Day: July 29, 2025

By many comparative measures things are pretty good in my life. I make good money – the fabled six figures – which doesn’t feel like much with inflation, I spend a lot of time in wilderness, I have a big jacked up truck and a number of toys – even if they are frequently in need of repair and the shine quickly wears off them and parts are hard to keep on maintenance on.

I am not the top dog but I’m also not the bottom of the heap. There are people with a lot more suffering then I have, though my life is still a story of trials and tribulations. You know I would have thought thing would be a lot better when I was making six-figures, when I had some money saved up and could afford my own home and land, when I had that title and nice office. But it’s not that way at all as there is always another dollar to chase, another step to get to the point where I can actually own my own land.

Things are never as simple as they seem. But I do got a lot of talent, knowledge and experience in the things I’m good at even if in comparison to others that might seem little. I am not a professional programmer but I am good at the R statistical language, among other programming languages that I don’t use as frequently. But I can query data, transform, load it quite proficiently. And I’m pretty darn good at making maps.

Now there are people who are professionally trained cartographers who have better tools then the open-source tools I use. Those who have gone to college for years to learn their craft. Those who do it professionally every day. Those aren’t me, but I think I do good work with the tools and knowledge I have. Sometime my outputs and maps have mistakes or aren’t perfect, but sometimes that’s more a matter of effort extended and time allocated to the process. But I do the best that I can do.