How to Avoid the Temptation of "Waiting for GODOT"

“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”

― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

For the better part of the last two decades, I have been waiting for the collapse.  In fact, back in those early days, I was pretty sure that my daughters would never need to learn to drive a car, because cars would not be obsolete by the time they reached their teen years.  When I started my first blog, my youngest was not even school-aged, yet.  When I published my first book, she was 10. 

She is an adult, now, and not only has she learned to drive, but she's also an auto mechanic and she recently purchased her second sports car.  Cars are still very much a part of our American lifestyle - much to my dismay.

In 2020, it happened, and I felt like I'd been holding my breath, waiting for that proverbial "other shoe" to drop.  A pandemic.  Shortages of food and supplies.  Extreme weather events.  Job losses and business closures.  All we needed was an EMP and for the grid to go down.  

As a prepper, I thought I was watching what I had been predicting, and I was waiting for when my freezer died, and I needed to pressure can all of the beef and chicken over a fire out in the yard.  

The folks in the prepper world didn't make things any easier, either.  Headlines that warn us about the "coming collapse" (which J.H. Kunstler predicted would be a very long, SLOW process sixteen years ago), resource shortages, and civil unrest keep us on that edge of worry.  

Don't get me wrong.  I'm sure I've been guilty of sounding the clarion call on an occasion or ... many.  My book, Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs, is exactly that type of tome - a warning about what's on the horizon, and a call to action - Do This and This and That to "get ready."

The problem is that I have been getting ready for so long, it wore me out.  I know, for me, during the Pandemic was particularly anxiety inducing to the point that I was rendered impuissant.  I found that I had no motivation to do much of anything for most of the year, and I spent the better part of the first ten months just trying to make it through the day until I could make dinner, have a glass of wine, and go to bed - where I lay awake with worry into the wee hours. 

There were things I could have been doing.  There are always projects, but I just couldn't get past myself for long enough to do any of them.  

The turning point, for me, came when a very dear loved one told me that I was just always angry, and I realized that I was pissed off that the end of the world hadn't happened yet, and that we were still muddling through our typical American Life, only with so many (and often ridiculous) fear-based restrictions and reactions to what was happening in the greater world.  

I am reminded of Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, which is a perfect example of how we had been living for way too long.  We're waiting and waiting and waiting.

And for me, especially that year, that waiting was very much like Vladimir and Estragon.  I was just waiting.  Not doing.

And that's not who I am.  

Even my book is about actively doing SOMETHING.  It's twenty-one days of doing stuff to your home and to your life and to your psyche so that when the SHTF, you will be prepared for the worst in all ways there are to prepare.

I submit, though, that the worst is not an EMP, but the paralysis of apathy that gripped us during the Pandemic, and really, in a lot of ways, still has its bony fingers around our necks.  

So, when my very dear loved one told me that I was just always angry, I had to take stock, and I realized that I was, indeed, angry, because I was waiting ... waiting ....

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, when he is waiting for the "Man in Black" to reach the top:  I hate waiting.

But usually, when I wait, I am doing something.  In the doctor's waiting room, I was reading.  When my daughters were young, we would play games, like I Spy.  But we didn't just sit idly and quietly waiting.  We did something to pass the time.

And I realized that what I needed to do was to stop waiting and start doing.

I started a list of 100 Things I Can Do to Stop Waiting.

Some of them are regular activities - like household tasks (sweeping and cleaning the bathrooms) to keep me busy.  

Some of them are ongoing - like knitting and repairing clothes. 

A few of the things on the list are one-time projects - like rebuilding the deck off the back of my house, which I have already done, with the help of my daughter, who owns her own power tools ... and knows how to use them.  

The danger in waiting, as I discovered first hand, is the apathy that comes along with it.  After so much time, we just stop caring, and as a prepper - nay, as a person - not caring is a terrible way to live and is a sure way to not survive in the face of extreme circumstances.

If, like me, you found that you have been waiting, I encourage you to start your own list, and instead of idly waiting for something to happen: 

1. Paint a room.
2. Find a favorite vlogger (I like Do It on a Dime) and get some inspiration for small space, low-cost, dollar store storage solutions for your bathroom ... and then, do them.
3. Darn socks.
4. Make lunch bags out of feed sacks. 
5. Write a short story.
6. Build a shelf for your kitchen counter to increase storage.
7. Plan and plant a garden.
8. Make a braided rug.
9. Knit some squares.
10. Make a blanket from knit squares.
11. Read a book.
12. Write an article about something that's important to you.
13. Submit your article to a newspaper or magazine for publication.
14. Bake some cookies
15. Make sauerkraut

Or 85 other things that are much better than sitting for hours scrolling through FB, and just getting angrier and angrier with each swipe.

Godot may still come.  We may still have some massive TEOTWAWKI event, and it may even happen sooner than we know.  If I've learned anything in my decades as a blogger and a prepper, it's that there is always that looming catastrophic event that will plunge us into deep, dark, despair.  The challenge is to not give into that despair and allow it to make us impotent, but rather to design our lives so that there's  something to do that will also do something for us.  

As I near my sixth decade on this earth, my goal will be to stop waiting, and embrace doing something to improve my life, and those who share it.

Life's Chapters

Full disclosure:  I drive a sports car.  

I know.  Boo!  

It's a 2025 Acura Integra, S-type, 6-speed manual transmission in cerulean blue.  She sparkles and purrs.  Her name is Zippy.  

I've never named a car before.  In fact, until I had Zippy, I never really thought much about cars as being more than a thing that got me from Point A to Point B.  I didn't like driving.  I didn't even like being in a car, and if I could walk there, I would.  Cars were (are??) a necessary evil for how we live in these modern times - what James Howard Kunstler has called "the greatest misallocation of resources, ever." 

I don't disagree that continuing to invest in our car-centric lifestyle is a bad idea, but there comes a time in one's life when one has fought the good fight as long as one can, and then, something has to give.

I guess this is what some celebrities call "selling out."  

Maybe. 

The part that's the misallocation against which Kunstler rails is the lifestyle that requires cars - homes built out on the fringes of communities and far away from work and shopping.  That's where I live.  In the 'burbs, on the outskirts of a seasonal community.  We have about 7000 year round residents, and mass transportation, like most things in my town, caters to the seasonal people.  

For instance, we have a train stop, and yes, I did commute to work by train for as long as I could.  From July until October, I rode the train to work in the morning and Deus Ex Machina picked me up in the evenings on his way home from work.  Then, for the winter, I had to make other arrangements, but I eagerly awaited the spring, when I could resume my train commute.  

When the next season rolled around, Amtrak changed the schedule so that the train was stopping in my town an hour earlier than it had the year before.  Riding the train would no longer work for me without making a lot of adjustments, and not just my schedule, but also Deus Ex Machina's schedule.  

And that's what happens, I think, for a lot of people, like me, who want to be able to make choices other than what's common; what's normal.  I think more people would really enjoy riding the train to work rather than driving a car, but for most of us, it just doesn't work.  It's not just inconvenient.  It requires an entire reorganizing of one's life.

Other people realized the convenience of the car life.  It's how we got to where we are.  My grandparents figured out they could live five miles, ten miles, thirty-two miles away from where they worked, and with a car, get there in a matter of minutes.  They figured out that they could access these far away places for work, and still make it home at the end of the day with enough daylight left to barbeque burgers on the grill in the summer.  They could escape the cramped, dangerous, dirty life in the cities and move to the 'burbs where their children could play on real grass and maybe enjoy a summer climbing trees. They just needed a car. 

And if they have a car, like Zippy, all the better!

It sounds like I'm making excuses for myself, and maybe I am, or maybe I'm just learning a few things the older I get.

I used to have some very rigid ideals for my lifestyle.  I was cutting edge, living on the fringe, being eco-friendly, cultivating a sustainable lifestyle.  

No processed foods.  Everything was local, sustainably grown and harvested, and/or organic.   

No paper towels.  

Line dry our laundry.  

Buy only second-hand clothes. 

And on and on stretched the list of things we didn't have and most importantly, didn't want. 

We didn't have air conditioning at home (I still hate air conditioning).

We didn't have cable TV (still don't), nor a television set to watch it on if we had had cable. 

It was a lifestyle that I was willing and able to maintain back in those days when I was home full-time and my daughters were young.

Then, they grew up, and I realized that my future financial security had been neglected for decades, and if I were ever going to be able to live that lifestyle that I so craved (the self-sufficient, world-by-hand), I would probably need to have some money stored away in a nest-egg somewhere.  

Deus Ex Machina has both an employer sponsored pension and a 401K, but there was a moment, when it was clear that I probably needed a nest egg of some sort. 

I'd spent decades figuring out how to live with less money (not no money, though), how to do things by hand, how to reuse, make do, and do without, and I was successfully practicing those lessons.  I lived by the credo: "Don't dwell on limitations.  Imagine possibilities!", and I did!  I imagined many of those possibilities into reality.  We actually did live the lifestyle that I wrote about on my blog, Surviving the Suburbs and, to a lesser degree, in my book, but only because the book imagines a future without modern amenities, which we still have access to.  

When I didn't also have to spend 8 to 10 hours every day, five days a week, 50 weeks per year at a job away from home, it was easy and possible, but at some point, I had to stop imagining what was possible and lean into what was practical.

Owning a sports car isn't practical, but letting go of the notion that I've failed in my life's purpose, because I allowed myself to enjoy the fact that we have a fancy-smancy car that's fun to drive is, practical. And it's also practical to have a reliable car to get me to and from the job that I now have that will allow me to imagine a future full of possibilities. 

I also bought a washer/dryer combo last year, and I use my dishwasher every couple of days (which probably saves on energy, because we use few enough dishes with just three of us, that I don't need to run it every day, and I also have it set on the one-hour cycle, which uses less energy). 

This weekend, Deus Ex Machina and I will be in search of a new coffee maker.  If you know me at all, you know I've been a bit of snob when it comes to making coffee.  I'm all about the French Press.  It's more eco-friendly, and arguably makes a better cup of coffee.

I'm a coffee drinker, and I won't apologize for that.  Study after study has shown that drinking coffee has overall positive health benefits. 

I was never worried about coffee before, considering it a delightful and healthy part of my diet, but my most recent blood tests showed a significant increase in my LDL Cholesterol levels - so much so that my PCP is talking about medication.  I haven't reached the point, yet, where I'm willing to compromise my stance on pharmaceuticals.  Medications aren't sports cars or really cool all-in-one washing machines that make my life easier and more fun. 

It's possible that my PCP is wrong and/or that the tests weren't totally accurate.  She's been wrong about other stuff related to my body, and I am looking for a second opinion, but also ...

The French Press doesn't use paper filters, and, according to Dr. Google, the unfiltered oil in pressed coffee contains compounds (cafestol/kahweol) that can increase LDL "bad" cholesterol.  My easy Google search suggests the possibility that my LDL cholesterol was so high on the blood test, because, while I was "fasting" (no food, black coffee only), I did have a couple of cups of coffee prepared in a French Press before the test.  

My PCP doesn't know about French Press coffee.  She didn't ask.  She wasn't interested in exploring why my cholesterol levels punched through the roof.  She just said, "Let's talk about Statins."  

Deus Ex Machina, apparently, has the same problem, and to compound our questioning the accuracy of the test, our LDL number was the same number.  I'm thinking that seems a little ... unlikely.

So, we'll be looking for a new coffee maker.  One that uses a paper filter.

There are days when I lament the loss of the life I wanted, and days when I think that this way of life I'm currently steeped in is a preparation for the life I will have when I (finally) retire, but mostly, I just know that life changes.  

And these days, while I'm still (always) excited about possibilities, I'm more inclined to lean into practicalities.

If you have a favorite coffee maker that uses a paper filter (we'll be buying unbleached, preferably from recycled materials :)), let me know.  I'd love some recommendations.