Cold today, but dry. I need the Christmas decor to finish drying out so I can get it down before the HOA sends their nastygram…
Which is but one of my tasks for the day. The others are pickups and continued cleanup at my secondary. ( Pickups are some preps, but also stuff to move along the bathroom remodel, because life goes on, even as the country melts down around us.)
Didn’t do much yesterday. I was really tired and not feeling well so I napped in the late morning instead of doing productive work. I felt much better after. I did get some small things done in between hitting reload on the news and waiting for the other jackboot to drop. It’s like 2021 turned to 2020 and said “Hold my beer…” and we’re barely started. It can get oh so much worse too. I don’t hold out much hope for ‘better’. Not for FBI certified home grown extremist potential domestic terrorists like me and most of my friends anyway. We’re in for a world of hurt.
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on yesterday’s trial. Well, wrt specifically writing the prepping guide, one chapter at a time, consensus seems to be “not as a regular thing” and “not necessarily in that format.”
Which is cool, as that was why I asked. The audience here is far past the basic levels of prepping. I still feel the need to at least organize the beginning stuff, so I’ll try some more stuff later.
One of the things I thought I might try doing instead is writing an article for survivalblog- because, PRIZES!
There were two ideas I was considering. One would be turning my posts about my visit to the Plymoth Colony last summer into an article. The theme would maybe touch on the complete lack of preparation for the endeavor on the part of the colonists, or maybe the lack of flexibility that let them starve while the native population had so much food they could make art. I can’t find a great hook to hang the article on though.
The other might be a bit more timely, and would be something about “what I learned about the power and tools available to the state in the form of local LEOs by listening to the scanner.” That risks getting into subversive territory, a handbook to partisans… which might be just what is needed for that matter, but IDK how the audience over there would react.
A third article could put yesterday’s comments into more coherent form, and cover how to set up a listening station and some lessons learned from monitoring…
My first loyalty is to this place, but hey- PRIZES! Long form articles take much more time and attention and editing than my usual casual posts to a receptive and friendly audience.
For some perspective, I looked at my posts for the last couple of weeks and an ‘ordinary’ post- something to just get the conversation started each day- usually ends up being around 500 words. A post where I have something to say, or a specific goal, those tend to be around 800 words long. And a fully developed but still short, topical post runs to ~1200 words. Something more long form would probably run 1500-2500 words and is not something I do here regularly. I spent a couple of hours on yesterday’s post and it was 1200 words iirc. AND THEN the BEST discussion happened there in the comments about scanners! Nothing to do with the post! But that is the great part about the ‘conversation’ here, you never know where it will lead.
FWIW, since we’re coming up on the unhappy anniversary, and I’m being all meta and introspective, I’ve done about 1113 posts since Bob got sick, call it average of 600 – 750 words, so I’ve written about 650K to 850K words here in posts alone. That’s kinda a lot. 6-10 novels worth. Add about the same in comments, as that was where I wrote most of my words outside of posts, especially in the beginning. 7500 comments would have to average 100 words each or just total to 700 words over the day. Call it 10-16 full length novels in 3 years. 1.3M – 1.6M words. Holy cow I’m glad my wife doesn’t read the blog.
Although, thinking about it, I wrote a fair number of those comments in the years before Bob passed- so spread the novels out over a couple of more years. Balanced against that, I used to write a fair number of comments elsewhere too. 10s of thousands of words about prepping and ham radio on just a couple of other blogs, for example. I did manage to reuse and recycle some of that, when I could find it again. That is the beauty of working with Intellectual Property, reuse and recycle, and everything old is new again!
It is immensely satisfying to be part of what we’ve continued to build here and to keep the conversation going.
Now I better go do something constructive before I start picking lint out of this belly button I’ve been staring into.
Start stacking. Keep stacking.
nick
(843 words according to WP, 864 according to the tool I downloaded.)