Dear J,
Just a quick note today, a collection of fragments. I’m 1,500miles into a 4,000mile road trip (CA OR NV UT CO NM), soaking up one of my favorite coffee shops in Bend, and wanted to get this out to you. The next few weeks are going to be very busy.
I’m planning on selling the moto immediately after this trip. I like motorcycles, but not as much as I like the other things that motorcycle ownership (and use) takes up space for. Especially not since I spend so much time in Alaska now.
As per usual, where my head goes when I’m on the road is to the projects I want to get back to or begin back home.
I’m really excited for Fall/Winter. I’m getting the business down to a more manageable maintenance level of hours and starting other projects.
The point which is easy to lose hold of is that we’ve all got to learn how to live good lives on something like 10% of the energy (/resources) we’d become accustomed to using in the 20th century. That’s the broad shape of response we’re looking at. So many people are still talking about trying to figure out how to keep using the same amount of energy (/resources) that we’ve been using. They’re looking for a solution to declining energy availability and access and that’s just the wrong way to think about it.
A fair question to ask someone like myself is ‘if you’re so convinced of the inevitability of energy descent and social collapse, why do you think your FIRE stash will continue to hold? Won’t that fail, too?’ and my answer is ‘yes duh it will fail.’ I’ll be surprised if my FIRE-style financial portfolio lasts my lifetime the way the FIRE bloggers say it will. I think of my stash less as ‘ahh, now I’m set for life’ and more like ‘great, I’ve got runway for a bit to figure out how to depend even less on primary flows of the industrial consumer superorganism.’
Personally, thinking back five years, my narrative sketch looks something like
Have low savings and a high burn rate.
Radically reduce burn rate, start saving $
Get laid off
Learn/develop skills that help me live a life I’m in love with on very low consumption
Start a business (serendipitous opportunity) to start earning $ again and build up runway/stash
PRESENT MOMENT: Begin backing off hours on the business to more maintenance levels, freeing up time to
NEAR FUTURE: spend much of my time on creative, stoke-led projects involving other people having to do with further dramatically reducing dependence on first-order flows of energy and resources from industrial consumer society. Aka, the Flotilla, if you vibe with that metaphor.
In other words, my post-consumer praxis education will have come in something like two waves. Wave 1 was getting my cost of living from $70k to $10 while improving my quality of life. Then there was an intermission of sorts to work on the business and ‘finish’ money stuff. Wave 2 will be about further reducing my dependence on money and the money system, and it will have much more to do with collaborations with other people.
Wave 2 will involve a lot of experimentation. I don’t have a specific plan, but I definitely have some ideas on next steps. There aren’t a lot of instruction manuals lying around, although there are a handful of inspiring pioneers.
Okay that’s it for now J. I hope you’re well. Talk soon.
T