Welcome to 'Quit your Friggin Job'. I'm just a guy who was lucky enough to be able to quit his job. What is defined as 'able' to quit? Well, that varies from person to personality to position in life and in the end it usually involves a great many of personal factors. For myself, health reasons pushed me to leave the polluted city that I made my adult living in. My wife and I knew we eventually wanted to move back closer my ageing parents and decided to quit our jobs and go traveling and learn new skills for as long as our meagre savings held out. For myself these skills include getting more hands on experience in the world of sustainable agriculture and design with a focus on a technique called Permaculture as well as investing in cryptocurrency. These writings will first take us through how I've compared learning about these seemingly drastically different worlds and how I'm attempting to engage in the crypto world while following the Permaculture principles.
But before all that, as this is an introduction, please enjoy a piece of writing I composed a while back that may inspire you to 'Quit your Friggin Job'
Until Then and The End
On November 8th 2011 a space rock the size of an aircraft carrier cruising at about 48,000km/h took our dear Earth in its cross hairs and narrowly missed by less than our Moons length away. My question for you is, “what were you doing at the time?” I can tell you I sure wasn’t looking up at the sky for possibly the last and greatest show human kind would ever witness, no sir. I was at work, slaving away for the almighty buck. I was probably reviewing basic English grammar rules for the all important pre quarter term whatever test to a half attentive class of Taiwanese 5th graders whom I’m wholly sure cared more at the time about online gamer supremacy than proper English literacy. My expressed sarcasm there begs to tell you that – like most of us – I was not doing what I loved most in life of that I am certain.
If you’re even the slightest bit tuned into world news these days it is nearly impossible to avoid reading, hearing, or watching news about how, when, and why the world, as we’ve come to be used to it, is going to – and I use this world very generally – end. By end I mean our first world living standard of lives and the future we planned on living will suddenly vaporize and reform into a world wide struggle for survival of the human species. Sounds like I’m a conspiracy theory lunatic, right? Well, truthfully, I try to avoid reading, hearing, or watching anything about how our time is coming up, but it is really darn hard to avoid all those hook-you-in headlines that flash by everywhere I look.
Here are just a few things that could whack our lives and planned futures out of orbit. I will tell you first, though; I will follow this harrowing news of world chaos with some golden advice on what to do if you even half believe anything I report. Here we go.
You have your perennial arctic sea ice (ice that remains through summer and all year round) melting at a rate of 9% each decade that has the potential of releasing millions of tons of methane gas (10 times more potent a green house gas than carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere possibly by 2022 - although some scientist predict it could happen as early as the end of 2018 – which would in turn deplete the ozone layer to such a degree that basically our Earth would be too scorched by the suns U.V. rays to grow enough food for our ballooning population. Had enough yet? How about all those super hurricanes or typhoons as they call them west of 180 degrees. Oh and don’t forget those massive earthquakes causing city smashing sized tsunamis, come on, you would have had to been on the moon not to hear about those; and even then you probably could of seen the ground shaking and nuclear reactors exploding from up there.
I mentioned earlier about asteroids, well that one passed by us now, whew, but wait a few years and we’ll see it again being that its on the same orbit as Earth, and trust me, it’s not the only space rock like party pooper in the neighborhood.
There are over 23,000 nuclear warheads in the possession of homo sapiens and counting. I think its safe to assume without any more nightmare inducing research on my part that we have enough fire power to put a serious dent in our earths 7 billion strong population. Here are two words few people like separate or together – nuclear and winter. And that’s not even considering the 270,000 tons of nuclear waste stored around the world that could be used by evildoers to make all sorts of diabolical nastiness.
Dominating the news these days are: world food and water shortages, rapid depletion of oil reserves, bird, swine, mad cow and all sorts of farm animal flues that could sweep through the population with no hope of enough (if there even is one) immunization shots for everybody. Rainforests are being slashed down at the rate of a football field every seconds, our oceans are polluted beyond belief and Prof. Whoknowsit is telling me that we need an area of arable land the size of Brazil to feed the worlds population by 2050. I believe I’ve made my point without even touching on how clever those Aztecs were at making calendars.
If you’re waiting for me to tell you not to worry, everything’s going to be all right, just keep going about you’re daily lives and all will be hunky dory, keep slaving away at that soul sucking job, save your nickels, cause you’ll get your time at freedom 55 and then you can really live it up, well, keep waiting. I did promise you some golden advice though didn’t I? Keep calm, breath, and dab that cold sweat from your brow. First, realize that we now are still living in a relatively calm and orderly time period of human existence, enjoy it while it lasts. You can go to the super markets, buy bread and fresh water, without screaming mobs clawing their way though the produce isles. You can go to the movies, enjoy a live concert, and stroll through the park with a friend on your arm without feeling like it could be your last time. My advice - go do those things now. Cut down your unpleasant working hours to as little as possible to survive and make use of your free time to do what you love to do.
World finances are teetering on collapse but some how are still holding on and perhaps they will hold out for few more months at least, so don’t bother saving any money and drain those r.r.s.p. accounts (because they will be worthless in a few years anyways) and buy or do that special something or go on that dream vacation that you were saving for your midlife crisis. Take that opportunity to see an old friend, or visit that neglected family member. Enjoy and savor every minute you get to sleep in with a lover. Turn off your T.V. or even better throw it out the window. Log off of your Facebook friends and log in to some face time with real friends. Enjoy, savor, and indulge in these times of relative peace and prosperity, because when whichever one of those rocks hit – playtime is over.
Thanks for your time. Follow along for inspiration and ideas for sustainable design and crypto currency investment as well examples of real life people who quit their frigging jobs. You never know, you just might too. hami -
Asteroid - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15572634
Methane and Ozone depletion - https://climate.nasa.gov
Moon distance – http://www.solarviews.com/eng/moon.htm
Nuclear weapons - http://www.web.net/~cnanw/a3.htm
Nuclear waste - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04.html
Rainforest facts - http://www.rainforestconservation.org/rainforest-primer/3-rainforests-in-peril-deforestation/a-current-state-of-tropical-rainforests