reepicheep's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
DutchGirl
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by DutchGirl »

For tuning the guitar: get a tuning fork. And instructions on how to use it. And at least one good ear.

Our (great)grandparents of course bought just enough meat to be used on the same day (and same is true for milk etc). And of course they would use other methods of keeping products for longer (pickle, canning, etc). And some had ice boxes, where ice in an insulated box would keep things cool for a day or two. Of course you can buy ice in the supermarket and put that in an insulated box you buy or make, not sure whether that's cheating for you or not. The castle in our village had an ice cellar where they would store natural ice in winter and use it during spring/summer. But I'm not sure whether you should build such an ice cellar where you live and fill it up in winter 2024/2025...

Otherwise I do not have any advice :-) .

Except: do you want to start mailing with me, for realz? Not sure whether lightweight paper & envelopes to send via airmail still exists... And people used to send newsletters that way too: by mail. They either created one copy that would then be send on from recipient to recipient, or they would use carbon copies or later photocopies. You could make once-a-month or twice-a-month newsletters to keep friends updated on your project.

Scott 2
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by Scott 2 »

Alternatively for the guitar, you can get a pitch pipe. Still need to use your ear, but don't have to tune the strings relative to one another. But that's probably the easiest problem in your list :D. I'd read that year without book!

Bonde
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by Bonde »

reepicheep wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:33 pm

I am considering whether a once or twice a month phone call with my therapist might be an appropriate breaking of the rules, given my history of mental health challenges and the possible importance of monitoring for issues if I am unable to resolve any problems that crop up from social isolation, loneliness, or boredom. My therapist might need to have the ability to encourage me to terminate the experiment early. I have not discussed this possibility with her.
Very interesting project.
I think that it would be quite fair for yourself to keep in touch with your therapist. I think that it would be valuable for you to have a neutral party that knows you well to talk to once in a while. Maybe every second week in the beginning and the you can taper it to once a month and even less if it goes well.

shaz
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by shaz »

The project sounds fun, interesting, and quite challenging. I can't wait to read about your progress.

Have you considered raising chickens for eggs and meat? That's more manageable in terms of the volume of meat you have to preserve since most of it will be stored live.

reepicheep
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

In reverse order:

@shaz - there are currently three chickens on the property. There used to be 4, but one got snarfed by a neighbor's dog. The current chicken set-up is insufficient for more chickens (very small yard, although the coup could probably hold a few more). I would like to make a chicken tractor and then allow the chickens more roaming space. But yes, I would like to have more chickens. I might get lucky and be able to take down some venison on the property while sitting on my back porch at some point, too.

@Bonde - I'll check in with her next time we meet. We have been meeting virtually for almost two years now, which on the one hand is sorta meh and on the other a phone call is already something we do sometimes when the video chat software isn't working. She is still insisting on masks in the office due to some of her clients being immuno-compromised (she also does work in nutrition) and so I'd rather not go in for appointments if I have to wear one, at this point.

@Scott 2 and @DutchGirl, tuning fork and pitch pipe. Of the two of these, the pitch pipe seems easier. I had never heard of this before. My only experience with a tuning fork thus far has been someone sticking one up my nose a few years ago. I'll endeavor to pick one up. I have begun a list of needed items. I'm aware of the irony of planning digitally, but it'll be more fun for the folks back home to follow along if I do so.

@DutchGirl, you have identified one of the many major difficulties with a project of this nature, which is that back in the days of yore (or in a less "developed" country) when everybody lived this way, there was a different kind of infrastructure set up to make living without readily available energy resources more viable. Daily delivery of milk, more frequent local vegetable markets or carts, etc. I imagine that the ice stored in the castle was a communally organized project -- even if the local lord organized the ice-cutting, transporting, and storing event many of the local citizens (peasantry?) would have participated in that process, and to some degree benefited from the cold storage available later on, I'm sure.

There is a lake relatively near the property, though single-handedly transporting sufficient quantities of ice the winter before (if it even freezes over, which I'm not sure of) and storing it through the summer seems quite daunting, even if I was able to "cheat" and transport by car prior to starting my year. I remember reading an account, possibly in a Little House on the Prairie book as a youngster (mental note, re-read these?) of the whole family participating in building a wooden ice-house and then packing blocks of ice in it surrounded by sawdust.

I think committing to buying ice at the supermarket and swapping it out with more ice in order to keep things cold commits me to biking to the grocery store perhaps more often than I really want to. I have a chest fridge/freezer from Dometic that is designed to run off-grid and it is built into my kitchen cabinetry, as well as a separate 7 cf 120 v freezer, so I do have insulated containers I could put ice in, but I don't love the idea of trying to do this regularly. Perhaps occasionally it will be worthwhile for something (maybe if I nab the above mentioned unlikely venison). A root cellar isn't quite the same thing, but some version of one may be doable. My experience in the PNW climate is that it is very hard to store even root crops for very long because of the humidity. I would welcome any suggestions on this front -- there's a nice hillside I could totally dig into, but if I can't actually store anything in it it'll be a waste of significant energy to do so.

I have experience with using this type of solar dehydrator and I think I could construct one with my present skill set. I have also made my own beef jerky before in a DIY dehydrator that was a large cardboard box full of screens glued to PVC with a lightbulb at the bottom, and the jerky lasted a long time and I had no issues from it. So I might try to dry a bunch of beef, which feels less scary than canning it. Then I can add it to stews and soups and get some re-hydrated protein in, or just snack on it from time to time. I imagine I could even dehydrate bacon? I intend to can other things as I go. I don't have a ton of experience with that -- mostly jam, which I don't eat a lot of, and a lot of recipes call for tons of sugar. I hope to learn more about pickling. It's actually only the last few years that I've learned to enjoy the taste of pickled food, so I'm a little bit picky about it. :lol:

Mailing list: I have thought that perhaps someone(s) would be interested in corresponding with me. There is a post office within biking distance, and perhaps if I get set up properly and figure out correct postage I can just put my outgoing newsletter in the mailbox at the end of the road. Astonishingly, Wal-Mart (along with many other places) still apparently sells carbon copy paper for typewriters. I could probably commit to making one or two copies of a newsletter and sending them out to a couple of folks who could then pass them on to others. If you are a person interested in participating in the newsletter, please DM Me the following:

Your Name
Your Mailing Address
Whether you would be willing to pass along the newsletter to others*


*If you are interested in receiving the newsletter but concerned about privacy, I have a couple of thoughts:
- I could set up an organized chain where any one person only knows the address of two other people (the person they are receiving the mailing from, and the person they are mailing to)
- Perhaps for redundancy sake I send out two copies to either ends of the chain and folks mail it in both directions, up and down the chain?
- If you don't want your address shared at all, you could offer to receive a copy and commit to typing it up and posting it here for others to read. If there were a bunch of folks in this category I could take it in turns to mail a copy to each of you as the year progresses, so you wouldn't need to type it up and post it more than once or twice (maybe?)
- You could get a PO Box or set up a digital mail box (where they receive your mail and scan it for you)
- Something else I'm not thinking of?

@moretrees thank you for that excellent resource. Yes, I am thinking of calling it "The Year Off", which amuses me because that sort of echoes the whole post-secondary gap year idea (which I also did a number of years ago). The second tab in my spreadsheet is now devoted to resources.

@Did I haven't followed Mark Boyle since he wrote the book, but I was curious if his very idealistic view of establishing a freeconomy community had panned out. I am not a huge fan of rabid veganism, myself, although I think that industrial agriculture is pretty horrific and try to buy my meat pasture-raised and local whenever I can.

reepicheep
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

Health and Fitness In the Apocalypse

N=1

I think it would be interesting to have a variety of tests done prior to and post project. I can imagine the following data being of possible interest, perhaps with the sidebar that I stop artificial supplements, but do some research on foods that contain some of the vitamins/elements I need that I tend to run short on.

glucose
insulin
Vit D
Iron
Vit B
cholesterol
Others?

It seems like I should probably have a couple of years of pre-project data before I run the post-project data, because two data points are difficult to extrapolate from.

Additionally, it might be interesting to put together a basic fitness test. I absolutely hate the idea of taking a fitness test -- the last time I did so was shortly before I got out of the USAF, and technically I failed it because I can't run for shit -- but I imagine I will be getting a hell of a lot more exercise than I normally do even if I'm not biking off the property all that often. I don't really intend to do much other intentional working out, although I may need to implement some intentional physical therapy/mobility exercises for a couple of physical issues I have.

Taking proposals for a reasonable fitness test? Something that can be done without much/any equipment would be ideal. I could take the USAF PT test (see page 23), I'm certainly very familiar with it and it comes with a chart to convert to a single point value for people of the same age/gender (1.5 mile run, max push-ups and sit-ups in a minute). And also I hate it, and it is mostly designed to provide data regarding an individual's health insurance liability, and may not be a great measure of the type of fitness needed to be successful in the endeavor I am proposing to undertake.

DutchGirl
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by DutchGirl »

Definitely get more data points, because between the beginning of the experiment and the end of it, you'll also have grown older; which in general negatively impacts health. If you have multiple data points, at least you might see for example some slopes "slowing down" for example.

Vit B is B12, I assume?

Blood pressure would also be nice. And perhaps liver function and kidney function measurements.

reepicheep
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

I'm the mystery ERE'r also at wood woorking school. (Hai!)

Small world! Delighted to find a kindred spirit here, and my roommate (who I accidentally outed us to over dinner, ergh) might be reading some of these posts now. She's quite fascinated by the concepts we were discussing and is asking a lot of questions.

I feel totally overwhelmed by the class and am dealing with a flair up of injuries on my right hand and left elbow from standing and doing manual planing for 8 hours multiple days in a row, plus am also working part-time. Typing lengthy posts at present not really in the cards, and unfortunately I don't think things are going to get less demanding as time goes on.

But the class is solid and I appreciate the opportunity to start with hand tools, even if doing so is causing me pain. If I were doing this for fun or money down the road I would not be doing it for 8 hrs in a row, so even if I was working without power tools I think I could probably find a path to physical sustainability.

Or maybe I could hook a benchtop planer up to a bike???

reepicheep
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

Got to use a planer for the first time today. I've seen them before but never used one myself.

Seems difficult to hook one up to a bike. One would need something that could also feed the wood in. Brief googling shows me that hand-cranked planers are not a thing.

Also does not seem to remove the need to hand plane at least one side to flat-ish. I wonder how industrial wood processing goes -- do they just remove a ton of material until they get something straightish, regardless of convex faces?

With my hands and wrists improving (see tendonitis post in Health), it's not such a big deal to hand plane things, but I admit I was sloppy today knowing we were going to run things through a planer and that close was good enough. If I wasn't able to use the machine things would have been a lot more challenging.

I think I can manage a lot of the hand tool woodworking without machine support sustainably (I don't mind sawing or sharpening, which a lot of folks are complaining about), but my goodness is planing to an acceptable finish a chore.

jacob
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by jacob »

reepicheep wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:44 am
I wonder how industrial wood processing goes -- do they just remove a ton of material until they get something straightish, regardless of convex faces?
Yes. This is the reason that dimensional lumber, e.g. a 2x4 is really 1.5x3.5 or a 1x4 is really 0.75x3.5, whereas if you buy roughsawn lumber (available in finer home improvement stores in the suburbs) it really is 1x4.

Logs will also be sawn in different patterns that are more or less wasteful. For example quartersawn boards makes for grain patterns that are both nice and easy to work with, but it also wastes a lot of material.

Boards don't come out of the sawmill with twist, cupping, or warping ... they get that way if they've been incorrectly stored. Wood furniture is designed and constructed so eventual cupping cancels out or is entirely prevented (dovetails instead of box joints). One reason why plywood is popular is that it removes that problem.

ffj
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by ffj »

@reep

Do you guys not have an electric joiner? If they are going to let you use the electric planer then they should let you use that too.

There is a reason people don't hand-plane to dimension anymore, it's just work. Years ago people didn't have a choice but they do now, and almost nobody will do it today unless they like to punish themselves.

I use hand planes for the final surface finishing, removing mill marks and saw marks and the like, as well as achieving true flatness. That's enjoyable. Bonus if you use a scraper. I have no shame in using powered tools up to that point. Haha.

Are your instructors going over the importance of moisture content yet? It's a big deal when you change MC and environments, as wood is a hydroscopic material. I have learned this lesson many times unfortunately and it can make your work look terrible, especially once perfect joints.

reepicheep
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

@jacob where I used to live we had a guy with a portable mill and he was cutting to actual dimensions, which I appreciated, but mostly didn't care about as I was done with the exterior construction of the tiny and didn't need a whole lot more exterior-grade 2x4's. It's weird to go and buy lumber that isn't the size it says it is, but I've done that too.

We just did our first practice dovetails today, I'm glad to learn the *reason* for why they are important. I'm looking forward to boosting my skills past slapping plywood on a frame held together with screws or nails.

I'm curious where you source your lumber? Do you ever take storm or windfall and process a whole tree or are you mostly buying?

@ffj the pedagogy of this particular course, especially the first few weeks of it, really emphasizes traditional hand-tool skills, to include dimensioning lumber by hand. There is a fully outfitted machine shop right next to my classroom and we are now allowed to use the electric planer and the band saw, with supervision, though the instructors asked us to hand plane one face of each board before we ran it through the planer. The boards were about an inch and we were getting down to 3/4", what they told us was that if the boards were too convex then the machine might push them down, remove a bunch of material, and then they would spring back into convex even after going through it, rendering them too narrow in the middle. Only one guy seemed to have a board that started significantly far away from "mostly flat", he was having a very hard time getting it hand planed. Everyone else finished getting their pieces ready pretty quickly, so I think the original lumber was mostly fine as it was.

I am very happy to be able to use the planer, but continue to do my sawing by hand, both to build strength and for the experience and practice. I'm talking about hooking an electric planer up to a bike because I have some crazy dream of doing all of this completely by hand for a year and then writing a book about it, but hand planing led me to a wrist/tendon injury in the first couple weeks of class and I'm not sure if I can do it sustainably long term.

They have talked about moisture content and the majority of the lumber we're using has been stored in the classroom for a good long time, so it's pretty dry. We started the first week taking a log down and making stools out of it -- green lumber -- but the stool tops were a glue-up that had been pre-made and dried, so I know the legs will shrink at a different rate than the tops and some people's stools are getting a bit loose. I am pretty sure that's a known problem with the project, which is really intended more to just be a demonstration for beginners of how to go from a log to a functional thing than it is to make a beautiful piece of furniture.

Do either of you have suggestions for purchasing hand tools? Bonus if it's a quality line that makes stuff for people with smaller hands.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

When you say hook an electric planer to a bike do you mean charge a battery with a bike and run the planer off the battery? Or remove the electric motor from the planer and connect a bike in its place? Either one seems challenging but I wonder if the bike directly running the planer could ever work. I think a planer motor is 1 or more horsepower which is way more power than can be produced on a bike, especially if you are trying to feed a board into a planer. I don't mean to rain on your parade and I'm not an expert on this stuff. Just trying to think it through.

jacob
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by jacob »

reepicheep wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:48 am
I'm curious where you source your lumber? Do you ever take storm or windfall and process a whole tree or are you mostly buying?
95% of what I make is dimensioned SPH/HF construction grade lumber from either home depot or menards, because I'm cheap that way. I do spend some time at the store looking for boards with good grain and few knots. I hand plane it square and put it together with pocket holes, because I'm lazy but not too lazy. Working with SPH really teaches you how to read grain and plane tricky patterns. I've given away all the fancy wood/construction projects I've made.

I do fantasize about getting a planer. Two things keep me from getting one. First, it will likely maul my cheap wood around the knots that can otherwise only be done carefully with a low angle plane. Second, eventually those blades will have to be sharpened and that might require a specific sharpening tool as well. Or replaceable carbide blades.

jacob
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by jacob »

Gilberto de Piento wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 10:50 am
When you say hook an electric planer to a bike do you mean charge a battery with a bike and run the planer off the battery? Or remove the electric motor from the planer and connect a bike in its place? Either one seems challenging but I wonder if the bike directly running the planer could ever work. I think a planer motor is 1 or more horsepower which is way more power than can be produced on a bike, especially if you are trying to feed a board into a planer. I don't mean to rain on your parade and I'm not an expert on this stuff. Just trying to think it through.
If and only if the feed rate of a power planer can be significantly reduced. I don't know if this [slow power planing] is possible? The average non-cyclist can deliver around 150W into the pedals for 20 minutes. The average TdF pro-rider can deliver about four times as much. A direct chain drive would be 95% efficient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ (Olympic track cyclist trying to toast a piece of bread)

ffj
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by ffj »

I like Veritas, or a multitude of Japanese makers I can't afford. I assume you are of the feminine persuasion which puts you at a disadvantage as far as sizing handles and the like. I thought Veritas had small handles to be honest. You may just have to make custom handles for all of your tools, which isn't a bad thing at all. They will fit you perfectly and you can perfect your skills.

Ironically, the chisel set I use the most was made in Pakistan and cost $1.99 at Harbor Freight. I am not afraid of hitting nails or anything with these crude tools and when I do I just grind them down. But that's for finish carpentry.

I'm not so sure about powering up the planer by bicycle. Even my bench top planers require a lot of power. I would think charging a set of batteries by bicycle and using a handheld electric planer would do the trick nicely.

@jacob

I've built a jig from Shopnotes for sharpening everything from chisels to joiner and planer blades. Requires a bench grinder and it works quite well. If you are interested I'll send you a picture and I have the plans somewhere.

reepicheep
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

@Gilberto de Piento - I think I was imagining that I could somehow hook the bike up to the motor and through some sort of magic get the blades to do the mystery thing they do when the motor kicks on, just slowly. Having now observed a planer in action this seems not viable -- one would need to somehow also feed the lumber through with significant force to get it to not just hit the blade and then knock back, I think. Mechanical devices sort of not my forte. I have enough trouble imagining how a water wheel goes from vertical to horizontal force.

@Jacob - perhaps I need to just suck it up and get better at hand planing. I'm also not sure that high-skill woodworking is really my future, although probably getting to that point would make a lot of other things I want to build easier and of better quality (like chicken tractors and sheds and firewood storage and fences and...) Really high quality work seems quite lucrative, but the pathway there is long and getting there without going to work for someone else seems likely to be expensive. More expensive than cobbling together a chicken tractor.

@ffj - yes, as my acupuncturist mentioned, most of these tools are built for male retirees. The handle problem is a bit complicated as I really don't have a shop of my own where I can make these, so I would be limited to whittling and carving, or finding someone with a band saw after class ends. Bit chicken and egg. I'd like to see your jig for sharpening, if you don't mind.

****

Being at school here, where folks are pretty hard-charging and interesting, (and being around @theanimal/reading his journal) is prompting some thoughts that I don't have very clearly outlined as yet.

When I first encountered ERE, nigh on a decade ago, I was really taken in and I was pretty hard charging. I got the concepts but didn't have a ton of skill, and sort of still don't. I didn't have a car when I was in the service, I was making real money, and I was saving a lot of it. Those decisions really helped me when I got out, and I've maintained a big chunk of retirement savings from the period where I was able to contribute to my TSP. Part of my decision making while I was in, though, I think contributed to the mental health difficulties I was experiencing. Sometimes I slept in the office building, or in someone else's car, because I didn't want to bike home through whatever nasty weather there was. I didn't keep the heat on in my apartment to save money, and I believe this seriously impacted my functioning. I could have eaten some degree of healthier/better, even if I wasn't up to cooking, if I'd been more willing to eat takeout of some kind, or even pre-made meals. As it was I basically got so overwhelmed that I was subsisting off of Reese's Pieces candy and coffee at the snack bar at work. Much else happened, of course, and the challenging work environment/lack of control/agency/sexual assault were likely bigger factors in my unceremonious drumming out post suicide-attempt.

Couple of years fast forward to 2019, divorce, money from my ex buying me out of the house we'd bought, plus the pension I get from the VA, and I went and messed around with an Environmental Studies degree through the G.I. bill, not really because I needed it, but because it had some classes I was interested in. I dropped out before I'd finished my degree, which would have been my second BA in any case, in part because I broke my elbow rock climbing. I no longer felt equipped to finish the Outdoor Education minor I was enrolled in, or to work as a part-time kayak guide, which is what I was doing at the time.

For ~twoish years of the pandemic I hunkered down in that community and I learned bookkeeping and a variety of other administrative and softer skills, and I'm grateful for that. And...I often felt like I was bringing up the average of the five people around me, often really struggling to do so. It was exhausting, and I put a lot of mental energy into trying to accommodate the wildly difficult governance style of consensus-ish decision making in a place that has been in constant start-up/eat its young mode since it was started in 1989. At the end of it, I'm not surprised that things ended badly for me there -- I had seen them end badly for so many other bright, ambitious, talented people.

I also spent an absolutely ungodly amount of money, while ostensibly living in a place that was pretty inexpensive. Of course, part of that was me building a house; I don't expect any other major bills for the construction at this point and any future projects, like a porch, I can do over time as I have income for it. But I have absolutely wiped my savings down to the last cent, literally, and while I have a substantial chunk in a Roth IRA and a 529 -- far more than most people my age -- I'm also dealing with over 20k in credit card debt and an RV I'm under water on. I've made some choices in pursuit of building the tiny home that have complicated my life and, because I'm pouring every spare cent I have into paying off credit cards, I am really struggling to make it all work every month financially.

A bright spot since 2018 on has been a strong, healthy relationship with a partner of mine -- polyamorous, which has been an education in and of itself, and not without its challenges, but he's been a wonderfully consistent and unflappable presence in my life through a lot of complexity, and has never overstepped into trying to solve any of my challenges for me. To some degree I feel the ties of that relationship loosening now; I think the pandemic may have brought us together in ways that would not have occurred otherwise, as our respective bubbles shrank. As the world has opened up so have we both.

I find myself a little bit adrift, without a strong sense of how to get where I am to where I want to go, which is also something of a nebulous destination. I used to have (pre-military) very clear goals and directions; the period from 2017 to 2019 when my life just got turned over and over again basically convinced me that it was silly to make plans (God laughs, yes?). I've been surviving, for a couple years now, and now I'm just...meandering. I'll also note that the first professional builder I worked with on the tiny home warned me that when I completed it I might feel lost for awhile. It's been a big chunk of my life and it is no longer all-consuming the way it has been.

In part, things feel a little bit more exciting and freer than they have in a long time. I have consistent work I can do remotely, I can get more of it with some effort, it is reasonably well paid. The current congressional debacle does not seem to be impacting military pension payments as yet. With time and discipline I can get a handle on my financial situation. I'm in school learning some really cool skills that I can put to practical use immediately afterwards; I could possibly find work with them although I'm not sure I'm physically or mentally prepared for a construction labor type job. My house is basically habitable, it's parked somewhere cool with lots of potential projects to dig into.

When I write application essays for things (this school I'm at, for example), I can present a convincing argument that *this thing* is *the thing* for me, that my whole life is wrapped up in doing or learning the thing. But outside of that structured moment, I have no idea what I'm doing. I sound far more sure than I am. I feel like getting the pension post service, and then getting a big chunk of cash from the house sale a few years ago, has allowed me to just...fuck off without a plan. I didn't have to think about how I was going to ER, it just happened, basically overnight. I haven't had to try hard to have a pretty high-quality life. I haven't had to think about how to save money. I haven't biked anywhere in a long time. I haven't walked too far in a long time. I haven't put a ton of effort into cooking, and am only now trying to re-build skills in this arena -- I've paid others to cook for me, do my mending, clean my stuff, change my oil...

I think if I were to drag my therapist into this thread she'd say that I've put a lot of effort into healing from trauma and learning relationship skills the last few years, and that's certainly true. My first major adult relationship and marriage was fairly awful from start to finish. The only major bright spot is that the split was remarkably amicable from a financial perspective. Recovering from bad habits and bad examples is an ongoing journey, but I'm far, far more self-aware and communicative than I was at 20, and I'm grateful to my current partner for his patience and good example.

So I'm sticking my head up from what has been a long march through a sometimes dark road, and now (with this amazing financial buffer that I have somehow managed to squander anyway), trying to figure out what to do with my life. I guess the main question I have is what is it to have a meaningful life in the face of relative plenty, privilege, and choice?

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I'm sorry I dragged down your planer idea.

I see powered planers that look a lot like a hand planer. Would something like that help? Or are you completely off electricity?

reepicheep
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Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:45 am

Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by reepicheep »

@Gilberto de Piento, no not at all! I knew it was a long shot. Even getting a bike to make a thing spin to wash clothes is probably highly advanced for my current level of skill.

I've seen those too. I have this crazy notion that I'm going to spend a year without electricity (after creating an extensive, overkill solar system, of course).

J_
Posts: 883
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:12 pm
Location: Netherlands/Austria

Re: reepicheep's journal

Post by J_ »

jacob wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:18 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ (Olympic track cyclist trying to toast a piece of bread)
Thanks Jacob for this youtube film. My home made e-generator bike gave me also insight how much legwork is needed to power a 75 W lamp for some time. How grateful I am for having solar panels!

To reepicheep: Heads up Reepi !

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