Adventures In Homesteading (Day 618)
@jacobpeacock
Posted 1d ago · 6 min read
Hello Everyone!
The last of the coffee, Internal landscape musings, Finding the connectivity culprit & Hauling water!
Alright, I am starting my writing routine more or less on time tonight... but am assuredly running a little later than I would like to be. Having been sipping on the last of my coffee... and piddling around 'waking up' for the last few hours I could have started a bit earlier... but chose to catch up on some reading instead.
Being nearly out of coffee has not 'done much for my mood' today... and for the most part I have been savoring that last cup for as long as I can. It is by no means a 'caffeine crisis' because I have a bunch of black tea... but when it comes right down to it (the vast majority of the time) I prefer to have coffee if at all possible.
Over the previous year or so, the rising prices on nearly everything has put me under some rather extreme pressure... and my coffee habit has taken a massive hit due to it. To be clear, I realized early on that I probably would not be able to afford 'keeping up with my habit' and not only did I begin drinking less of it... but I also changed my coffee mug to one half the size as what I like to use.
Of course, the price of goods has impacted other aspects of my life... and compounded my financial stresses to the point where I just feel poleaxed anytime that my mind turns to such matters... which honestly is way more often than what I want it to. As it turns out, that is not very healthy for me... since it creates a massive barrier to doing projects... and I spend way too much time simply stressing out, feeling mildly neurotic and totally exhausted mentally.
None of this particular adventure has been 'easy' (not that I thought that it would be) and through it all... I feel like I have spent more time dealing with my internal landscape (to cope with the exterior one) than I really want to be doing in the first place. To say that I have felt like I am 'in a pressure cooker' would be an understatement... but even given that... it is not like I have given up or caved entirely to regressive behavioral patterns.
In other words, it has all pretty much sucked... but I keep making the best of things (to the best of my abilities) knowing that somehow I will make it through it all. Which is absolutely 'easier said than done' when simultaneously dealing with things like mild dehydration, fevers, tooth pain, oral infections, food insecurity... and all the other 'hardships' of life.
Fortunately, I saw that drinking alcohol was just going to compound all the challenges... and I still have one of the beers from the six pack of them that I bought thirteen months ago. So, in the not-so-grand scheme of things... realizing that I needed to 'cut back' my already mild imbibement of the stuff... truly 'clued me in' to how 'thin the ice' was that my morale (and even sanity) was skating on.
Per usual, my coping mechanism has been to withdraw... but this time around I have been doing it with the caveat of communicating (and staying in communication with) others. Given how unhinged that the current timeline has become, I am unsure if it is myself or others that need the communication more... but either way I have been surprised (and thankful) that I have bent my hermit ways enough to accommodate it.
All that jazz aside, I finally solved the mystery of why my cellular connection went from 'kinda working'... to 'hardly working at all' over the last few months... and the culprit was of course me! What happened, is that months ago I removed the bluetooth 'button' from inside my phone's menu... because previous to that I kept accidentally enabling bluetooth while doing other stuff on the phone.
I guess that when I removed the 'button' that I also accidentally turned it on... and so now (for months) it has been on... and I just could not tell that it was on. Not to rehash what I have explained many times before... but that extra 'radio' being on is just enough of a power drain (on the device) that the other radios (like 3G/4G/5G) do not have as much power available to work at peak performance... which they need to do given how remote I am.
After figuring all that out last night, I was so frigging stoked... because it made posting and uploading images (and doing anything online) a much less painful experience. Some of the times that I have posted previously of late... had taken me a ridiculous amount of time to do... and I would find myself internally sighing while wanting to scream: It is a two hundred kilobyte file... just finish uploading already! Right before the upload failed for the sixth time.
Anyways, needless to say I was pretty jazzed up last night to have my internet connection not be a total clustercuss to deal with... and spent the rest of the evening (and early morning) working on my online projects. Early in the day, I did the same thing that I did the day before... by taking a hike, checking on (and watering) the newly planted seeds/seedlings... and then hauling rainwater uphill from the old camp.
By early afternoon, I was pretty wiped out and my brain was feeling super 'toasty' from all the technological thinking... combined with drinking countless cups of tea... and I zonked out for a three hour nap before getting up again for a short time later. I did not last all that long after the nap... and mainly just got up to let the dogs out before going back to sleep for a few more hours.
Well, I think that I should get to wrapping this entry up now that I have meandered on so much! I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now.
Estimated Payout
$6.08
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