I wish it was easier to understand the world, have a clear, lucid understanding of the world around me. See things the way they really are, find the deeper meaning. But it’s so darn hard, as most of the time I’m just trapped in the same frame of reference and even when I smoke I get more tired then inspired. I just wish there was something deeper and more profound to life.
Personal
Squaw Lake
Exploring Squaw Lake at Moose River Plains.
Should having a psychedelic experience be required for employment?
It’s an interesting question. While for many jobs, you want people to be fully sober before working, it seems like that having a past psychedelic experience might actually be an asset as it provides such a moment of clarity.
A chance to laugh and see the world in such clarity. Rich colors and details otherwise overlooked like the exact patterns in the clouds. While such experiences do not continue once the high has worn off, the memories and wonder remain and that’s an asset for any career where creativity matters.
the fastest dataframe crate in Rust – with Ritchie Vink (Ep. 146)
Blue skies and no wind makes for a beautiful morning ☀️
A cool autumn but not cold feeling without the wind and lots of sunshine.
Taking down camp 🏕️ once again but as soon as Friday morning if the weather is decent I’ll be back in the woods as I’m thinking of doing a long weekend up in Madison County at Charles Baker State Forest. 🚵 Thinking about riding trail and maybe bringing the kayak 🛶 and on Saturday or Sunday paddling up through Nine Mile Swamp.
Probably check out Huyck Preserve 🚶 midday then maybe log in and process some of the data jobs at the Rennselaerville Library, then head home unpack, shower 🚿 and hop on my bike 🚲 and ride down to Hannaford for at least enough groceries for the first half of the week. Monday I’ll go to the laundromat to have clean clothes for work and then Thursday get propane, supplies and fuel ⛽ for my truck in preparation for that Columbus Day Weekend trip to Madison County.
Who knows though, the hurricanes 🌀 down south could change track or other things happen between now and the end of the week to change my mind. But I would like to do a trip to Madison County when it’s still colorful, warm enough to kayak and the trails are still open at Charles Baker. But I do fully admit it will be a busy weekend for work so it won’t be all fun and games.
Just buy a house, it will be great 🏠
Your the Director. You make good money, you’ve saved and invested, you could buy a house with cash or get it at a good interest rate if you wanted the tax advantages of letting your money grow in the markets.
Don’t you know it’s foolish to pay rent. You’re just making your landlord rich, paying his mortgage. Renting is a temporary thing you do or what you do when you have no other options because you’re poor. Did I mention it’s foolish? Think of all the money you would be saving, paying the bank and establishing equity in your own home.
You’re in your mid forties but you’re still riding your mountain bike to work most days, except when you take the bus and transfer over to the shuttle. You know like the drunkards and the poor who don’t own cars. You’re spending your weekends in the wilderness, smoking pot, drinking beer and burning shit. Listening to shitty old music. Even when it’s cold and snowy as you hate living in the city.
But I really don’t want a suburban house. I hate lawns, I hate carpeting and vinyl siding. It would be such a waste of money to buy a structure I hate, costs a ton to heat and light and I wouldn’t bother even making the most minimal of repairs because I hate it and it’s all just garbage to me.
I want a small cabin up in the wilderness wherey I can shoot and own whatever hand and long guns I want without special government permission, burn whatever garbage I want and not waste my time washing out plastic bottles and tins cans for fake recycling, have pigs, goats and any other livestock I want, grow cannabis and other feed stuffs. I don’t mind shitting in a bucket, chopping wood or fiddling around with batteries and solar as that’s that I do half the year when I’m not back in my cesspool apartment in the city!
It will happen some day. Not that far in the future. I can see my net worth increasing and my years of experience paying off at work. After all, not everybody becomes a director. The financial experts say I am a fool but they are not me. They don’t understand my love of the wilderness and the small towns, the freedom to live the life I want to live. The houses I see on Zillow are so distasteful as is everything New York State and the liberalism it all involves.
Studying the rural landscape 🐐
One of the things I find myself spending a lot of time lately is trying to understand the rural landscape and people’s relationship to land and property. The architecture and barns, the livestock raised, how people piece together a living in the country.
Methods of study vary. One is the simple just traveling to rural areas, riding rural roads on my bike. Climbing mountains and peering down into the valleys. Things I’ve done for years now, but now with a much more careful eye, trying to figure out what I actually want to some day not that far in the future incorporate into my life. Styles of architecture, layout of homesteads and gardens, livestock and even toys like ATVs, tractors and trucks.
But at the same time I’ve been doing a lot of reading and listening to e-books about farming and homesteading, books about the wilderness and how people relate to the land. In many ways it’s taking off my rose colored glasses on the topic. I grew up in the country, I know about barnyards and breaking ice to water ducks and feed dogs in the winter and all the smells and hard work that go along. Still maybe I didn’t think as much about stewardship and how much farmers of all stripes struggle to stay on the land, and the hustle to stay afloat selling what they can. Often it really is a fight for life against markets, pests, disease and weather. Or how 5 acre homesteads chew away at once vibrant farming lands. YouTube videos are good to get a look at every day operations of farms and homesteads but sometimes five hundred page books give you a lot more of the back story.
People will say I’m wasting my time in analysis and study, years of my life are rapidly fading away while rent checks fly out the door padding my landlords pockets. But I want to do it right, build the right homestead in the right location, be thoughtful not rushed. The time is not now but will come and armed with facts on all aspects of rural life, I will make better decisions. I grew up in the country and went to school in a small town, yet there is much more to learn.