Starting Over

IImage by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It’s been a while since my last post. A loooooooooooooooooooooooooong while.

By this point, it’s time to just call a do-over on the whole blog. Especially in the midst of an actual global pandemic. Especially since I’ve dropped the ball in so many ways over the last several years.

Seriously, I’m kind of ashamed.

OK, there’s no “kind of” about it.

You see, I have no excuse. A lot of people trust the system. They expect things to work the way they’re supposed to work, only to be blindsided by reality. That’s not me. I know the system is fragile. I’ve been through this before.

No, not a pandemic, but my area was devastated by Hurrican Michael a couple of years ago.  It knocked us on our keesters something fierce.  And that was mild when you think about it. Hurricanes hit a given area, tear things up, then go away. Pandemics? Oh no, they hit everywhere.

For the record, I’m in one of the worst-hit communities in the nation for COVID-19. I also have two kids with a history of breathing issues and this stuff attacks the respiratory system.

And I did jack shit.

Oh, I’d stored some food back in the day, but we ran through it when money felt a tad tight. Hey, that’s what it was there for, right? Except, we never replaced it.

Now, we’re risking people’s lives just to the grocery store and I have virtually nothing stored up. We’re looking at a global economic crisis barreling right over us when this is over because no one has been able to work. The government’s throwing money around like there’s no tomorrow, but I’m skeptical it’ll work.

And I sat on my ass beforehand and did nothing.

So, it’s time to start over. If we’re having to go to the store, we’re buying as much of things as we can get away with. We’re not buying every can of green beans on the shelf or anything, but if we need six cans, we get nine. Things like that.

There’s a lot to update going forward here, and I want to make it work, but I also don’t want to keep prattling on about why I feel stupid.

Instead, it’s time to step up and get un-stupid.

Make no mistake, there are things I can do even in the middle of a pandemic to make things just that much better for me and mine.

Reviewing the Mistakes

Look, I don’t think anyone wants to watch me self-flagellate over those mistakes. I do need to mention what I did wrong, mostly so I can remind myself not to, but also so others can learn from my mistakes.

Instead, the plan needs to be to look forward more than anything.

Yet there’s still a point in looking at those mistakes. There are things to be learned from there. Especially in the wake of Hurricane Michael a couple of years ago.

Reviewing Where I’m At Now?

Well, I’m actually starting from a much better position, all things considered. I’m still living in the same place, but my professional life is in a much better place. Good enough that we may well be looking at buying a house soon-ish.

I have the means to cook food without power, which was something I didn’t have a when I was blogging here semi-regularly. I have a better handle on the firearm situation now (I’ve always been a gun nut, though).  I still have some of the water storage stuff I bought several years back (which reminds me to check and make sure it keeps).

All in all, I’m in a much better spot. Especially since I’ve already dug garden beds to start my garden back up. The last one…well, it didn’t make it.

Moving Forward

My goal is to do something to move my family forward each week to some degree. I don’t know how practical that is since, well, I get paid monthly, but it’s a goal at least. I’m not going to write everything, though. You don’t care if I picked up another dozen cans of early peas, now do you?

I didn’t think so.

However, you may care if I replace the barrel in my AR-15 and are curious about how to do it. You might care about the tricks I use in my garden or showing you what kind of harvest I had with my limited space.

So, I’ll be doing something each week, but I’m not sure I’ll write about that something each week.

That said, I do want to write a little more often here. OK, I want to write a lot more often here.

The next couple of days may see something of a flurry of new posts, but expect that to taper off into something a bit more manageable. This is kind of how I am with a project, so that’s to be expected.

All in all, it’s time to start over again, both with my prepping and with the blog. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Let’s do this thing!