ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Where are you and where are you going?
ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@Sclass
Yeah, me too. haha

The beauty of rope work is that if you do it right, there is no possibility of falling and hurting yourself. I've been hundreds of feet in the air with the confidence of standing on a sidewalk simply because my systems were bombproof. I've also been at the tip of a ladder nervous as a cat because my sense of balance was the only thing between getting the job done and splatting on the ground. I'll be covering how to ascend rope on my Youtube channel sometime in the future which will be fun because there are so many ways to do it. I'm happy that I gave you the confidence to get up there and it's good to hear from you.




Well, we got another dog the other day. She has really big ears and loves a good head scratching.

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Seriously though, I have no idea where this deer came from but obviously it has been raised by and around humans. She's probably about a year old and I am worried that come hunting season she is going to end up in somebody's freezer. Even with my dog chasing her, she won't leave the general area between my place and the neighbors. What was funny was that I had to explain to the neighbor, who isn't from around here originally, that it wasn't normal behavior for a deer to approach you and nuzzle. :D This guy is such a hoot.

And speaking of the dog, I thought we had lost him the other day, that someone had stolen him. We have a routine every evening that at dark when I call him he goes into his outdoor pen for the night. He's very good at this and consistent, which I worked hard with him to accomplish. The other night he disappeared and I spent over an hour searching for him in the dark to no avail and I went to sleep that night convinced someone had stolen him.

I awoke early the next morning to search for him in the daylight and there he was chilling in the yard. Just his normal old self, no sign of struggle, nothing to indicate he had been kidnapped or lost or anything. As I am sitting there scratching my head, my other neighbor calls me and explained what happened:

He had been fishing in the pond near my house and as my dog really likes him and I had gone to town for a couple of hours, he hung out with my neighbor in my absence. What my neighbor didn't realize is that my doggo followed him home and as he closed his garage door for the night he trapped my dog inside. When he got up for work the next day my dog was there to greet him wagging his tail, happy as ever. He said that damn dog never made a peep the entire night and he had no clue he was there. And he didn't leave any messes or destroy property! Happy ending.

I don't know if you guys want to hear dog stories but I thought it was humorous and I was quite relieved it ended well.

MBBboy
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by MBBboy »

I'll pile on with the welcome back. I'm new here, but excited that you in particular are giving it another go

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Ego
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by Ego »

I meet weekly with a group of friends for coffee. We have wonderful meandering conversations. They are often similar to past conversations we have had here on the forum. I will sometimes revisit old treads here to help clarify my thinking because some of the guys are waaaaay smarter than me and I like to hold my own.

When you nuked your account you really fucked up a lot of those treads. Now you are back. I am all for forgiveness but as far as I can tell you never apologized. Am I wrong?

I mentioned before that during the BLM protests someone sledgehammered our backflow. Pure performance vandalism. For some strange reason when I try to make sense of those old threads it reminds me of that jet of water from the backflow shooting across the street.

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@MBBboy
Thank you


@Ego

Quite frankly when I came back here a few days ago I thought I was going to be hit with a barrage of posts such as yours and something happened which changed my mind and I went for it. I distinctly remember while signing back up thinking I was fucking up. But the response has been overwhelmingly wonderful from everyone for which I am very appreciative. Much of it, like all blessings I receive in my life are undeserved.

I was going to ask you to PM me to clarify these issues as I promised myself and Jacob I wasn't going to be argumentative like I have in the past, and I won't here either in this response. But everyone should probably hear what I have to say.

So let's revisit the past. Let me clarify my positions and people can make up their mind whether what I did was acceptable or not. I'm not here to argue whether whatever position you take is right or wrong, it's yours to make and I accept the consequences. If even one of you who I respect (there is only one person I don't) think I should leave then I will go and mark this experience as a lesson learned.

The crux of the issue is whether I had the right to nuke my presence here. I had been here for ten years, had roughly 2,500 posts, and my various threads including my journal had about 300,000 views if I remember correctly. Now you may disagree with this position, but my journal was my property ( I have no regrets getting rid of that) and it was the main source of my concern as I had been very free with details of my life and it wouldn't take much of a sleuth to figure out who I was, who my family was, and where we lived. Who's fault was that? It was mine, but that didn't negate my concerns at the time, which was that someone could retaliate against me for my political views.

Now the blaring question is why didn't I just delete the journal? It's a fair question and really one that I should have considered harder. As you know, over the years I have been very vocal about the press and politics. Looking back, all of the squabbling was pointless but it was also a source of ammunition against me and potentially my family and I wanted it gone. Is that selfish? Yes, and if you can't forgive me for that then I understand.

Now as far as apologies I have already apologized back when all of this happened. But, I apologize to you. Or to anybody else that was offended. My actions were always to protect my family and they come first even if I brought all of this on myself.

Some people I believe thought that I was trying to destroy something they loved but that was the furthest from the truth. I have been a cheerleader for the whole ERE movement for over a decade because I believe it is truly the only way for all people whatever their status to achieve equity and freedom in this world. They just have to apply the principals to their life, but the answers are there.

AxelHeyst
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by AxelHeyst »

I'm glad you made your way back ffj. Maybe 'what happened' is an event that has, or can, make our little corner of the internet stronger. I'm looking forward to your stories. (Dog stories are *always* appropriate!)

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Sclass
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by Sclass »

Huh. I must have been too busy worrying about the pandemic and it’s chaos to have paid much attention to all this. I did notice you vaporized a long with all the rope stuff. Whether the content is yours or not I missed it. And the delete button does exist.

Just my 2c. From the early days I was stunned at how much identifying info you posted.
The beauty of rope work is that if you do it right, there is no possibility of falling and hurting yourself.
Yeah I should mention I really missed this opinion when everyone else told me I’d be killed. Or they knew somebody who fell. I only got off the ground a few feet but I took your message seriously. ‘Kids try this at home without your parent’s permission with proper safety precautions it’s impossible to fall.” I engineered a redundant system using multiple attachment points. The tree would have to uproot for me to fall. I missed your threads because it was the sensible voice rather than the “No you’ll die!” Comments.

I actually went back and search for your words for reassurance that what I was about to do was sensible but poof you were gone.

Daring people go a long way if they can plan their way around the cemetery.

Smashter
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by Smashter »

Glad to have you back! That reply and apology to Ego was really thoughtful, thanks for sharing.

All the value you provided was not erased just because the old posts are gone. They still had a positive impact on a lot of people. Just wanted to acknowledge that too.

If Jacob decided to erase this entire forum and his blog, well that would be a travesty. But I still think we could look back on it all and think the forum was a net-good for the world.

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@Axel

Thank you


@Sclass

The only caveat that I would add is that all of your equipment has to be rated for life safety. In other words, don't go down to Home Depot and pick up a rope and some snap links and trust your life to that gear. I am also very wary of these weird name brands coming out of China that are listed in Amazon searches that are a third in price of any reputable brand. They probably would work just fine but you aren't going to see my fat ass trying it out. ;)

Interestingly, there is a wonderful Youtube channel that is very similar to MythBusters but for rope and rescue products. I love, love this channel as it puts all equipment and theories to test. There are so many rules of thumb in the rope world that are just accepted without question and these guys just ask why? And let's test to find out if the theory holds true.

For a rope nerd this content is gold and my only regret is that they don't have a high end slow motion camera for when they break things. Check them out if this interests you: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowNOT2


@Smashter

Thank you.

Touching on your point and if I may become a bit philosophical I think it's important to note all of this is transitory. My life, your life, early retirement ( retirement may not even be a concept in a hundred years ), this forum, whatever. I'm old enough now to realize that I will be dead sooner rather than later and I've witnessed many of my close relatives pass on to whatever comes next. Most people and their ideas will be lucky to survive total amnesia after five years or so after they leave this earth. That sounds dark doesn't it? But I think we need to be mindful of change and its inevitability.

Apologies for sounding like a Hallmark card.

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Sclass
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by Sclass »

Don’t worry FFJ. I dropped several hundred dollars on Bluewater and New England ropes, Black Diamond hardware. I got a nice sport climbing harness from Camp USA. And I used my ski helmet which looks a lot like a climbing helmet. All good gear. I did look at the Chinese Amazon stuff for about ten minutes, but no thanks.

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@Sclass

Good. Those are all excellent brands. PMI, Yates, CMC, and Petzl are also great brands.





I'm going to talk about this Youtube channel I started because that is what is going on in my life at the moment. This is going to come across as fishing for views (cringe) but its not because I want to see if I can survive in the wild so to speak. I haven't promoted it whatsoever other than mentioning it here because I knew some of you are into the rope stuff and I deleted my thread here on that topic. So hopefully those of you interested have an outlet.

What is funny though is that my competitiveness has come out again and I want to be successful, haha. But when I watch Youtube videos on how to be successful I'm thinking " I'm not doing that!". :D I'm not a fucking entertainer, especially over something as boring as rope. I have to admit my range as being interesting is limited and that is why something as niche as rope interests me. It's a brutal circle. ;) Now the guys and gals using rope for erotica are doing pretty well but I'm sticking to the rescue side of things. 8-)

A lot of the advice entails making better thumbnails so people will actually click on your video, using phrasing that peaks ones curiosity, telling a story in your video, and never completely finishing the story so the viewer will feel compelled to click on your next video. I do ok on creativity but man what a challenge with this subject matter.

But the whole thing is kind of fascinating as if you create a channel you'll have access to Youtube Studio and all of your analytics. You'll get to see who is watching your videos and for how long, how many times Youtube has offered it for someone to view and how many actually clicked and then whether they stuck around. I'm learning all kinds of new terms and what is considered acceptable rates. So there's a technical and goal driven challenge in front of me which I want to see if I can overcome. We'll see what kind of attitude I have 6 months from now but at the moment its fun to joke around with the family that I'm a content creator which is a hilarious thought. My kids when they found out thought it was a riot which is funny in and of itself.

All in all though it's been a decent start.

ertyu
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ertyu »

In all honesty, I run out of energy with "entertainers." Everyone tries to be one, so when you find a chill dude who goes straight to the point and tells you what you need to know, it's like a breath of fresh air. Good luck with your channel

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@ertyu

I'm going to give it a few months and see what happens. For as amateurish as I am, with almost no editing, it still takes a fair amount of time to do these videos. But like you, I love it when people get to the damn point.

I had a guy complain this morning that my lighting was bad, and you know what? It was horrible. But what I want to know is whether the info was good? Tell me that please. Did you learn something?

I watched a video about a guy complaining that Youtube had wrongly demonetized his video and he broke down the number of hours it took him to release his latest contribution for zero revenue: 40 hours of editing alone! What? Is that normal? It was a sailing and snorkeling video.

Oh my goodness, we'll see if any of this is worth it. Thank you for the encouragement but as soon as this becomes a chore I'm checking out haha. I've got two videos I'm going to be posting and I'm trying to get better but we'll see if anybody on Youtube cares. I'm ok with not being interesting enough, it's actually a superpower of mine, flying under the radar and such. It has its advantages. :D

jacob
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by jacob »

ffj wrote:
Thu Sep 01, 2022 9:32 am
I watched a video about a guy complaining that Youtube had wrongly demonetized his video and he broke down the number of hours it took him to release his latest contribution for zero revenue: 40 hours of editing alone! What? Is that normal? It was a sailing and snorkeling video.
Try to count up the number of cuts and camera angles in a video. A video with a count of 0 and 1 respectively will take almost no time to edit even if it's 15 minutes long. The same 15 minutes where the counts are 100 and 30 will take much much longer to edit.

7Wannabe5
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

My niece, a beautiful born-performer content provider who makes $50/hr upselling whiskey to tech/finance bros, was recently trying to talk me into making TikTok videos on the topic of permaculture. Since I am no longer in anything resembling the photogenic shape I was in during my very brief internet "rope" modeling phase, my enthusiasm for the project was limited :lol:

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@jacob

Yeah the channel in question uses all the glitter for attracting viewers: women in bikinis, a hundred jump cuts, spectacular lighting and attractive surroundings and people. In that sense it really is like making a movie. Youtube can be lucrative for some but I have to wonder if it is a solid play with so much uncertainty. It has to be a real investment to produce this kind of content only to have Youtube take away all of your revenue because they made a mistake. And even though their video became remonetized the momentum had passed and most of the viewership had already occurred so the whole project was a net loss.

But these videos remind me of childrens cartoons. Modern cartoons will almost put you in a seizure as they have zero dead space. It is constant sound with jump cuts in the milliseconds. No wonder people have almost no attention span these days if they have been conditioned to be stimulated without interruption for something as trite as a cartoon.


@7

Oh, there is a market for everything . One of the friends of my wife ( we're all in our 50's ) the other day confided that she was considering becoming a foot fetish model which we thought was a hoot. On OnlyFans! I don't really know if she understands the full context of what she is proposing but then again she very well may. I have so many questions for this woman, which I will never be able to ask. :) Unlike Quinten Tarentino, I don't really understand the foot obsession, but there you go.




I continue to clear out my woods and make it healthy again. It is such a slow process but yet a very satisfying one when I achieve my end result. Here is a good example of what I am dealing with:

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That is a wall of vines and scrub trees that have to be removed in order to create space and non-competition for the valuable trees that I will be keeping. The amount of work I have invested in these two acres in almost comically absurd. But it looks so much better where I have made healthy spaces and the ultimate goal is to provide a private park-like setting with beautiful specimen trees. And one of the rewards of doing so much work is that I get to free worthy trees of their veil of vines and smothering by the less beneficial tree species. Now this process would occur naturally if left alone but I don't have the 30 to 50 years to let it occur without my meddling.

Here is an example of what it looks like after the initial rough clearing:

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The pink ribbons are identifiers of the trees I want to keep so that I don't accidentally cut a beneficial. When you are in a thicket of vegetation it is easy to make mistakes and get overly aggressive with a chainsaw. Now to keep the vines from growing again next season I will be using a scythe and a push mower to keep the weeds in check and once my new fencing is complete I may consider sheep or goats to keep everything from becoming aggressive again. As soon as the ground is open to sunlight that space will become a riot of vegetation, most of it not wanted.

I've also been keeping a list of tree species encountered with 21 counted so far, not including sub-species. Some of them I am actively destroying such as the ash tree because they are dying anyway and the non-beneficials such as box elders. I also have very little need for osage orange, and most of the elms as they grow into a very wide spread canopy.

But the oaks, hickory, walnut, redbud, pawpaw, mulberry, sycamore(within reason), poplar, sassafras, dogwood, hackberry(within reason), buckeye, willow, maple, locust, cedar, and basswood are all welcome. And I continue my little tree farm in which I am currently growing persimmon and white oak, so hopefully those all do well once I place them into the woods.

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

Have you ever heard the expression "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"?

That pretty much sums my life up these last few months, and while I continue to improve my small patch of land on this Earth, and as satisfying as the results are to my eye, I've become a bit stagnant. I've become too immersed in my projects around the farm and I am a bit myopic at the moment truth be told. When this happens, I become a bit one-dimensional, as my thinking process is consumed with what needs to happen next in my work progress. While this produces results, it also makes my days somewhat muted.

So I've been forcing myself to do things I wouldn't normally do when I could be getting something meaningful done. I watched "The Planet of the Apes" the other morning. Now this movie was released 54 years ago and I always defer to the standard at the time, but holy shit what a horrible movie. I should have been drinking to really have fun with it but I watched it in the morning. 8-) Apparently it was a major hit back in the day and multiple sequels were made ( I remember some of them) but I think I'm done with the series, haha. The female starlet had ZERO speaking lines and still managed to look like she didn't belong there, and don't get me started on Heston with his weird lines (there is a meme of him laughing out there somewhere). I need to screen my entertainment more diligently or drink more. :D

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I got offered a small job the other day and I think I'm going to take it to get my game back on. As alluded to earlier, I think I am out of balance in having to be "out in the world", and an easy way to fix that is to work while making money. Ironically, my current situation was my fantasy 10 years ago, but too much of a good thing can be a retardant on developing your full self. At least for me. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the money earned; the proceeds from the last job I completed a few months ago for a friend is still sitting in a tin forgotten for the most part. Which is another issue you will deal with once you reach a certain status. I used to make fun of people that would sit on cash or not spend money but I understand now why that happens.

The Youtube endeavor continues to be fun, although I cringe at the sound of my voice and diction. I overcome that with the knowledge that I have good information that is beneficial to people that need it. Also, it seems a waste to keep this all to myself when others can benefit. The analytics are good for the amount of impressions given by Youtube so I am happy with those metrics. I guess I'll continue until it's not worth it.



I'll leave you guys with a recent hike. It's that time of year again.

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Gilberto de Piento
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Are those steps coming out of the stone wall? What for?

Also, it's good to hear from you. Glad things are going ok.

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

Hey Gilberto, good to hear from you too. I've always enjoyed your contributions. And I love saying your name in a Spanish accent, haha. Dorky, I know, but it's fun. I don't even know where you are from but the name flows. ;)

Aren't those cool? I love details like that in any kind of design or structure. It's remarkable how easy (relatively) it is to add a bit of uniqueness to anything we build to make it stand out and capture our eye, these stairs are a good example, and how many times that opportunity is ignored.

These fences were built by people long gone now as most were built around 150 years ago, and it's a place I've hiked often over the years. It's overall just a beautiful place to experience with the architecture and the stone fences and there are many hiking trails available. And like many places, if you are willing to exert physical effort, you will virtually have this beauty to yourself. Well worth the drive to get there.

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IlliniDave
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by IlliniDave »

Those photos of your hike are really cool, ffj. Reminds me of some places I used to wander when I lived near Boston between Lexington and Concord. Always wondered if some of those old stone walls had musket ball chips in them from the revolution. The old house is reminiscent of some of the old historic sites in East Tennessee.

ffj
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Re: ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

Post by ffj »

@IDave

Happy you liked them.

I love exploring and finding interesting and beautiful things to experience. I've never been to Boston but my wife has and she loved it with its architecture and history. I may have to go myself.

I have been to East Tennessee many times and love it. In fact, the whole East Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia area is beautiful and if I didn't live where I live I would move into that area, with a strong preference for Western North Carolina. Beautiful country.

I was reading the thread about ERE locations and every place has a conundrum. The old pick two out of three but you can't have all three. Every place is a compromise and I think it comes down to what you can live with ultimately. For myself, I value privacy and I am more than willing to put up with the headache and cost of personal transportation if I can trade that for the freedom of movement and living far enough away from other people with a private personal residence. However, my walkability score isn't too good. :)

One of the investments I would like to make in the future is land incidentally. You can't replicate it and unless something totally unforeseen occurs, it will increase in value especially with increased population.

I'm interested in properties that have the following characteristics: I won't have to maintain them, there are few restrictions and absolutely no HOA's, it's undervalued because of reasons that could be fixed in the future, property taxes are low and lastly they have inherent natural attributes. And all of my timelines for recouping my investment would be decades away. It's not about making money per se, but about preserving a natural resource while I still can which is important.

I'm currently looking at a property in Eastern Kentucky that has some rough edges but huge potentials. This area is very poor and the property in question is about 150 acres or so. As is, it has several downsides, mainly the poor neighbors (with poor habits) and accessibility, but in 30 to 40 years that could all easily change. One has to look at the future. But we'll see what happens.

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