Once a Prepper ...

I often think fondly of those days, almost two decades ago, when there were so many of us here, on blogger or wordpress, in those pre-Facebook and Instagram days, when we spent time drafting out our thoughts and ideas and actions.  We were "influencers" before that was a word.

The Crunchy Chicken.  Sharon Astyk.  John Michael Greer.  James Howard Kunstler.  Dmitry Orlov.  The Dervaes.  Miranda.  Daisy (who is still writing and sharing and prepping at The Organic Prepper).

I JUST learned that Jules Dervaes, Jr. passed away in 2016.  I mean, just now. Just this minute.  He's been gone almost 10 years.  It feels like the end of something ... and I missed it.  RIP, Jules.

Those people - all of those above and many more - had such a profound impact on what I was doing, what I was building as a future for myself and my family here in the suburbs of southern, coastal Maine.

In a lot of ways, those were pretty amazing and intense days, and I am so incredibly grateful for all I learned during that time.  My children had such a different experience than I had as a kid.  It's not a good thing or a bad thing.  It's just a thing.  Sometimes they tell me stories of experiences they have with other people where they will share some knowledge they gleaned from living the way we lived, and that person with whom they are interacting will ask, incredulously, "Why ...?  How do you know that?"  In a snarkier moment, they'll respond with, "Why DON'T you know that?"  

There's a saying about apples and trees.  We all know where they get that snark.

My life is very different now that my kids are grown.  Precious is the only one of my large brood who is still living at home, but she's a grown-ass adult with a full-time job and an active social life.  It's very, very different from days of yore when my children were the center of my attention and everything I did evolved around what they needed in that moment and the prepping I was doing in the hopes of having a more comfortable future.

There was a lot of living in the future.  As a prepper, that's what we're doing, but not.  Not "living" in the future, but every day is spent preparing for tomorrow.  

There were so many things that needed to be done NOW: splitting and stacking wood; planting, tending, and harvesting the garden; tending the animals; butchering; canning; preserving; cooking; eating; sewing; crafting ....  It was very much about doing what had to be done today, because today is the only day that it can be done.  Tomorrow it will be too late.  Everything had a time, and it had to be done in its time.  Chicks arrive in the spring.  Strawberring ripen in the summer.  Apples are picked in the fall. 

I spent most days just doing what had to be done to get ready for the next thing.  There isn't a lot time to be worrying about what's gonna happen next week, when you're dealing with what's for breakfast today.  And having so much to focus on every day doesn't leave a lot of time to worry about what happened three weeks or three years or three decades ago. 

In those days, my dream was to be a full-time surbuban homesteader - to be off-grid on my quarter acre, producing our own electricity, growing or raising most of our own food, being debt-free, and working at something to earn a little cash to be able to pay the property tax, and maybe go see a movie, occasionally.  My goal was to get everything ready and in place so that someday both Deus Ex Machina and I could be home full-time and just be doing things we loved to do, or just needed to do for survival purposes (like stacking wood.  Nobody loves to stack wood, and if they say differently, they're lying).

I still fantacize about being a full-time homesteader, and I think, when I retire, I'll go back to it.  Maybe even start a home goods or craft-centric side-job as a way to generate a little bit of an income stream.  

The other day, Deus Ex Machina and I were working wood (yes, we still heat, primarily with our woodstove), and I found three little birch logs.  I held them up to show Deus Ex Machina, and quipped, "I could wrap some twine around these and sell them for $15 at the Farmer's Market." 

I'm not going to make a living just selling birch log decor, but I have a few other skills I could use.  I still have my trusty sewing machine.  There's probably some fun, little thing that I could stitch together - like an apron.  People still use those, right?

Maybe I could start a gluten-free micro-bakery in my home kitchen and sell muffins and cookies at the Farmer's Market.  There's probably a niche for that sort of thing.  

For now, though, I'm working full-time, and I like my job.  It's a desk job, but if one has to do a desk job, it doesn't get much better than working in a theater.  

I guess we are, sort of, still doing some mindful prepping, but we're prepping differently.  We're prepping for a future in which we are still active.  So, we're going to the gym and doing a weekly full-body workout with weights.  I practice Yoga, taking classes three days a week.  We're watching our diet more closely, both for health reasons, and because I'm trying to lose a few extra pounds I seem to have decided to store.  When I became a "woman of an age", I found that I needed to relearn how to live in this body.  Eating chocolate after dinner when dinner is after 7:00pm means my body wants to hold onto all that chocolate goodness.  Did you know that chocolate is really heavy?  Ask my scale.

I'm learning to adjust to the new me.

I got a tattoo on my forearm a few years ago.  It says, "Kein tag aber heute."  

Recently, I was told that spending too much time dwelling on the past creates depression and thinking too much about the future creates anxiety.  I laughed in recognition of those roller-coaster emotions.  I know, I know, I keep saying "Do what you can with where you are," and then, I spend all my time analyzing what I did and worrying about how it will impact me later.

So, I'm working on remembering - Kein tag aber heute -  No Day But Today.  And for those who aren't theater folk, it's a line from the musical, Rent with the message being that we can't change the past and tomorrow isn't a given, and the only time we have to really enjoy life is right this minute. 

Deus Ex Machina and I celebrated 30 years this year with a renewal of our vows in the place where we first said them.  

We aren't who we were 30 years ago.  Every couple who has been together as long as Deus Ex Machina and I have been will say the same thing - it's been a long, hard road, blah,blah, blah.  The fact is that we're still on that road, after 30 years, and that's pretty incredible.  Most days, we even still like each other enough to hold hands and laugh at each other's silly jokes.  

We raised meat birds this year, and bought a cow share and a pig share.  We still have our laying hens and share a lot of eggs with friends during the summer.  The rabbits have been gone for a while now.  

I planted a garden, as I have for the past twenty-five years.  We harvested a bunch of tomatoes, lettuce, and broccoli.  The cucumbers were a failure, as was my cardboard box potato experiment.  The Brussels sprouts may get big enough to leave for harvest later, if it doesn't snow anytime soon (I think we might have JUST had our first frost this past week).  The chipmunks ate the blueberries.  The birds ate the  grapes.  The squirrels ate the apples.  I don't know what ate all the raspberries, but it certainly wasn't me. 

In short, I'm not doing a lot of prepping - like I used to do, but we did get a membership at a regional warehouse store (by the way, we have a Costco - not a fan!) that carries a surprising number of local-to-me products, and I'm doing some stocking up on fresh and frozen things I can buy there.  

Life is still pretty good.  I'm not living the dream, but there's probably still time.

For now, Kein Tag aber Heute.  No day but today, and that's okay.