I'm geting to feel what it's like

I'm getting to feel what it's like to not have a job. Joy. I got let go yesterday.

I'll not be going into the why. I'll not be naming names. It's just a jumble right now in my head and that's where the real story is...in the jumble.

I have fond memories of doing cool things that impressed my boss.

I have fond memories of things going right.

I marvel at some of what that organization was able to do for the communities it served.

Their cast offs were better than most of what I personally had.

It was neat to be part of the team.

And that was then. Now there's just a hole left behind where most of that stuff lived. Eight plus years in size. Fifteen co-workers deep. And the funnel I have to crawl out of now is trying to pull me back into it.

Sucks really.

What is a good son to do?

I'm losing my mom. Day by day, dementia and Alzheimer's is taking her away from Dad and I. My daily interactions tell me more than I want to know. My sisters, when they show up, probably don't see it to the degree that Dad and I do. But, as of late, even they would admit to seeing it.

I and my wife just came back from next door visiting them. We moved them next door several years ago because we saw part of this coming and knew in our hearts that these days would come. I don't think either of us thought it would come on this forcefully, this quickly...

The visit was instigated by Dad, calling us on the phone after dinner in a worried, almost panicky state. He said "Can you come over? Mom wants her ear rings in and I just cannot see to do it anymore. I don't know why she needs them now, but she thinks she does." Dad, fighting macular degeneration (to the extent of being legally blind)...just couldn't deal with her. He can no longer see either her ear rings, nor her ear piercings (holes) to put the ear rings in. But mostly, I fear he doesn't see anything BUT the woman he loves, he married, and said "I do" to, so long ago, and her departure...and it is tearing him apart.

I and my wife looked at each other and went over. Dad met us at the front door. Mom was in her chair, and as my wife talked to my dad, I went over and tried to talk with my mom.

"Mom, it's getting near your bedtime. Do you really want to sleep in your ear rings? Doesn't that hurt you in the middle of the night?"

"But that way I'll be pretty in the morning," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'd really like them in."

So, my dear wife came over and put them in for her...no big deal.

On the way out of the house, dad stops us on the front porch and relates to us on the porch that she was in bed, all of about 5 minutes from her normal time to be asleep, and she started to ask question after question:

• Where were her parents? (dead)
• Where were dad's parents? (dead)
• When was he going to get around to marrying her? (51+ years ago)
• ...and on and on...

This had a sincere undertone of grief that really struck me at the time (and as I started to write this blog post). Once my sadness abated a bit, I started to ask some hard questions:

• As Alzheimer's is hereditary, am I seeing a foreshadowing of my own future?
• Will I be stuck doing the same to my sweet wife?

Minimalism as a Strategy for Survival

In several other posts, I've mentioned that I believe in a moderated form of minimalism.  Not to the extreme of the 100 Thing Challenge, but I do believe that owning less "stuff" and, in a sense, cherishing it more makes sense to me.  As I've told my kids, "if a fire or tornado occurred today and we lost everything, the items on your lists would be the first things we'd try to replace."  That level of focus is what drives my minimalism.

In looking over my personal list, these are the everyday items that:

• I use often
• I have actually spent money to "upgrade" (as and when I found something of a better quality than what I had, I'd sell the old one, and buy the new one)
• That I see the need for the in my daily life and actually value having for myself, rather than borrowing/renting it.

I consider all such things to belong on my "valued items list," which is, and probably always will be, a work in progress.

However, I would like to mention that it plays into the current "prepping" culture also.  On the web, in books on Amazon.com, etc., you can find all manor of suggestions about "prepping", ranging from:

• Preparing for a short term natural disaster (typified by the 72-hour "Bug Out Bag" concept)
• Longer term food/famine disaster
• Ultimate demise of the world-wide economic systems (typified by the "Survivalist Farm" concept)

I have no problem endorsing the "bug out bag" as valuable concept, especially here in Tornado Alley (in fact it's just about that season again as I write this), but being knowledgeable about both ends of the spectrum can hardly be considered a bad idea.

As such, I do have a "bug out bag list" that is, much like my "valued items list" a work in progress.

As I compared these two lists, I discovered that they gave me a remarkable focus on defining what all is necessary for my life.  Furthermore, as I continue develop these two lists, I have found that items from one can serve a good use on BOTH lists.  This allows me to move towards a more self-sufficient life, as well as a more compact one. 

I hope these two lists will merge down to an easily transportable set of "things" that would allow me to live, in my retirement, or as needs demand, pretty much anywhere.

A case for being knowledgable

It's been a while.  A LONG while, no doubt.  Many things have changed, both for me and my family.

First off, fear has been growing about the state of the world, our country, and our very safety over this election season.  The more bickering and general discontent between the parties, the less and less of the "big things" seem to get done.  The whole ideas of:

• Compromise: the art of getting something CLOSER to ideal (incremental improvements)...rather than just saying "if I don't get my way, you don't get yours either"
• Working for the people AND THEIR GENERAL WELL BEING (...a government by the PEOPLE, and for the PEOPLE...sound familiar?)...rather than just to get reelected.
• Working towards becoming more of a steward of the planet...rather than a corporate consumer of the planet.
• Acknowledging that the world, and it's various groups, all have their OWN INALIENABLE RIGHTS to rule themselves as THEY SEE FIT...so long as they don't bother us, we shouldn't be bothering them.

Many of these sorts of things have lead to a sense that the world, as a whole, is simply on the verge of becoming a very fearful place.  Without some of these things getting fixed, many reasonable people simply have a fear for the future.

....SO...

Given a fear, how do you combat it?  How do you effectively deal with a fear so it doesn't consume your every waking thought?  Various groups would have you approach it from different sides, each according to their own core beliefs:

• Religious folks would say "pray for all of us, that we may survive the coming strife"; putting faith first...while arming themselves up with guns, ammo, and whatever else they thought they might need.  In short, hoard up stuff for themselves (and maybe their like minded neighbors) to survive and wait.  They seldom care about gaining the knowledge of a larger and larger community.
• Consumerist say, "Nothing is really going to go on...and if some war does spring up, that's typically good for the economy"...which history has proven it is.  Good for jobs, good for innovation, good for pocket books (at least of the rich).  Never mind the poor are usually the ones who end up in Arlington National Cemetery as the easiest "boots on the ground" to put against any opposition.
• Extremest would tend to say, "arm up, get your survival farm planted NOW, and if you don't have or cannot get one in the ground in the next 60 seconds, buddy up with someone else who has one"...really a throw back to some of the isolationist thinking of the 1900's.  They have no interest in allowing the "outsider" to join them, under any circumstance, for fear of the unknown.
• Typical folks walking about the streets don't like to think in this area, because THINKING is just way too scary.  "What do you mean, the grocery store only has about 3 days of food on hand at any one given time?  They'll just get more"...this is about as deep as these folks go.  Kind of like ostriches, they just want to put their head in the sand and pretend they are hidden and will therefore not be affected by these sorts of events.

Given all of this background, and thousands of other snippits I've read over the last few years, I would like to promote an idea that does seem to help me greatly in these trying times:

I think it important for every person to be knowledgeable, in as many areas as possible, about what is important to them.  Such things as:

• If you enjoy eating, know about farming, gathering and hunting in your area.
• If you enjoy drinking safe water, know about purification methods.
• If you have no desire to be stolen from, know about self defense, both hand to hand, and long range.
• If you wish to know about communication systems, become an amateur radio operator.
• If you wish to know about keeping your information both yours and private, learn about cryptography.
• If you don't like being sick, learn about those methods of medicine that do not require a doctor.
• But most importantly, if you like surviving, build a community. 

This last bit is the one that is really the hardest of the bunch.  You see, many great thinkers of the past have come up with the golden adage "You can never know everything."  I'm a firm believer of this.  There's just too much to know to really do a good job of it.  This has lead our modern world to focus on the development of specialties in the work force (know some small part of the whole machine, but know that part well and truly in depth).  What is not said is that if you cannot know everything, and therefore you need folks with diverse specialties, you need  a COMMUNITY of folks working together to get anything meaningful done. Whether it be in the form of a church group, civic group, or just a bunch of folks in your neighborhood, we all need communities...NOT the rugged individualist.

Even in natural strife events (tornadoes, hurricanes, earth quakes, etc.), a sense of community comes out of the woodwork to help those in need.  It is THERE, but just hidden, maybe just DORMANT, until it is needed.  And, if you review the overall sense of community several years after such a strife, it will still be spoken of in hushed terms, least it vanish completely.  But the people who went thru such things, know it is there...and are in utter awe of what happens when it reveals itself.  This is the true strength of any nation;  How well it deals with strife.

The mindless mob mentality may well win various battles in any given strife, but the knowledgeable communities can hold the real wealth...KNOWLEDGE...and it cannot be seen or singled out easily.  Knowledge cannot be stolen, broken, or vandalized by the mob.  And in the end, the sharing of knowledge is really the only "coin of the realm" that will never go out of circulation.  If more people could see their way clear to this end point, there would be less evil in the coming strife.

The World, My Life, And The Kids

Has been a while, sorry about that.  Things have been a bit on the crazy side.

I think I've said (somewhere) that we gave up cable TV a while back.  Well, my daughter gave us a "Roku" box (basically a NetFlix set-top player) for Christmas...and I think it's pretty much negated whatever "extra time" I thought we might get by not having live TV in the house.  Hence, at least a portion of, why I've not been on here.  We've been watching old movies, TV series, etc.

This, like so many things, is both bad and good.  We've wasted lots of irreplaceable time watching old things.  Guilty as charged.  But not all old things are bad things.  Take for instance:

• Cosmos, you remember, the old Carl Sagan 13 part show about the nature of the universe.  Pretty good stuff...even for as old as it is.  Nothing too far out of wack, with the exception that the major pain point now is the environment and terrorism.
• Connections, the old James Burke show, along with it's follow ons, Connections 2, and The Day the Universe Changed.  WONDERFUL stuff here.
• Tapped, a relatively new show that somehow never played here in Oklahoma...at least that I know of.  It's all about the evils of bottled water, how stupid it is to pay so much for something so unregulated, in containers that are unsafe, made by polluting the environment and killing people near the plastics plants, all for something that we can get out of our municipal taps for next to nothing.  Very reminiscent of The Story of Stuff.

The best part of these sorts of shows being available to our family was that I was able to get MY KIDS to watch them.  This has given us time to discuss the importance of the issues raised, and has given us various thoughts as departures for our own conversations on things.

Yes, there were lots of older movies that we watched recently (Red Sonya, Dr. Who, etc.) that simply brought back some warm fuzzies from my youth.  But there were a number of good things too.  After watching some of this stuff, it encouraged I and one of the boys to go bike riding.  Not just to go out and have a good time, but ALSO to save on fuel while doing something good for ourselves.

Maybe the Roku isn't bad after all.

Holiday Expendatures

Several blogs that I read have had "holiday hints" given about what to spend per person for the holidays.  Some say it's a percentage of income divided by the number of people.  Some just give an arbitrary number per person.

For me, I'm trying to curb everybody's interest in giving things and instead giving time this year.  You see, after much reflection, I've come to firmly believe it really is the events and experiences that matter.  Nobody will even remember what the "thing" of any one gift is for more than a couple of weeks.  But fun memories, entertaining antidotes, even shared misery is far more memorable.

This year, for instance, my family received a copy of the new "Clue Secrets and Spies" board game.  It's a highish tech version of the venerable old "Clue" with a cute little black-light wand reader thing.  Over all, it's quite a bit more complicated than the old one.  It took the kids and I probably about three hours of reading/playing/fumbling around to get to a point where we thought we could actually play a game of it.  It was pretty fun, but took more out of us to keep it all straight than the old version.

Those three hours will be far more memorable to both the kids and I than the ten minutes that it took to unwrap the rest of the gifts that they have/will receive.  That is a very frugal/minimal thing to have.  Not the game, but the memories.  Gota love it.

Minimalizing, My Take On It

There are lots of blogs on minimalism on the web these days.  I must say that I enjoy most of them on a fairly routine basis.  One of the key motivations behind this blog was to express my own take on minimalism from my own perspective.  You see, one of the big areas that most everybody else doesn't address much is that of family.  I'm older, have a wife (with a child from a previous marriage), an ex-wife (with whom I have three kids), and my parents, all of whom depend on me.

To say the least, being "minimal" with all of these people around, is a far different and more realistic thing to write on than being a 20-something with nothing but a backpack (and it's 100-things) tackling the world.  Trying to minimize while helping everybody out, financially, time wise, etc. is a large enough challenge for me.

For instance, one of the four kids is in college right now (Hi Tori!), and thankfully is fairly well funded due to her own skills/drives/talent.  She has turned out to be quite the beautiful, smart young woman, and I'm very proud of her accomplishments.  She has a good head on her shoulders, and should go quite far in the world.  I would like to encourage her to read several books that I like, as well as to de-clutter her bathroom counter, but that's another whole story.  How does a minimalist approach fit into this scenario?

Kevin, our oldest son, is doing quite well in school.  He doesn't cause too much in the way of trouble, earns good grades, and in general is kind to pretty much everybody.  He recently earned 6'th place (out of 47) in a local robotics competition (a topic area that is near and dear to my heart).

David, the middle boy, is also doing quite well in school.  He is quite the book worm, in addition to being a Jujitsu aficionado.  Always up for a hike, or really doing anything outdoors, he is by far our most athletic child (having a physique that I can only envy).




Zach is the youngest of our kids.  He is typically almost the academically inclined of the bunch, fretting if he doesn't get an "A" on everything.  He has already won a state wide writing competition (not to mention the cash prize that went along with it), and aspires to write books .



Skill isn't a "missing" thing amongst them, motivation however, does seem to be in short supply some days.  How does one motivate children?  How does one instill the drive that will "push" them each to do all of the extra-curricular activities necessary (as resume fodder) to get the kinds of scholarships that they each will need.  The drive that will "push" them to excel at whatever field of endeavor they embark on after school.  How does a minimalist approach fit into this scenario?

Additionally, I have moved my aging parents into a house next door to mine so that I can help them, when needed (and only then...I really don't want to butt in too much).  However, as they age further they are both going to need even more of my time/money/etc. to avoid becoming institutionalized.  My wife (who blogs about her experiences over at Earning Stars in My Crown), without whom I have very little hope of getting into heaven, helps with their care/groceries/doctors apointments/etc., but is that fair? How does a minimalist approach fit into this scenario?

So, being me, I figured I'd see what I can do to help myself (and all those around me) out from within the morass that I find us in.  That search is the basis for where I intend on taking this blog next.  Its a far cry from some of the others out there, but from where I sit, this is the life I have to pursue right now.