Summertime
By this time next month, if all goes well, I’ll be on the road living off my Long Haul Trucker. I’ve just got to wrap up a few things but I’d love to leave here by May 15.
Project TTM5k aka money stuff
April Expenses: $776
ttmCOL: $7,445
ttmFU: 5.2x
ttmFull Stash: 18.9x
An expensive month for me. I bought some kit for my travels, the stuff for the gravelcool roof, and another couple sacks of food staples for the deep pantry. I’m interested to see how my expenses go while I’m on the road.
The Book
I'm circling in on a complete manuscript for the book. It's out now for the second (final?) distribution to advance readers for feedback. I’ll shelve it while I'm biking around and then when I come back in September I'll have another look at it with fresh eyes, do final revisions and then do the work of getting it published (proofread, audiobook recorded, etc etc). A Fall 2023 publish date feels about right.
Headspace
There's some kind of phase shift in my head afoot that I can sense but not articulate well. Elements involved include
the internalization of low spending practices (implying I have more cognitive bandwidth
vailable to spend on figuring out what to *do* with my autonoomy)
buckets of solitude
the revelation that I've used other people's projects as a form of self-sabotage
a new systems check in my head that asks "Am I doing this because I want to, or because it's a good thing to do, or because I think I should?"
a more nuanced (and mature? hopefully?) perspective on selfishness, self-regard, self-absorption, self-awareness, boundaries, needs, wants, desires...
a more dispassionate perspective on The Predicament.
I probably need to flesh that last one out. I'm not saying that I'm caring less about The Predicament or am deciding to say well fuck it ima just party cuz yolo, but I am seeing how I used The Predicament as an excuse to huck myself at work/problems and more or less be a not very good human, take things very seriously, and fuel my self-destructive and ineffectualizing behavior patterns.
In one sense I feel very very lost, ungrounded, and uncertain about what I want, what my future looks like, what I *should* do and what I want to do... but not in a bad way. This sensation feels absolutely appropriate considering all the work I've been doing rooting around in my head and the work I've been doing to modify the external structure/logic/logistics of my life. I'd be disappointed if I *didn't* feel off-balanced and confused. So I feel confident and assured about my uncertainty and lostness, if that makes any sense. Normally anxiety/neuroticism accompanies lostness etc, but I feel very little anxiety around this.
IN Other News a spider blew up our inverter
Poor little guy.
He’s dead, Jim.