your skills for understanding the world". Not the most catchy title...

That project would then fall under another even larger project "become a holistic human being".

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic but they're not coherent enough to share on the forum at this point so I'm going to punt on providing more details for now.

[OutOfTheBlue]

"Become a holistic human being". Now that is a far-reaching project. Looking forward to reading more about your take on this!

[ertyu]

Sounds like a great month! Cool update