Side tracked by futility .....

I spent most of the past month making a thousand Pinterest and Facebook "bookmarks" . When I wasn't reading these articles and "sharing", I was obsessing about a person . It is not the first time this has happened to me but it's been well over 20 years since the last time and I truly thought I had out grown my people obsessions . I was wrong, it was just that I hadn't met anyone worth obsessing over in the past 20 years .

Like most other addictions/obsessions...there is good and bad involved . The positive for me was that the individual in question woke me up to feeling again . Funny how you can stumble through existence in a semi-comatose state and not even realize . I wont say it was as dramatic as The Matrix but it certainly was both frightening and disorienting . Left me with a reeling head, a bit nauseous and smiling...I know, weird combination . Not unlike a rollercoaster .

Now, he has decided to do me the favor of running away...and I am left feeling numb and no less disoriented but oddly motivated . So, back on the "farm journey" .  I still don't know specifically "where" I want to do this but I am 90% certain it will be near a small town, perhaps two hours  from medium sized city  After much thought about moving further south to be near family, or further North to avoid humans, I have decided that being near enough to use recycle resources and sell hand made items, makes the most sense . Worse case scenario....ie...bad year for crops...I can still have some access to at least part time job . I still would like the majoority of my income to be on-line sales of items I make from my felt animals, wool scarves and any small herbal items . Being able to barter extra garden or animal items with small town would also be nice option as well as having access to mail service .

Way to early to look for land , though I spent many hours getting price points on different locations , I think there have been some good options outside of Mooselake and Hinkly . Right now, would settle for a trailer home until I can build my own home but couldn't do this with out some help from family and haven't had to ask them for much since I left my 20's, but perhaps can find away to make it an investment for them ? I could careless about actually "owning land", I just want the rights to build and grow what I want there .


So, yes, watching my brain work is a bit like observing a ping-pong game....I am not linear . I see what I want at the end of the road and then have to work backwards figuring out how to get there . Now, the "what" has become clearer and I have to go backwards to the how . How is mostly about learning some skills , getting physically healthier and stronger and earning some money , The first and second goals are already in progress , the money is the most daunting but I think doable if I can stay motivated . Although I have sold a few of my handmade items, I mostly avoided it because I saw them as my future income to supplement social security . I was making them with the intent of selling off a few but mostly keeping the best for when the economy stabilized . I'm doubting that that day is coming , so might as well see what I can sell them for now as land and supplies seem a better investment to me now .

That's it for now . Still doing some research on gardening and health issues and felting on my work week and working towards selling my stuff and finishing up some half done projects to add to on-line store or local market . I had already researched some local markets when I started felting, but need to dig through files and see what new stores have opened in my area . The down side for what I make is that not very many people know what it is but the up-side is that they aren't making it to sell here from China .

I spent the past 2 weeks researching and bookmarking and hunting down informational resources . I think I found some really excellent specific information sites if I can figure out how to set up side links here . Had a pretty good method of doing so on my felting blog but then they changed the whole format for blogger and I have to learn the new one . (I'm still really mad at them...fuckers!). So....Just planning on adding live links for now and working on creating a more organized format as I go .

One of the most difficult aspects of this whole journey is deciding where to relocate . Land is always cheaper "away from the maddening crowd"...but I don't think I could live alone off the grid . Pretty sure it would only be a matter of weeks before they found my rotting corpse after I tripped and fell down a ravine, frozen to death or was trampled  by a bull moose . Maybe that would be preferable to dieing in an old folks home, but I don't want to be stupid about this either .

So, not knowing how or where I am going to live is about the worst possible way for me to go about something . I can research specifics ....what is the soil like, where is a water source, any wild edibles or hunting available , local resources for building materials, etc...if I have a specific place in mind . I don't actually have a preference though Having a natural water source is pretty important , soil can be worked on but weather...dealing with cold and heat are pretty important . Point being, how can you work towards a dream you can't quit see in front of you .

What isn't an option to me is living to close to people . There is literally nothing that scares me more and the hyper vigilance it takes to interact with them is draining . That leaves the boondocks or edge of a small town . If I was doing this with another person, I would prefer the boondocks .....more natural resources to use and more serenity  and more freedom to be my weird old self . I'm the kind of person villagers tend to chase with pitchforks .

I wont go into what kind of shared living arrangements I would like as ...well, it's to   complicated ,  but I need to plan "as if" that will never be an option because the odds of that working out are...complicated . Anyway, about 7 years ago , I spent about a year on an aspie web site discussing creating an "Intentional Community" of aspies . We had several details worked out and possible building, land and ways to fund it . It was really fun , I did a lot of research then about low cost building and I was ready to pack my bags but...the individual doing the most planning chose Texas . No one else had any interest in Texas...and whole plan just disintegrated .

It wasn't very long after that , that I first heard about needle felting and overnight, I had a new obsession . I spent hours teaching myself everything I could about animal fibers, sheep and alpaca, mohair, how to process and dye...how to do needle sculpting and wet felting and other related fiber things . 5 Years later, I have an apartment full of wool items I made as well as tons of hand made wool fabric to turn into bags, scarves and lots of beads to decorate and finish them . I've also researched how to market items but that stuff is beyond boring to me so I never seem to retain the information . Now, I have some motivation to do so ....money for land and supplies .

I currently work a job , that after rent and bills, I have maybe an extra $200 a month, "IF" I don't buy anything else . That is actually not that hard for me but there are always dental and medical things that you can't predict and now I have decided that I want to look into financing Lasik surgery so I can "garden" with out glasses . That surgery alone would eat up my "extra" . SO the first step seems to be finding extra income, my job schedule actually works out pretty good for that as I work 8 nights on and 6 days off . I could use the time to actually start selling my stuff on-line as well as checking local shops that sell hand-made . I could try and pick up some part time home health work with a local company . Some of them can be very flexible about letting you just work your open hours .

So, the options are ....renting land that has a structure on it already, buying and building with someone interested in creating a homestead or living in a cave and wrestling local bears over the berry patch . (if the bear is interested in homesteading...that would be cool with me too . )

So, obviously not in a place yet to get to specific so but trying to learn what I would need to know to survive if given the chance . The best option seems like finding a semi-secluded place to rent in a small town....with a space they would allow me to garden and getting to know the area enough to find the perfect land to buy while I sell my craft items and work what ever local side jobs I can to get by . Might be worth looking into options for early retirement .

A seed .....

This is not a fancy blog or one meant to be read by anyone but me and  a few significant "others", interested in my personal journey...yep, just a journal and place to bookmark information for achieving long and short term goals . So, if you stumbled here by mistake...not here to entertain you , just sayin .


At the beginning of 1990 , I decided to change the whole direction of my life..."go to hell, go directly to hell. do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars ." By stopping..... using chemicals, and sex and cutting myself, and dreaming of suicide......as an escape from the pain of being in this world . I did not decide that I was no longer an alien stuck on this planet by mistake , I did not stop feeling the confusion of interacting with most humans or end my own self-loathing .

What I did do, was make a decision that I was going to stop listening to the "professionals" who wanted me to focus on all that crap...and just try and live as best as I could, while on this planet .
Sounds much easier then it was, believe me . It took a couple of years and a lot of help from some very caring professionals who taught me some useful skills....

_ Think about who you were before you started escaping the world and go back to the things that made you feel alive and happy . For me that was animals, plants, learning ,creating art, using my body for good not evil=exercise, (yoga, weight lifting, hiking, biking, dancing). You can see that the glaring thing missing from that equation is one that would be at the top of most folks list...."People"..(more about that some other time,  it is still something I'm working on )


_Everything you think about how awful humans are to themselves, each other, the world maybe true, but if you keep focusing on that, at the exclusion of the things you love about the world...you will get depressed again . Being dead wont change any of that bad stuff . So, do what you need to avoid being sucked dry by the negative . When you feel strong, fight the evil you can, but changing yourself IS changing the world, so start there . Selfish is better then dead .


_Grow up a little . Take responsibility for your own needs .
Really look at your weaknesses and see which ones you can improve .
Find hero's and learn from them .
Get organized (personal weakness due to ADD), keep lists or other tools to help
Stop saying...."it's not fair"...It's not fair ! But no one, especially yourself, needs to hear that .


Ok, so this is just a bit of what I recall from my couple of years of transitioning from escaping the world to trying to learn to live in it .  30 years later and everything is not perfect but I still embrace most of the same principles . I did get help with a low thyroid, (can cause depression) and take a low dose anti-depressant because some things are chemical and my family are poster-children for depression and suicide . I did us alcohol again about 10 years ago, without escaping to much, but it is still something I prefer to avoid , especially if  I am only using it to escape instead of as a tonic for sensory issues(more about that when I blog about my Aspergers) . It is a chemical depressant after all, and can be used for good or evil in my opinion .

After being sober for 10 years, I promised my newly sober self...to take another look at my life and reassess if all this work was worth the effort . Did I still think being in a physical body held more pleasure then pain ? If not, 2000 seemed like a nice round number to stop "being" . It was round and I would be 36, which is my birth year reversed "63" . Not that I'm into numerology, just liked the art of all those numbers together . Well, it happened that things were still not great but not horrible and I decided to give myself a bit more time.....the great thing about being an indecisive/procrastinator is that you can always kill yourself tomorrow . (unless your brain damaged or physically unable but I decided to risk that and just put it off a bit longer . )

It's now 2013 and I had an epiphany  last month . One that I find very funny to have not thought of before .....(isn't it always like that with these things). Turns out that in my working towards not killing myself, I sort of forgot to actually embrace life , I was setting the bar pretty low, in my opinion . That is probably where I needed to set the bar 30 years ago, but the closer I get to not having a choice about dying...(getting old here), the more I think I should re-evaluate that bar . As things were 30 years ago, accomplishing some of my dreams, were also much less access able because the tools I needed were not available but that has changed . Number one change.....

The computer and other people who share my interests . We still maybe in the minority, but what seemed to be something infested with "pot smoking" wantabe hippies that got on my last nerve , now seems to attract other nerds interested in alternative life styles, liberal politics and  self sufficiency . (In my "day", we had the same group of "hippies" but they were called punks and though they espoused alternative life styles, were really more interested in getting drunk, breaking shit and getting laid ...yea, your 20's can kind of be like that ).

I know that some of these new trends are just that, "trends",  but there have always been a core of people that try and find an alternative to what they see as a "dead life" and those folks will be around long after this trend moves on . I want to be a part of that , and with the missing link of the internet.... to buy, share information and resources with like minded, and a market to sell and barter....I think it is finally doable . Do not think, that I think, this is an easy life, but if I can use a cycle to cut grass, dig ditches and take care of 114 dogs at one time...I think I'm not afraid of hard work as long as my body holds out .

Yea, my body, that is one of those possible weak links in my plans . It's not that I'm in "bad shape", especially for my age (almost 50), as they say . The problem is that many of the things I want to do will take physical endurance, flexibility and strength . It seems to me that in Western society, many people see old age as making a concession to let yourself fall apart .(I think it is just a slow form of suicide for people who are actually depressed and wont admit it to themselves) Never felt much pain until the past year after a car accident....fuckin drunk texters get off the fuckin road !!! Most days it is tolerable but recent yoga has made me feel more optimistic about being able to reverse some of the problems in my shoulder/arm and change of life style in general, I hope will help with the rest of this problem .

It's worth while to me to do a bit more fact finding about other cultures who are forced to do physical work into their later years . How are they doing that, what are they eating, using for pain relief, etc . I think we have been brainwashed into believing that our lives should be spent on a treadmill in our youth ,  then in a chair behind a desk in middle age until we retire to a wheelchair. Not much to live for in that scenario .

Some of what I have seen about "reversing age, living stronger,etc.. in our culture, has been tainted with our consumerist way off life . It has turned it into trend/gimmick to make us buy more things to try and run away from death . (I see this on a lot of the best places to get free information, they do so, to lure you into buying their...."whatever" . So what ,  more power to them, a lot of of the oils and herbs are still better for our economy then cheap plastic crap you would be buying at Target and some are actually small family businesses that I want to support . It's just good to keep in mind when your checking out such sites .

So, what the hell is this blog about anyway ? One of my weaknesses....a huge obstacle in being my most effective , is getting and staying organized . Yep, it's the twin super powers of Aspergers and ADD that I blame for this in me . They are a huge assert in finding information and staying focused to read it but....I get so focused on every little vein in one leaf of the tree tha,t I do not see the eagle swooping down to peck my eyes out because I am disturbing their nest . I'm hoping that between this blog, pinterest, and facebook, I can finally find a way to gather and organize all the leafs, to see the tree as one piece ....do-able ? I don't know,  but I think it's worth my effort and I actually love learning, so seems like a win/win .The majority of the things I'm interested in are past interests, so I already have a foundation of information but now I finally have a way to get it all in one place so can put the puzzle together .

I will be adding ....in an organized way,....working from the roots up....  my attempts to grow this tree, this dream, this life I have decided to finally embrace . This IS the seed .