Living Well with What You Have

The future that may or may not occur weighs down our enjoyment of the present.

Does the future have techno-utopia in store for us? Or is apocalypse more likely?

Is there any long-lasting value to the time spent online? Is surfing and gaming just escape?

What would happen if the internet or even powering my laptop suddenly became prohibitively expensive, and I were thrown back on what is stored in my meat-brain? What would I lose in the mundane day to day things? Does the balance of how I spend my 24 hours between working for money and doing home-based and family and friends things make sense? Rather than thinking about prepping in terms of guns and ammo or cans of freeze dried food, would it be worse living to "collapse now and avoid the rush"?

Whether real or virtual, it's a challenge to use the resources we have already acquired, rather than spend all my time and attention on the hunt to acquire new stuff.

This page collects different topics related to this conundrum... the time I spend on the computer, the time I spend maintaining my home environment, the time I spend wandering around the town I live in - or thinking about wanders in other places

Gaming and Geek Culture

As long as the world has not caught on fire YET, enjoy what is here now and possibly ephemeral.

I got my son his first deck of Magic the Gathering cards, thinking it might be fun for us to play together. He surpassed me in skill right away, as I don't have the kind of obsessive time necessary to learn all the cards current in standard or all the decks in the "meta".

My son sucked me into World of Warcraft, where I enjoy leveling alts. I resisted virtual worlds all through the time of Second Life's dominance and the era in which World of Warcraft was really relevant.







I realize that I'm pretty late to this particular party, just as I was to the MOO party, though I enjoyed it's winding-down days in the late 1990s. Although I've been online since the days of BITnet, I seem to hit most of the campfires at 3 AM when only the most dedicated are still awake staring into the fire and chatting softly.

The following are some relics and ephemera I put on the web in the late 1990s... Travel back in time...


Moo


Geek


Things Elvish

My son and I and my good friend Athan go to Gen Con at the end of July/beginning of August. While my son games, Athan and I teach workshops as CU DIY Wellness. (Tumblr) I enjoy seeing all the cosplay, and how much this world has changed since I was playing D&D in Junior High.

Domestic Arts

Since the 1990s I have tried to deal with organizing my recipes on the computer... I never stay in one format long enough to really get the project to any kind of satisfaction. Currently I'm at Food.com, having been a member since it was Recipezaar.


This is a page I put up in the 1990s

I dabble in crafts, minimally knitting at the moment, but in the past more sewing and embroidery. I used to make garb back in the days that I was active in the SCA. I learned to sew when I was 9, and did a lot with it in 4-H when I was growing up.

Walking (Urban Trekking and Races)

Runkeeper

Woodcraft and Herbal Skills

7Song Northeast School of Botanical Medicine

HerbFirstAid with 7 Song

HerbMentor

"We are like a group of canoeists paddling down a broad, deep river. For a long time, the current has been steady and slow. We have relaxed into the ride, hypnotized by the flow and the canopy of blue overhead. Suddenly the vessel quakes. We look up and see a bottleneck canyon ahead. The mighty river is being forced through the canyon. When a river runs through a canyon, things change quickly. The water turns to rapids – indeed it is already churning into foam about us.
"No one knows how bad these rapids will become. We don’t know if we can make it through the canyon. Still there is only one way ahead. Into the rapids we go.
"When the river of life gets rough, there is only one thing to do. Put on that helmet, strap on that life-preserver. It is time to get ready for change."
Timothy Rayner, writing about James Martin's canyon analogy

I am the parent of a member of the Transition Generation. I don't believe my son's generation is being given in school the tools they need to survive many of the possible futures they are likely to face.

As James Martin (The Meaning of the Twenty First Century) points out, "the job of the Transition Generation is to get humanity through the canyon with as little mayhem as possible into what we hope will be smoother waters beyond. Solutions exist to most of the serious problems. The bad news is that as we are heading toward the canyon, our leaders are not preparing to make the passage smoother for us."

Resilience and the Long Descent

Resilience

Blogs

The Archdruid Report

Rice Farmer

Nicole Foss

James Howard Kunstler

Richard Heinberg

Living Below Your Means

Quora

SpiralScouts

In hopes of helping give kids the tools they may need, when my son was younger, I invested a good chunk of my writing time in SpiralScouts. I wrote badges for kids to learn neglected skills and think about questions schools don't ask.