When things aren’t going wrong I can live like a king on $150 a month. I’m housed, clothed and fed on what I can scrounge and what I figure out.
That bit of hooting self-congratulation has been weighing on my mind. In terms of cash outlay, it’s literally true. In terms of all the stuff I don’t need cash for, it’s blatantly false. And it’s the second thing that makes the first possible.
I get a lot of help from my friends. Landlady provided the chickens, and constantly shows up with mail runs, dog food and coffee. She owns the Jeep I putter around in. Ian was essential in the Lair’s construction, hauling virtually all the lumber and working straight-through on the basic structure. The land it’s on belongs to him, and it’s tied into his water. For complex reasons I don’t dare show my face in the nearby town behind the wheel of a car, but I have neighbors who let me tag along there weekly – not to mention all the trips they’ve scheduled to the big town about fifty miles away for all the eye stuff. Granted that I try to make it worth their while to keep me on their good side, none of those people are obligated to do that.
I couldn’t begin to count the care packages I’ve gotten from TUAK readers over the years, just because. Then of course when things DO go wrong, those same TUAK readers have been my salvation. Without some of you, I’d be sitting back and watching myself go blind.
Self-reliance is a good thing. I practice it to the extent possible, but it’s also possible to sprain your arm patting yourself on the back for it. Honestly, I’m not sure complete self-sufficiency is possible – or even desirable. Just saying: I need to be more careful with the self-congratulations.
That’s all right, Joel. I suspect most of us knew exactly what you were talking about. I have a slightly similar situation here, so when people learn that I live on about $350. a month (I have to buy electricity, remember – and a few other things), their jaws drop. I can’t begin to enumerate all of the help I’ve received, present and past, to accomplish that by giving me an opportunity to assist them, or just by showing up and doing what needs to be done that I can’t manage myself.
No man is an island. Very true. But the interactions must be voluntary and mutually satisfying to be viable. That’s the part so many people just can’t seem to wrap their heads around.
Self-sufficiency is, and mostly always has been, extremely close to impossible, and certainly totally undesirable.
Any man who thinks he’s better off setting and splinting his own broken leg will change his ideas about self-sufficiency very quickly.
Humans are social animals, and they are so for mostly selfish reasons. it’s way easier to survive with some help. Other people pooling resources or skills or just a pair of helping hands with you in order to make life easier. Building a barn is easier when your neighbor comes over to help. When you break your leg, it’s awfully hard to feed yourself for 4 to 6 weeks after.
You trade favors with each other in order to help alleviate those times when you need help and can’t do for yourself.
If you’re wondering what you do in return for the help people have given you, Joel, might I point out the hours of enjoyment that they’ve all had in reading your blog, for one good example?
Don’t look at the help you’ve gotten like its charity. No one should ever be ashamed of receiving payment for the provision of a good and/or service. That’s all it is.
Second and third on the above posts! I suspect that every last one of us has received help/support/encouragement throughout our lives and feel lucky if we have opportunities to return favors and blessings to someone else.
And you do give as good as you get, IMO. If you couldn’t shit-shovel, would the neighbors have the enjoyment of owning horses? If you weren’t there to keep a watch on things, would Ian and Landlady be comfortable having unoccupied properties? What would the neighbors spend to dump their trash if you didn’t find excellent uses for things like broken tile bits and leftover lumber bits? Doesn’t babysitting a bunch of stoopid birds warrant some return on the time and aggravation? Isn’t it lovely that we can read your musings without having to pay some money wall subscription fee? If it’s more blessed to give than to receive, what would folks do if there were no recipients available?
Other people may provide us with an environment, but how we choose to enhance and enliven it is our doing. Granted, you’ve gotten some pretty amazing gifts like the eye money and the batteries, but I’m betting that those benefactors got almost as much joy as you got utility, otherwise they wouldn’t have done those wonderful things. No red face due as far as I’m concerned, but it was a nice gesture anyway.
I still think I got the better end of the bargain. 😉
But the point was that you can live on $150 a month. This would necessarily exclude expenses for extraordinary and/or one time events.
You did qualify by saying “when things aren’t going wrong”.
You do seem to keep thing stitched together for you and your neighbors and the barter system all of you have seems to work quite well.
From my experience family is not necessarily a case of blood relations. Good friends can be family and family takes care of family. What you have Joel, like it or not, is family.