I wrote a piece on here about a year or so ago about how everyone has a superpower, and that superpower is choice. It is the one thing no one can take away from you. Even when you think you have no choice, you do. Like paying taxes.....you may think you have no choice, but you do, because you can choose to accept the risk and potential consequences if you get caught not paying them (taxation is theft, but that's a whole other discussion).

Thoreau was a wise man.

I want to live off-grid within the grid, if that makes sense. Convert to solar power, grow my own veggies (I already grow herbs and have since college), that kind of thing, but while being close to things I might need, like a grocery store, gas station, hospital, veterinarian, my friends, etc. Once, for a year, I lived 12 miles away from the nearest grocery store and a twenty-five minute drive from the nearest hospital. I did not enjoy it, though I did enjoy the tranquility of my partially wooded back yard, and all the cool animals that roamed in it. There were also wild blackberries and strawberries growing there, if you could get to them before the squirrels and chipmunks.

My dad has invited my up to one of his three vacation properties in the mountains for my birthday this year. I've been to two of them, which are minutes from a Native American reservation that has a hospital and grocery store and such. The one he wants be to go to, though, is on top of a mountain, and it takes half an hour to get anywhere from it, and there's also no cell phone service up there. I haven't been to that property yet, and it's so off-grid, the thought of spending a week there kind of stresses me out. It's actually located in a self-proclaimed prepper community, and my dad recently gave a presentation to the neighbors there on canning your own food.

I'd prefer to just go to one of the ones a little closer to civilization, like I've done before.