My Daily Posts: The fourth month of going 'off grid'.

This is the fourth month of 'Daily Posts' that I have been making (on another platform) ever since I went 'off grid' six hundred and thirty-eight days ago. Much like the video project these posts have often been a major pain in the butt especially since I type them out each day on a phone. I do not know why I feel compelled to share them here but 'knowing' is not always a prerequisite of sharing so here they are and I hope that it has been worth my time to painstakingly edit and compile them. Enjoy...or not and have a nice day/night...or not.

Day-93 04-15-2017

Day 93. Today was bountiful. I just do not know how else to put it. You will have to watch the video for a full explanation but I got a good bit of building materials and one beast of a wagon among other things. The wagon I am super stoked about because it is going to save me a bunch of calories and time doing things around here. I am slowly inching my way out of the stone age towards the bronze age mainly due to the kindness and generosity of others. Even though I have put in the hard work I would definitely not be at the point I am without the help of friends (and even strangers) that have believed in what I am doing enough to lend a helping hand. It has been both a humbling and empowering feeling every step of the way.

Day-94 04-16-2017

Day 94. Today I planted thirty black locust in pots from root cuttings off of trees that were already growing here. I have been wanting to try this for a while now ever since I read about doing it. Supposedly when planting them this way the trees grow rather quickly. The strain of black locust that is here is different than the seeds that I have but the way I see it variety is a good thing. Also where I dug up and cut the roots in the woods more trees will grow from the remaining root structures so that is also super cool because I get a two-fold propagation when I do it that way.

Day-95 04-17-2017

Day 95. Things are going pretty good out here. I could definitely use a bit of funds though especially since paying off my incredibly late storage unit bill took every bit of money I had. Fortunately it got paid and I did not lose my stuff which is a huge relief. So if you can...then please consider making a donation: https://paypal.me/jacobpeacock

Day-96 04-18-2017

Day 96. Today was a rather rainy day but at least I managed to get a few things done outside. Mostly though I reorganized stuff inside, read, made more dream catchers and tried to keep from getting depressed over my financial situation. All in all I would say it was a rather productive day. I should also say I am fucking tired of being stressed over fucking money. The farm phone will be off after tonight so no more video uploads until I can somehow pay it. I will keep making them though and eventually get them uploaded. {Insert positive spin here that will make me seem more optimistic than I really am.}

Day-97 04-19-2017

Day 97. Woke up this morning to a deposit on an order of the dream catchers that I have been making. Which is a damn good feeling because not only was I able to pay the farm phone bill (to continue my daily video uploads) but also because I have been able to produce a good that someone wants to procure and will perhaps in the long run provide me with the trickle of income that I need to not just get by but also move forward with some of my projects around here. The financial aspect of all of my recent endeavors has weighed on me heavily and stressed me out tremendously so perhaps now there is a bit of light at the end of what has seemed like an incredibly long dark tunnel. I still sort of marvel at the irony of someone (myself) who is plagued by lucid dreaming (and dreaming heavily in general) making dream catchers as their primary means of financial income.

Day-98 04-20-2017

Day 98. This has been quite the journey thus far. I am glad that folks have been enjoying my posts, videos and pictures. It has been interesting (and challenging) to be sharing my more private life and the things I actually do that I often refer to simply as 'caretaking'. Which actually does not sum it up very well because I think that often (at least in my experience) folks have no real idea what all 'caretaking' really entails. It is never as cut and dry as it appears to be and I often think of it as 'dealing with hardship at it's finest' without much room for errors, mistakes or being lackadaisical in my foresight because the things I am doing always have an impact and are altering both the literal landscape and the 'societal landscape' of the place that I am doing what I do at. I do most of what I do with extreme trepidation because I am just not arrogant enough to think that I know everything and every potential outcome of my actions which is fine by me because I would rather error on the side of caution and succeed on the side of well earned confidence. The truth is I often find myself in some sort of (what appears to be) insurmountable situation that more often than not has some rather sketchy elements to it and I just waltz in and start making adjustments to the scenario with lots of hardheaded determination, hard work and the barest glimmer of hope that I can actually succeed at accomplishing what I see is possible with a place. I often say that it takes a 'special kind of crazy' to do what I do and it actually does because I know there will always be discomfort (both my own and for others because let's face it folks are not comfortable with change), there will always be hardships and there will always be the unknown (and unknowable) things that pop up along the way. All in all though I just give it my best and work with what I have around me and no matter how small that 'glimmer of hope' is I never let it go and do everything that I can to help that 'glimmer' grow and grow until it takes on a life of it's own. I like to occasionally call myself 'the swiss army knife of the universe' but I know that even that does not quite sum it up and I am okay with that because at the end of the day I am just 'me' doing what I can do in the hope that the world around me will be better off for the things that I do. {I tell myself something like this post almost every morning.}

Day-99 04-21-2017

Day 99. I am still just plugging along.

Day-100 04-22-2017

Day 100. It was suggested to me that I do something special for my hundredth day and I have pondered heavily what exactly to do and came up with nothing. So I guess I will do what I have done on all the previous days and just keep working towards my goals.

Day-101 04-23-2017

Day 101. I have definitely had a lot on my mind lately and although I have shared some of it in my recent posts and videos (and a few podcasts) I never quite feel like I have shared enough of it. I guess that since I have been taking a break from journaling/writing or making my wacky mix-tape tracks there is just a lot that I am not expressing and it has left me feeling like some things are churning over and over deep in my mind and seeking some sort of expression. It is not like I have a lack of creativity or anything like that and if anything I am feeling more creative than ever. My self imposed abstinence from writing has (I think) been very good for me because at the end of the day it really is like a bad habit to me and one I have turned to again and again over the years and I have just wanted to see what it would be like without it. As for the music I just cannot rationalize the amount of electricity it takes to do what I do with it. Hell I can barely rationalize the electricity it takes to actually play some music even though I have done it a few times during my stay here just to sooth my troubled mind. Without these creative outlets though (and dealing with the stresses and stressors here) I have found a perpetual feeling that there is something missing from my life. Occasionally I wonder if this missing thing is some romantic interest to have a companion or if it is something more along the lines of just not doing everything that I could be doing to express the often overwhelming feeling that I should be sharing everything that I can share through my talents. I am fond of being able to sort out the various sensations, ideas, notions, feelings thoughts and whatnot that I experience and being able to parse them down into something that makes some sort of sense to me and of late I just have not been able to accomplish that. In the past this (a lack of expressing these things) has caused me considerable aggravation and left me with a sense of perpetual irritation yet for whatever reason (probably because I am so damn exhausted from my physical workload) I have not been feeling that way. It is like I have an itch I cannot (or will not) scratch, or a word that just hovers on the tip of my tongue but just will not come to me. I would call it some sort of mild existential crisis but it is not a crisis at all. It is just a sense of something missing from my life.

Day-102 04-24-2017

Day 102. Had a little break in the rain earlier so I went mushroom hunting and found some Dryad's Saddle and Wood Ear mushrooms. I am looking forward to what all pops up once this rain stops and the sun really comes out. That might be a few more days away though. In other news my IBC tank (intermediate bulk container) is a little over halfway full of rainwater now which is awesome.

Day-103 04-25-2017

Day 103. Occasionally I think of the people that told me that I would 'never amount to anything' and it makes me snicker at just how wrong they were. Thinking about them also usually brings to mind that those people are some of the shittiest people that I have ever met especially since who the fuck tells a developing child/adolescent something like that in the first place...unless they themselves are just some shitheel that never amounted to anything themselves and take some sort of perverse glee in 'putting down' a developing mind.

Day-104 04-26-2017

Day 104. Woke up super early today from some pretty wacky dreams. It is always such a relief to wake up, drink some espresso and clear my mind of whatever bizarre stuff was going on in it while I was asleep. On a different note I am still making pretty good progress around here working with what I have got and working around what I do not have. It has definitely put my skills and mind to the test to accomplish everything that I have so far. I have still got to get this new cabin built and although I have gathered a lot of the materials I am still short on several things that I need but hell at least I am gradually getting closer. Most days I feel like I am making good progress on my own but sometimes I wish I had a consistent pair of helping hands around here because fuck I am just one damn person with extremely limited resources, time and energy. I also wonder how or where I would find such a person that could handle such rugged conditions, know what the hell they are doing and albeit be fucking hardcore enough to not just be apt at it but excel at it. I am at a total loss when it comes to that. I have looked around at various forums and whatnot to no avail. Perhaps my bar is too high or my filter too stringent because it just seems there is a lack of folks that have what it takes. Which is probably why (like most of the previous endeavors I have undertaken) I am going it alone and that is fine by me and all but damn it gets exhausting.

Day-105 04-27-2017

Day 105. I have been doing a good bit of hiking the last few days. I am finding a bunch of game trails that I had not really noticed before but now that some vegetation is growing they have become easier to spot. Mostly I have been trying to find what plants and mushrooms are here but I have also been on the hunt for fruit trees. I have found two small groves of pear trees and numerous individual pear trees and that is pretty cool because they all seem to be loaded with tiny pears. Some of the pear trees are huge and I am not quite sure how I am going to manage harvesting them but I am sure I will figure something out. I have done a bit of reading on harvesting them and apparently they ripen from the inside out and once they look ripe on the outside they are over-ripe on the inside. Since they seem to grow rather well here I am thinking that next year I am going to plant (or clone) a bunch of them and farm them along with the black locust trees. Anyway I have been enjoying the hikes and learning the lay of the land better and what is growing where.

Day-106 04-28-2017

Day 106. No long winded post for today. I am exhausted, irritable and uncomfortable but at least I am still making progress.

Day-107 04-29-2017

Day 107. I spent most of the day doing preliminary work on another spring head. It is always interesting because no two springs are the same. This one was pretty neat because it had already partially formed it's own 'cistern' and I just worked with what was already there damming up the downhill end and digging the 'cistern' deeper. Hopefully all my efforts with it will prove worthwhile in the end. I am not in the mood to feel very optimistic though because all the other springs I have worked on here so far turned out to be wet weather springs and basically dry up without rain and with warm weather. Anyway life goes on and I am still feeling irritable, exhausted and quite uncomfortable so to those of you that enjoy watching me struggle...suck it up buttercup because it will not last forever.

Day-108 04-30-2017

Day 108. I told myself that I would take the day off...it did not happen.

Day-109 05-01-2017

Day 109. As difficult as what I am doing is I am absolutely glad to be doing it. The more I look around at the state of affairs in 'the world' the more I think that it is perhaps well past the time that folks start taking a real hard look at what the fuck is going on, what they are spending their time and attention on, and maybe figuring out some real solutions to the problems we are both individually and collectively facing. The spewing of outrage is chuckle-headed at best and inflammatory and self-defeating at worst but hey if it is making you feel like you are really 'doing something' then keep doing it right? Wrong. What is actually going on with this 'outrage culture' is that folks are attempting to put out a fire by dowsing it with gasoline which by the way is rather flammable stuff to be fighting fires with but hey it is also apparently a culture that 'knows everything', is an instant expert about anything because it can watch a video about it, and is infallible because it's peer group supports every soft-headed notion that it espouses because if one person is 'wrong' in their views then the entire 'house of cards' crumbles. So keep propping up the bad ideas and unrealistic ideology because after all what is the alternative? The alternative is to think for yourself, to engage the world not based on stereotypes, memes and trends but with deductive reasoning based on empirical evidence that leads to taking decisive action to change the course of your own life and perhaps change the course of other lives as well.

Day-110 05-02-2017

Day 110. Woke up today to read this. Sigh. As if I was not already stressed enough about the snakes... http://wlos.com/news/local/nc-poison-control-center-calls-about-snake-bites-have-nearly-quadrupled

Day 110 again. For some reason the phrase 'Hold my latte' just does not have the same ring to it as 'Hold my beer'. This is definitely a hold my beer moment in human history and I cannot help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all. But hey if you want to cut the head off the snake you have to wait for it to stick it's head out of it's hole.

Day-111 05-03-2017

Day 111. I have tried to keep my posts for donations to a minimum but it seems like every time my bills come due I am desperately scrambling to find contributions. If you are enjoying the things I am currently doing, the posts I make, the videos and albeit the infrequent podcasts please consider making a donation.

Day-112 05-04-2017

Day 112. I have basically spent the entire week getting an aerobic workout by cutting down the weeds around here with a swing-blade. It is seriously tedious work. I have probably spent a solid forty hours doing what could be done with a push mower in just a few hours. I have also been raking it all up and adding it to my massive compost pile one wagon load at a time. It is turning into a full time landscaping job just to keep the woods from taking the place over. On the bright side there has been less ticks since I started relentlessly hacking the weeds down. The place sheds so much water and gets so much sun though that as soon as I am finished 'mowing' I have to start again. This landscaping shit is really starting to get in the way of getting anything else done and I have got to get a lawnmower soon and figure out how to afford to buy fuel for it. I really do feel like I am in the stone age most of the time and doing all this stuff without equipment is wearing me the fuck down and wasting my precious calories. Anyway at least I have got a pretty good tan starting to form.

Day-113 05-05-2017

Day 113. I have adjusted well to life off the grid. Not much has actually changed though in how I have lived compared to my past experiences except for not being able to use power tools, watch any movies, make any music or get to play my favorite online video game. All of which were things that brought me a lot of joy and now without them I just sort of shrug and tell myself 'life goes on'. So I find myself reading more books, over thinking (more than I usually do), and spending what little 'free' time I have at night sort of brooding over what I can and cannot currently accomplish with the resources I do (or do not) have available. This sort of brooding has brought me again and again to thinking about the flower pots that I need and what the fuck I can actually do to acquire them. A thought that keeps occurring to me is that perhaps I need to find a deposit of red clay (it is actually orange colored) build some sort of kiln and start firing my own flower pots. Then I brood some more and my more pragmatic side kicks in and thinking of all the logistics involved in that I am like "Fuck that!" While it is a neat idea and all I do not know anything about being a 'potter' and it is not something that I really want to spend tons of time learning just so I can make flower pots. Anyway much of my thinking goes like that when there is something that I need and do not have...I instantly make the mental leap towards what materials does it consist of, do I have those materials available and how do I fabricate what I need if they are available. Most of the time (like with the flower pots) my mind runs the gambit of it all and I (more often than not) reach the same conclusion..."Fuck that!"

Day-114 05-06-2017

Day 114. Worked all day in the rain and cold clearing brush. Rather grueling work in this kind of weather but I got a lot done nonetheless. Had to cook some chicken noodle soup just to knock the chill off and hopefully prevent getting ill after working in all that rain and cold today. Anyway I keep plugging away at this landscaping crap when I would much rather be working on my new cabin but without the necessary resources I am just stuck doing whatever the fuck I can accomplish on other things and hoping that things turn around soon financially.

Day-115 05-07-2017

Day 115. I keep thinking of how I wasted my twenties trying to 'find myself' and working one dead end job after another. I wasted my thirties 'being myself' and working for folks that loved to both underpay me and feeding me numerous carrots on sticks. Now I am one year into my forties and I absolutely know that I will not repeat the mistakes of the last two decades. A lot has changed for me over the years. Some of it for the worse and some of it for the better and I am okay with all of it. I enjoy the solitude and simplicity of my life now and the deep peace of mind that it accommodates me. Although my life is neither filled with comfort nor convenience it is filled with a sense of security that I have made it through a lot of horrible shit and no matter what the future holds it most likely will not 'hold a candle' to the past and if it does then I will be sure to just keep moving forward and continue doing what I do. That old adage about 'not being able to control what the world does to you but being able to control how you feel about it' comes to mind.

Day-116 05-08-2017

Day 116. It seems like I am somewhat immune to all this pre-apocalyptic hype going around these days. Nuclear war is some rather scary stuff and all but there is actually not much (personally) to be done about preventing it as long as the psychopaths of the world have their fingers on the buttons. It is sad that humanity has never quite matured beyond some adolescent behaviors when it comes to settling disputes and that terms like 'mutually assured destruction' even exist. Why can't the quarrelsome asshats of the world just face each other off individually 'fists to cuffs' and leave everyone else out of it? Maybe because it is easier to create carnage if the folks creating it never have to witness it first hand nor be in any real danger themselves.

Day-117 05-09-2017

Day 117. It is getting more and more challenging to come up with good commentary for these daily posts but I will just have to manage. I spent the day burning a bunch of multi-flora and brush in a big fire. It was nice at first because it was overcast but then the sun came out and it was some hot work between the fire's heat and the sun's warmth. Anyway I am still trudging along and slowly getting the area around the cabin looking like more of a yard and less like a thorny thicket mixed with a poison ivy patch, so that is good and all but I am definitely getting tired of all this landscaping. While I am cutting the weeds with my swing-blade I keep thinking of Stephen King's Lawnmower Man story (not to be confused with the movie) and cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of it again so that I can re-read it.

Day-118 05-10-2017

Day 118. I am loving this heat even though it has got me sweating like crazy. I have been relentlessly hacking down weeds most of the day with the swing-blade. I got to cutting back the sides of the driveway and damn the honeysuckle is thick and the going is slow but I did pretty good clearing it back. I thought the multi-flora and wisteria was a pain in the ass but that stuff is cake compared to the honeysuckle.

Day-119 05-11-2017

Day 119. Another day of tediously hacking away the weeds with a swing-blade. Although today was sort of neat because I was mostly clearing out under one of the small black locust groves here. This particular one has thirty two trees in it all of which are about twenty feet tall. They were looking pretty sad all covered in vines and I could not take looking at it anymore. After clearing the vines from each one I told it "Now you can be a happy tree". Anyway that little grove is looking much better now and will look really awesome after I finish cleaning up the remaining debris tomorrow. There is another larger grove near it with what looks like maybe sixty trees in it and I am gonna try to get it cleaned up over the next few days also.

Day-120 05-12-2017

Day 120. Wow I am four months into this thing and still going. Under the conditions that is quite the achievement even for me. I got a good bit done today on my own then this neighbor with a tractor showed up and I got a whole lot more done in a very small amount of time comparatively. Like six hours of my work compared to forty minutes of work with the tractor clearing weeds from a field. Anyway something really cool happened earlier in the day while I was swing-blading...two swarms of bees merged above me and then flew off into the woods. They were insanely loud and at first I had no idea what was making that sound but I looked up just in time to see a swarm from the south merge with a swarm from the west. It was super neat to watch and something that I had never seen before.

Day-121 05-13-2017

Day 121. Today was super productive. I am not going to go into details but suffice it to say waking up at three a.m. has it's advantages for being able to maximize the hours of the day for working purposes. Anyway it is almost that time of the month again where everything is due so please contribute if you can and I will be able to continue making these posts and sharing my videos. I am really glad that I have been making the videos on this particular journey because it is such a 'starting from scratch' situation and it also superbly breaks up the monotony of my day to day toils. Someday I am going to get to sit back in a comfortable chair, watch the videos and have a damn good laugh along with a deep sense of accomplishment over what I have done. Until then I am going just keep plugging along and hope for the best.

Day-122 05-14-2017

Day 122. It has been a long day of clearing out brush from a rather large black locust grove. It is coming along nicely though. Buried under the largest multi-flora that I have ever seen were two pear trees. I hope they grow good pears after all the thorns that I got jabbed with today. Some of the multi-flora stalks were as big around as my forearm! I hope that I never encounter another one that big. It took me about four hours to get it all. I kept thinking how much it was some analogy for life...full of sweet smelling flowers but with thorns everywhere. Maybe not the greatest analogy but it kept going through my head today.

Day-123 05-15-2017

Day 123. I am not quite sure how the one dollar and seven cents in my payal account paid my personal phone bill but it did because I got a text saying 'your monthly payment via paypal was successful'. It nor my linked bank account had enough funds to cover it so all I can say is 'Thank you whatever technical glitch made that possible.' We will see if it does it for the farm's phone bill in a few days when it comes due. Anyway I did more brush clearing today in that large black locust grove and yup I got a fuck load more thorns in me and many more scratches for my efforts but at least I didn't get any in my ears, lips or nose today so that is nice. On a different note I have started to re-read the few books that I have which I generally do not mind doing if the time between reading them is five or ten years apart but meh I will just have to make due with it being five to ten weeks apart. I keep daydreaming about having an ebook reader but then I kind of cringe at having another device to keep charged and my mind drifts towards the day when I will have a bunch of books on hand. I have never actually gotten tired of reading even though I got into watching movies and series for a while I still liked to read and now the idea of using that much electric on entertainment makes me sort of nauseous. So back to books and exercising my brain instead of entertaining it.

Day-124 05-16-2017

Day 124. Today's adventure will include attempting to eradicate kudzu growing in the middle of a poison ivy patch. Yay!