Crazily in a haze he stays in holiday in

Baby grapes

I’m getting better at predicting the future. The longer I live, the more accurate I think I’ll get. Granted that assumes I keep collecting knowledge like I have been, but I seem to spend more time learning than ever before. Having knowledge also allows for symbiosis with other ideas or building on the old to create new. There is no shortcut on the path of learning. An attitude I find in myself lately is when I’ll notice something feels difficult I’ll reassure myself that I’m not good at that thing because it’s new to me and that I’m going to have to learn what a good technique feels and looks like. Once I forgive myself for making mistakes, my brain switches into learning mode and I’m gifted with a special brain to where I can learn like Neo in the Matrix. The hard part is convincing people to let me start swinging a hammer. 

I can’t believe we’re just in waiting limbo for the house right now. Think about this concept, if I’m truly waiting for an inspector to get around to my house, that means that market can afford to hire more inspectors. I’d also like to add that the market is at historic lows, so what are the odds the inspectors have a backlog of houses to look at. I bet tomorrow we’ll hear from house people and the way they speak is like, “We need this thing right now, or your whole life will fall apart.” Well maybe that’s just me being dramatic, but it feels that way to me, so I think, “Why didn’t you contact me as soon as you found out?” I’ve been waiting on you. They’re treating life like a job, don’t work a job unless it fulfills you enough to live it. I wanna get stuff done, whatever that means, I’m ready.

Take back the fat stacks

The now gone cactus flower

This morning has been pretty good. I got all of my chores out of the way early. I mowed the lawn, walked the dog, and even emptied the fridge of all the expired food. Today I separated more cuttings from my fiddle leaf because I want it to be a long slender tree, so all the new branches that grow have got to go. My neighbor shouted over the fence for some help to straighten it up, so I pulled the fence straight and he screwed it into a board to keep it in place. Oh, while mowing the lawn there was a horrible tragedy. I use an electric mower as should most people because there’s a statistic that more oil is spilled every year by Americans trying to pour it into their lawn mowers than by all of the major oil companies. Anyway, the cord for the lawn mower bumped my cactus flower. I had the cactus in a sunny spot to get the flower to open up wide and then I could take a photo of it, but now it’s gone. I do have a photo of the flower, but it’s could have been way prettier. I did get a ton of good plant and bug photos today though. I’ve been collecting so many plant photos that yesterday I started up my instagram to unload them all. I don’t know if I’ll keep up with it after I’ve caught up, but I’m happy to put them out in the world. I was actually thinking lately that I should get those photos online somewhere because my phone has been getting really slow and if it dies I don’t want to lose any pictures. Like my cactus flower, all things are only bump away from falling off. That’s ok though, I think the photos are mostly saved online.

A shoe! Excuse me

A baby peach

A robin landed across the yard right now. I’m writing this from inside the green house. I suppose he’s found some food in a terra cotta water dish. Of course there isn’t food inside the water dish, there’s water and he’s taking a bath. Watching birds is beautiful, all nature in fact, probably even all everything. What makes something beautiful is taking the time to appreciate it. The days are going to feel longer, now that I’m trying to be better. I’ve been thinking lately how my wife and I are too hard on ourselves for always trying to be better. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be better and I want to be better in a lot of different ways, but when you reach a certain point you no longer have to be better. The have to makes too harsh of a master. On the other hand I often credit the have to as why I could succeed in the Army. I always ask, “Why?” and when the answer is, “Have to” then I have no other choice. I will do whatever is within my power to accomplish something if I have to do it. The struggle now is convincing myself I have to do these things. All my dreams have come true. I can make new ones, but they’re not the same as something that grew inside of me for decades. Plants are a lot of fun though, and some advice I’ve gotten recently was, “Have fun.” I’m going to have so much fun at the new place, that garage and workshop are so awesome I almost cursed. All the books I ordered are coming in and they’re giving me ideas for smaller projects that will teach me while being a lot of fun. Watch as this all unfolds, it’s gonna be massive.

I call it monk mode

It’s late so I have to hurry. I wasn’t going to write this because I’m tired, I was sort of on vacation, and I spent all day driving. I have a number of reasons not to do it, but the reason I’m here is because writing this is healthy for me. That’s the same reason I weighed myself a moment ago. I’m gaining weight and have to intervene. The farm will be good for me, but will break me if I’m not ready. It’s very likely that I’ll own land next month, so now that vacation is over I have to be preparing as much as I can for the day I can start working. It’s still mostly waiting, but good news is waiting is the perfect activity for a guy who hasn’t eaten enough. I’ve got to be dieting. I’ve lost weight before and I can do it again, but it’s got to be done with intention. I doubt I’ll be perfect with my diet, but progress is all I’m after. Every right decision I make will bring me closer to my goal and I’m not forced to make wrong decisions. I make wrong decisions through weakness of will. I have to know what I’m after and how I’m going to get it. I’ll prepare the road map as best I can, Mary give me strength to stay committed. I will do this. If I fall, I fall forward. Even if I have to sit here typing compliments to myself all, I have the strength to accomplish any goal. I know what I want, to lose weight and to learn how to build houses. Everything else will only be in the way of accomplishing my goal, so I can’t lose sight of what I want.

Self Timer

I got bubble tea today, and I only had to drive six hours to get it. I also went on a walk with my dog. It’s been surprisingly hard to walk at the beach. I understand that sidewalks would take away from precious beachfront realty, but if you build a society around one thing it won’t last. It’s been a beautiful day though, finally got some hot sun. I got a little too heated when I went to spray the dog down, and he hates water, so I got scratched. I felt I got a little too rough with him, but now that I think about it he’s a dog and it was like 60F degree water, there’s no need for him to throw a fit. I like water though and he does too, I don’t know why he’s always acting afraid of it. Once we have a pool, he’s gonna have to take lessons. I really hope the pond happens in his lifetime, that would be the best. I dream about the pond all the time, I’ve got my strategy down and everything. I know I could at least plant one four foot by eight foot plot of food forest a year and over 20 years, that will have accomplished my dream. It’s insane to think I have access to this, but I don’t know why 20 years doesn’t seem daunting or long. It’s like I know once I buy this house I’m gonna blink and I’ll be 60 years old. Then what am I gonna do? Probably pick up painting again and do a couple of water lilies from the pond. Unbelievable, I’ll have all sorts of plants and wildlife, the only limit is what I can keep up with and I’ve lived a lifetime of having to wait for other people to let me run.

Masses miss my May material most

It’s bright and early, well not super early, but it’s still technically morning. This morning has been nice and relaxing. One of the nice effects of the crazy times has been feeling content to stay home and rest. The modern world is constantly a buzz telling us to see this and go there, but right now we think twice and decide those things weren’t a huge deal in the first place. That’s why we’re going through a massive digital restructuring. The term I’ve seen a lot of places start using is “no contact” or “contact free”. That says to me this is something a business has to do to survive in the future. I’m sure there are plenty of places that refused to create a digital presence or to do delivery because they’ve always had good foot traffic, well they’re not going to survive. That leaves a lot of room for small companies that are willing to put in the work required of the post-CVD world to take a lions share. There’s a bit of excitement in me because I could see this was desired for awhile, but people weren’t willing to go through the growing pains and sooner or later that decision devours us all. I would say our society is on a 10/20 year cycle. A big event happens every decade and that event has the power to trigger a shift where space is cleared up for the younger generation. As members of this society, those cycles are too big to fight and we can’t predict what will happen to ensure our survival. My plan is to step out of that cycle by providing for myself. If you don’t know how to get food, water, and shelter without exchanging it for money, you are at the mercy of these unpredictable waves.

Server time set to surf style

Yesterday felt like a super long day, but some how I couldn’t find the time to write. The day felt long in a good way in that we were always fulfilled. I mean, even if we were doing nothing more than listening to the wind, there was nothing we wanted. That’s sort of been the them of the vacation and maybe the take away from the crisis is that when we have time together, there’s nothing else we want. Experiencing new and exciting places is fun and I’m sure we’ll do plenty of it, but the quiet moments on this trip have truly been divine. As I looked up to soak in that last sentence, I notice a lime tree growing in front of me. I suppose it’s now my duty to take a cutting from that tree. What better souvenir(memory) to take from a trip than eating fruit from that exact location for the the rest of your life? I looked up again and spotted three more limes. There’s a life lesson, often we won’t start seeing something until it’s been proven possible. I’m not going to look for limes on every tree, but as soon as I know there are limes on the tree my subconscious starts pointing out every lime. We have to be open to the world in order to share in any of it. I’ve got my fingers crossed for a big storm some time during this trip. I’d swear I’ve written that before, probably have, I hope it rains anywhere I go. Wait until I start harvesting rain, I will essentially be making money every time it rains. Best job I could imagine would probably be getting paid to sit in the woods with my dog while it rains. Now that’s the stuff.

Can’t cling to me

We made it to the beach. The place we’re at is amazing, I really should have taken more pictures, maybe I will tomorrow. Probably not, but I’ll definitely take better photos of the water. I’m really excited to see the water tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll head out there tonight. Today was a travel day so that’s exhausting. My eyes need time to recover from staring intensely forward for hours. I love being exhausted though, and to be exhausted on vacation when you can pamper yourself in recovery is the best place for it to happen. I’m so happy with how everything is going in life right now, this is amazing. There was a birthday party of my nephew today and we had a video call with the party. That was my first video call of the event. We probably should have turned the cameras horizontal for more space. I kept thinking I was yelling. All calls should start with a sound check at different volumes to see what would work best. It’s funny, when I predicted the iPhone I thought video calling was going to be a much bigger thing. Why would people sit in traffic and travel to go see someone when they are already in your pocket? I had been counting that as a lose, but maybe I haven’t given it long enough to play out. I expect the next step of that to be similar to the video calling in Back to the Future 2. The TV would replace the phone screen on the wall and there will be a higher quality camera. Tech companies will love that, they will literally be tracking your every move. It would lead to another step in VR if a room would have multiple cameras or some way to track the body in space. Combine that with something like Stadia, people will be sitting face to face in each others houses, perhaps more like holograms.

Feel that freaky fern

Baby fern phone taken with microscope

Today was interesting, I’ve been feeling a little off since yesterday. Only about two inches off, yesterday I saw a hairy baby fern frond growing so I ran inside to get my macro lens for my camera. On the way inside, my right food landed on a step and then slid out of the flip flop I was wearing. It was only slight enough to throw off my balance, so I rolled my ankle and kicked the stair. I’ll be fine, but I feel like I’m waiting for something bad to happen. That’s why I hate good things happening, like getting the house we want, now I’m waiting for something bad to happen. Well nothing bad is going to happen Chris, get out of that head space. Of course you should still be prepared and take precaution, but you’re not owed something bad every time you’re happy. Well that makes me feel a lot better. Anyway, I took the dog to the new house because I wanted to see what the dried up pond is like when it rains. I believe that it floods at times, but I was actually surprised I didn’t see any water in the creek bed. Then the dog ran around and he checked out the new digs. He pooped in the grass and I didn’t clean it up. My reasoning is I want him to come back in a couple months and he’ll smell himself and feel more comfortable. I’m not made comfortable when I smell poop, but who knows with dogs. There are some plastic poles around the land that I’ve been noticing, well today I started tugging at one and kept pulling some metal wire. I think those poles and wire were an electric fence the owner had before. I doubt I would ever use an electric fence but I will collect that metal wire and find some use for it.

Sleeping on the drive home

Good Beef Water

(Well, well, well)

Tomato flowers

Today’s already been a pretty good day and it isn’t even lunch time yet. That’s what happens when I eat a proper breakfast. I got a bunch of reading done in my home building book, and I finished the chapter on framing a roof. Next I can learn how to finish a roof. I also ordered books on electrical, plumbing, and general home repair. I’m trying to power through these books. I don’t care if I absorb everything I read, I will absorb a lot and a lot of the material I’m going to read in different books will be reiterated. My strategy is keep reading so I’ll learn the terms in all the different fields, then as I reread topics I’ll be able to get more out of them without having to ask myself, “What is a joist and where are they?” It’s exciting though when I’m finishing a topic and I can visualize building it as I read. 

When I was around 14 I liked to count cards in black jack because for some reason I always enjoyed challenging my memory. Another game I played as a kid was to memorize a license plate with one look and see how many days I could passively remember it; I would do the same with people’s SSN in the Army. Anyway, I learned a technique for card counting where you imagine you’re in a room and you begin to fill the room with objects that correlate to cards played. For instance Jack’s may be represented by bunnies(jack rabbit) and if three were played, there would be three bunnies in the room. That way instead of trying to remember arbitrary numbers, you look around yourself. I’ve heard Tesla would be able to visual inventions he wanted to make inside and out before they existed, so this is a special gift and I don’t think a lot of people have it.