Day 769. I have been doing my best to stretch out my supply runs to five or six week intervals. I have been doing this mainly because I want to make my propane last as long as possible before getting the tanks refilled and also because I have been trying to ration my supplies to last just a little bit longer than the four week schedule that I have used rather consistently for the previous several years even before starting this 'phase' of my life. The rationing is also an attempt (perhaps a bit of a masochistic one) to make the limited resources at my disposal go as far as possible which gives me more time to make money on my own and/or so that I am not faced with soliciting folks for contributions too often. So far this approach to rationing my supplies (and solicitations) has gotten me through the majority of the winter and facilitated the dogs staying fed, me being able to stay in touch with the outside world and alas having my own food and staying warm. Those things in and of themselves are the glue that hold my little world together and keeps me plugging along. I guess that I could call folks generosity (and albeit kindness) the 'gravity' that keeps my world spinning. Sharing the things I share has been overall a really healthy experience for me and I am appreciative and extremely grateful to those of you who enjoy my ponderous words and what I think of as my 'bemusing antics and musings'. I should inform you all that publicly sharing my little sliver of reality has been an extremely potent antidote for my previous feelings of isolation, alienation and to some extent even anxiety, stress and depression. To think that I spent decades consigning such musings to the pages of journals without a thought to sharing them makes me only shake my head in wonder at where I would be now had I done things differently. No regrets there or anything because maybe that journaling provided the required stepping stones and self therapy that I needed to get me to where I am currently and from my perspective where I am 'at' is a place where I do not feel isolated, where I am not depressed and where I feel tangible hope that the next many chapters of my life will look nothing like the previous ones. It is a bit of a scary feeling because it is so far outside my comfort zone that the landscape and terrain are alien to my mind which over the years grew accustomed to dealing with hardship, difficulty and adversity...and I am okay with that. I am also okay with wandering around in that unknown landscape and looking at both myself and the world a good bit differently than I ever have before. Words fail me in giving an adequate description of 'how' I feel but suffice it to say that I feel...not fucking bad at all. The process has by no means been one-sided (me just sharing) it has been rather multi-vectored and extremely reciprocatory which actually surprised the hell out of me at first but I have gradually adjusted and I often surpress a gratuitous urge to gush my thankfulness so profusely that I fear it might sound bogus or insincere. Suffice it to say 'Thank You!' and hopefully that is enough. This post got more long winded than I intended and when I started it I just wanted to say my piece/peace and avail to you readers that I could use any contributions anyone can make because I am almost out of everything and need to make a supply run soon. I will put the links in the comments for anyone that is interested. Anyway I have rambled on long enough for one overcast day at the ass end of winter. Yal be well and I will assuredly do the same.
Note: As some of you know I have been making these 'Daily Post' on another platform ever since I began my stay at this old farm seven hundred and sixty-nine days ago. Ever since I began using Steemit I have considered posting them here as well but have been hesitant to do so because the content of them varies and thus it is difficult to tag as 'one thing or another' and they do not always directly relate to homesteading, off grid living or whatever. I also type them out in a notepad App on an Android phone and post them as a 'wall of text' instead of breaking them into paragraphs because the platform that I copy and paste them to formats them into a 'wall of text' even if I break them into paragraphs. I am not going to correctly format them and have grown to enjoy their rambling nature. So this is sort of a test and I appreciate any feedback that folks may have.