No Time Like Right Now - sky's journal

[grundomatic]

It never ends. I met up with a friend for our ERE chat, and he had brought me cookies from his work. He felt bad when I told him later in the conversation that I had just finished reading How Not to Die and was doubling down on my healthy eating. I told him no sweat, a couple cookies a month is nothing compared facing the daily temptation when working. I did succeed in sharing healthy food at my other weekly gathering. I made veggie tacos for dinner (skipping the cheese and tortilla for myself), with grapes for desert. At another gathering, I had zero cookies and instead finished the remaining salad.

[shaz]

That garden looks like a fantastic place to chill with a book.

Did you make the cake yourself? It's impressive!

[sky]

No, it came from a store.

[AxelHeyst]

To a certain extent this quest for an ultralight backpacking kit is a form of madness, however I have been pursuing this madness for many years. I don't even go backpacking much, for me it is more of a design and make your own gear quest.

I get that... many of my projects are more about the doing than the having the end result.

Your garden is beautiful! I'm inspired, thanks for sharing.

[sky]

It takes a lot of pressure off when you recognize it is the making that is more important than the using.

[sky]

Fall weather starts the time of year when one tries to complete home and yard maintenance before bad weather starts in just a few weeks. I spent some of my time this past month doing boring things like cleaning gutters and changing engine oil.

There is a tension between the conserver lifestyle and the low-maintenance lifestyle, in that the conserver lifestyle requires a high level of maintenance to extend the service life of things. This tends to frustrate the low-maintenance lifestyle point of view, which would prefer to spend time on leisure.

I had a battle with wasps who entered our home through a tiny hole in the siding and made their way into the house. After a few days of chemical warfare, the wasps appear to have withdrawn. I caulked the siding and hope they do not find another entry point.

I finished the fiberglassing of my old van, I am hoping to get one more winter out of it. It has over 200,000 miles so it has served us well, any additional service life is a bonus. The body metal under the doors is entirely rusted away, and is now covered with fiberglass. My fiberglass work is not a restoration level job, it looks OK from a distance but close up it has an unfinished look. Good enough to drive through winter.

I started a project to design and build a lounging chair. I took some measurements from my current chair to estimate where it was supporting my body in full lounge mode, then converted the measurements to x,y coordinates and plotted them on CAD. I designed a chair out of plywood. At first it was intended to be a prototype with the expectation that I would need to build a second chair to fix problems with the first attempt, but so far it is looking pretty good and is comfortable. I am now trying to make it look good enough to use as my main lounging chair. It seems to be strong enough, I hope that it will last the rest of my life. I might also build a desk chair based on ergonomic principles.

Up to about mid-summer, I was walking or bicycling one to two hours a day. Due to a number of reasons (busy, minor illness, minor injury), I stopped in mid-summer. Now I am feeling pretty unfit and my goal for next month is to restart walking and work up to two hours a day. For now I want to reduce the number of projects I am working on and refocus on walking. I think that being fit will help with a number of issues in my life at the moment.

I have been obsessing with getting a sailboat and setting it up to go cruising for longer periods of time. I have had a sailboat before and know that it is not good to own a sailboat unless you are going to use it frequently. I currently care for my wife and can't get away, so it doesn't make sense for me to buy and outfit a sailboat. But I keep thinking about it, to the point of me identifying this obsession as a minor insanity. My response to solve this problem has been rather than buying and outfitting a sailboat, to inventory the gear I would need, and put together a list of items and cost estimate. I am now saving up money in a separate investment account that is intended to allow me to buy and outfit a boat if I am in a situation to do so. Hopefully this insanity will pass soon. I have many other things that I could do that cost very little, such as backpacking, bicycle touring, van camping, canoe camping, etc.

My broccoli cover crop that I seeded a few weeks ago is coming along well. I bought a tree collard plant which I hope to propagate, it if survives. I expect I will have to keep it inside this winter. I also ordered some tree collard seed. I don't have a lot of room in the garden so will have to find a way to fit it in. Maybe grow them in pots and move them around as needed. I am looking for land to garden, although I am not sure I want a large project.

[ertyu]

Would it help at all to reframe the conserver lifestyle as something which minimizes maintenance over the lifetime of what you're conserving? Make the costs of not-maintenance larger: time to seek out replacements, money paid to others, skills forgone, etc - idk what's relevant in your case. The idea is to see the conserver lifestyle -as- a low-maintenance lifestyle.

[Ego]

But I keep thinking about it, to the point of me identifying this obsession as a minor insanity. My response to solve this problem has been rather than buying and outfitting a sailboat, to inventory the gear I would need, and put together a list of items and cost estimate. I am now saving up money in a separate investment account that is intended to allow me to buy and outfit a boat if I am in a situation to do so. Hopefully this insanity will pass soon. I have many other things that I could do that cost very little, such as backpacking, bicycle touring, van camping, canoe camping, etc.

I recently experienced something similar with van building. Thankfully I did not have a van to build on. Mrs. Ego realized what was happening and dangled the campervan rental to shift my focus from building to doing.

There is something I can't quite put my finger on about the desire to build a useful thing vs. the desire to actually use the thing. Many van builders, and I suspect many boatbuilders, obsess on the building of the thing, but don't really dream about using it.

Perhaps a potential rental in some interesting place will shift your focus as well.

[sky]

@ertyu
I picked up the book by Charles Long, "How to Survive Without a Salary", which is where I got the Conserver Lifestyle term from. I am going to read the book again. I skimmed it but did not find a good definition of the Conserver Lifestyle. There were some comments on how reducing costs is more important than increasing income, and a general anti-consumerist outlook. He does not specifically say much about maintenance, but does say that there is hard work involved in the Conserver Lifestyle. The Conserver Lifestyle according to Long, is living without a 40 hour a week job and living on as little money as possible to do the things you want to do.

My term Low Maintenance comes from my Low Maintenance Manifesto, which is an attempt to improve quality of life by accounting for the time cost of maintenance of various items and activities, and reducing the amount of required work to keep things going.

I think you can do both at the same time, it is just that there are two separate "currencies" to be accounted for, dollars and hours. Note that I developed the Low Maintenance Manifesto after accomplishing Financial Independence, and as long as I follow basic frugal lifestyle techniques, my concerns are mainly with how to spend the time of my life.

Probably both the Conserver and the Low Maintenance philosophies would point out that eliminating an automobile would reduce my cost of living as well as reducing my maintenance labor time.

@ego

Yes, actually experiencing the reality of the "thing" as opposed to the fantasy of the thing may be a good cure for the madness. I also thought about listing all the negative aspects that I know of, just to bring myself back to reality.

This need to build something reminds me of the Sorcerer's Apprentice folktale. My brain demands: "Set me a task!". I can't get it to stop.

https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type0325as ... ussianbook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorce ... Apprentice

One cure seems to be to "read the book backwards." I am not exactly sure what that means, but perhaps getting a dose of reality to counteract the fantasy (magic?) written in "the book". Or perhaps remove the wizard hat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snB8u_G3jVI

[jacob]

There is something I can't quite put my finger on about the desire to build a useful thing vs. the desire to actually use the thing. Many van builders, and I suspect many boatbuilders, obsess on the building of the thing, but don't really dream about using it.

It's because these are really doing two (or three) different things.

Overall, I learned a ton. I'm somewhat inspired to build another cockpit for a more modern plane. I've already falling victim to what is apparently a common problem for people who start building "pits". I haven't started the game in weeks.

It's the difference between designing the plane, building the plane, and flying the plane. It's completely possible to have more fun building the thing than actually driving it or vice versa. Some are happier being engineers. Not everybody wants to be a pilot. Indeed, after finishing the controller mentioned above, I immediately started building another one for another game. Why? Because the game of programming multiplexers is more fun to me than the game of doing loop-de-loops. (I'm using game in the widest sense possible.)

[grundomatic]

I tend to dislike maintenance in almost every realm. I need to seriously consider this in my "lifestyle design" moving forward.

As far as the design-build-use modes, I find myself happy to inhabit a single mode in some instances, yet feel some sort of guilt or shame in other instances. For instance, even pre-ERE DW gave me side-eye when I admitted I wasn't the type of "bike guy" that built all his own bikes from components. I was quickly able to dismiss that, as I knew that I wanted to be a bike rider, not a bike mechanic. However, once I stopped playing tabletop wargames on the regular, it felt somehow wasteful or maybe useless to build and paint models for those games, even though that was the part of the hobby I enjoyed the most. I wonder why the difference?

[Ego]

Maybe it has to do with the degree of commitment involved and the potential for it to become an identity.. I believe that someone who plays tabletop wargames or uses a flight simulator does not consider themselves a player or simer in the same way that a person who rides a bike or sails a boat considers themselves a cyclist or sailor.

[sky]

[sky]

Belt Pack for Walking


Umbrella, gloves, windshirt, hat, water bottle, napkins/paper towels, wallet, key, handkerchief and a bag to put them in.

Here all items are in the bag. A little bit full, maybe too full.

I bought a music stand, which came in this bag.

Marked out the text.

Sewing on 1-1/2" straps with a belt buckle.

I could have used a smaller belt but the wider belt is more comfortable.

The belt goes outside other clothing and is adjustable. It can be worn on the back or side.

This allows me to carry what I need on walks without having to carry anything in my pockets.

I use a cheap, old sewing machine and it does the job. It was given to me for free.

[sky]

I have been using my lounge chair and have been making some design observations. Without any padding, my limit was about a half hour before the chair started to get uncomfortable. I had hoped that if designed correctly, no upholstery padding would be needed. This is not the case.

I have experimented with different padding and now have a comfortable chair. I can spend 3 or more hours in the chair with no problem. I am using a pad meant for a car seat and two back pads from an old rocking chair. I estimate that 3" thick closed cell foam would work. If I build another chair I will offset the seat and back panels accordingly.

I narrowed the footrest because I found I had to put my feet on either side to get into the chair. Hip width seems to be the appropriate size.

Generally my chair is about 2" wider than it needs to be.

I had to raise the armrests quite a bit. I would like to remove the armrests and raise them up, but they are glued on and I don't want to destroy the chair getting them off. For now I have built padded blocks that are velcroed on top of the armrests.

I will probably continue to use this prototype, even though it has mismatched cushions. It is comfortable and I think it is better for my back than my old recliner chair.

I may build an office chair next, generally following guidelines here: https://chairsfx.com/computing-chair-ad ... uidelines/

[sky]

Back on the road, feels good.







Camped by the New River, West Virginia.

[delay]

Lovely, trees with autumn leaves and clear blue skies. Thanks for sharing!

[sky]

I recently became eligible for a Lifetime Senior Pass for national park facilities. My cost to overnight in a campground is running between $11 and $14. Now that we have reached the coast in NC, the goal is to slow down and do a lot of walking on the beach.

If I did not have a house, I could probably maintain this lifestyle on 1 - 2 J, camping out of a minivan, using free camping where possible and paid camping for showers. My class b van is nice but if it dies the replacement cost would be very high. Long may she run.

So far we have overnighted at a Kohls parking lot, a free campground, an Aldi parking lot and now have reservations for a few weeks in national park camping.

[sky]

My goal for this week: walk 1 to 2 hours a day down this beach.

[jacob]

My cost to overnight in a campground is running between $11 and $14.

It's probably worth it to highlight how this translates into a monthly rent of some $350--$450, much in the spirit of cheaprvliving.com.

Also, the rest of us can approximate senior pricing by avoiding reservations and paying cash. The risk is the campground being full on arrival. The point is that campgrounds run by the government charge much like a utility bill adding all kinds of different convenience fees when reserving and paying online by credit card (that's 3 fees right there). So for those who are flexible enough to take a chance, ...