One of the things I'm trying to do with my posts here is to give a sense for what it's like to live a life in pursuit of postconsumerism. Before I seriously got into this, I remember feeling like it was this big unknown somewhat scary territory. I couldn't wrap my head around it totally - I mean, like, what do people who don't spend money *do*? - and it felt inaccessible.
Of course, with all journeys, it's just one foot in front of the other and soon enough you notice you are in a place that seemed wild to a previous version of yourself, but now feels mostly normal. The trick of writing about this journey is that much of my life feels unremarkable, literally, and so I don't think to talk about it. It's getting harder to know what might be interesting to other people.
A tool I'm going to start using to excavate details of my journey that I might otherwise not mention is the Renaissance Report. Jacob Lund Fisker proposed seven categories for the Renaissance Lifestyle: Intellectual, Physiological, Economic, Emotional, Social, Technical, and Ecological. The aspiring Renaissance Man or Woman should endeavor for development in each category. The Report is a summary of what I’ve been up to in each category for the past month.
Here we go.
Where I’m At
I’m on a small permaculture project on the Island of Skye, Scotland. I’ve been here since the end of June, and am planning on being here through mid September or so.
Physiological
After having abandoned any kind of exercise or fitness routine since February due to the instability of travel, I've picked back up my bodyweight strength training and mobility routine again. It's a mix of reddit's /Bodyweightfitness Recommended Routine, E-Sizes, Natural Movement, and yoga. It requires no equipment (although I make good use of a stout tree branch for pullups) and I do it outside ANAP (As Naked As Possible) under the pines.
My diet is now much cleaner than it has been since I started traveling. We eat vegan and almost entirely whole foods here, and the Rock is straightedge so I haven't ingested any fun poisons (aka beer) since I got here. Most days I do intermittent fasting, only eating between 1p and 8p.
Intellectual
I read How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens. Amazing. I use Obsidian as my zettlekasten platform, and thoroughly enjoy the process of taking notes now. The book is about much more than the mechanics of taking notes, and actually influenced some of the core ideas that went into episode 7 of my podcast. Very highly recommended. Here’s a line from it as a teaser:
The ability to change the direction of our work opportunistically is a form of control that is completely different from the attempt to control the circumstances by clinging to a plan.
I've been thinking about scenario planning with one of my mastermind groups. I read Holmgren's Future Scenarios and several follow-up essays, and revisited Limits to Growth, Rander’s 2052, The Seneca Cliff, Greer's The Long Descent and The Ecotechnic Society, Nate Hagen's The Great Simplification, Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Society, and my notes on John Boyd (mostly Osinga's Sciene Strategy and War).
It's important not to get too bogged down in the details of this stuff, but it's also important to understand the landscape of possible and probable futures. It'll be a waste of time planning my life for a Star Trek future if we're actually much more likely to get a Waterworld future, y'know? I’m seeing a future podcast episode and/or blog post on this…
Emotional
I've been having a really rich time exploring Bill Plotkin's Wild Mind and Carolyn Elliott's Existential Kink, which complement each other really well for me. I never really understood shadow work - it was one of those things I sort of got at an intellectual level, but never found an explanation or a practice of shadow work that resonated. Existential Kink (EK) makes crystal clear sense to me and the practices have been nothing short of revelatory. I'm running out of space in my journal. Highly recommended.
Economic
Project TTM5K is headed in the right direction now. I spent $87 for all of July, which breaks down as:
$42 - Traveler’s Health Insurance
$34 - Books
$10 - website
Of course, I'm trading 20-25 hours of work per week for a caravan to sleep in and food to eat. But calling what I'm doing 'work' feels wrong: I mean, I spend my days felling trees, taking ducks for walks, and building an aquaponics system. I basically play in the forest all day, doing the sorts of things I'd want to be doing if I didn't have to worry about money. Which I don't. So... #winning?
Thaaaat’s better
So Wait. Am I….FI?
Nah, probably not. But maybe?
The rule of thumb of early retirement math is that if your expenses reach about three or four percent of your net worth, then you are unlikely to run out of money for the rest of your life based on historical performance of the markets. Most people figure out how much they spend and then try to save up money until their net worth equals 25 to 33 times their annual expenses. (This is a gross simplification of what is a complex and consequential decision, but for discussion it's close enough).
I took an opposite approach: I have some retirement savings, and have been aggressively driving my expenses down towards the neighborhood of 3-4%. It's too early to tell where my cost of living is going to settle out over the next few years, so I'm not about to declare myself financially independent... but also I don't really care, because being technically FI or not wouldn't change how I'm living my life.
The retirement math is a side effect of my strategy, not a goal. I chose to accept the argument that after your basic needs are met, the things worth having in life don't cost anything. Sure enough, as my monthly expenses have been trending down, my overall psychological well-being has been trending up.
Who knew, huh? Every spiritual teacher and wise elder in the entire documented history of wise elders and spiritual teachers have had it right all along, and the bad-faith storytellers of consumer-capitalism are a bunch of thieving liars that keep us trapped in small lives of isolated, shameful misery for their own profit.
Social
I'm learning a form of intentional community social practices here on The Rock. We start every meal and every meeting with a simple gratitude ritual. We have daily check-in meetings, where we let others in on how we're doing physically and psychologically, if we want to,before talking about projects and logistics. We do sharing circles once every week or two. We practice deep listening, which mostly looks like not interrupting each other (even to excitedly agree or interject), and giving a few seconds of 'space' to everything anyone says. One of the functions of these practices is conflict avoidance, on the theory that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We also have a conflict resolution process, which we haven't had to use since I've been here. I’ll write more about this soon as well.
There are two other volunteers besides me at the moment, a young couple from England, and the host Ludwig. We've had more short term people come and go, and they've been almost entirely pleasant experiences.
Technical
Ecovillage Handyman
I've been able to deploy my handyman skills on fixing up various huts and caravans around the place. Some of them weren't built right to begin with years ago by others, and just need a bit of coaxing to get a few more years' good use out of them before they need to be decommissioned. I continue to improve my ability to build things out of random stuff that's lying around in the salvage yard, which was one of my main goals for my travels.
Aquaponics
My main focus at the moment is getting a reciprocating aquaponics system up and running. A previous resident had built it on a different site as part of his university studies. It was disassembled when it was moved here, and never reassembled. My task is to reassemble it and get it up and running again. I'll be posting more about that as the project comes along, as so far I've just been doing site prep for the growbed tanks.
Doing a dry fit check of the sump pit foundation blocks.
Cooking
We rotate cooking duties. I've been cooking dinner and lunch for 4-6 people two to three times a week, so I'm getting a lot of 'reps' in. When it's just me at home I tend to cook the same thing over and over again, but I feel bad doing that with other people, so I've been putting a fair amount of effort into learning new recipes and techniques.
Ecological
I've been diving into the world of nature observation with an initial emphasis on listening to, and attempting to understand, bird language. It's all based on the work of Jon Young, who as I understand it learned from Tom Brown Jr. I have a sit spot where I spend a fair amount of time every day, listening and watching what the birds are up to. I'm also working on conscious walking through the forest, in such a way that the birds aren't simply alarm calling about me as I move through the land.
I had no idea there was such richness in the forest, and I grew up in the forest (and desert). It is both very exciting and profoundly sad to me. Most of us modern people will shuffle out of our lives not even knowing that such richness existed all around us, because our culture deafens and blinds us to it.
At any rate, due in large part to how much amazing richness I’m now aware of in the natural environment, my cravings for most forms of electronic entertainment have vanished. I haven’t listened to digital music since I got here, haven’t watch a show, and only watch youtube videos when I need to figure out how to install a dektite stove jack boot or whatever. It’s not that I’ve set some constraint; I just don’t have any desire to consume that stuff. I’d much rather to to my sit spot and listen to the story of the forest.