22 November 2009

THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN


  • Nov 22, 2009

THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN

I have not been writing much lately.

Spending my time with work, and new friends, and classes.

Work remains fun, after 3 years of doing the same things (compare to a record of 10 months max at any one job for the rest of my life prior), easy enough to be good at it, challenging enough to stay interesting. 
Just the past few days involved somehow fitting about 10cubic yards of random stuff into the truck for the largest hauling run I've had so far, installing drywall in an attic furnace room so the building could pass fire inspection, and careful deconstuction of the walls holding in the old biodiesel tanks at the old biodiesel fuel station so the lumber could be reused.

But far more important and interesting is the classes.

Little by little I add to my stable of random skills.


Expert in nothing, but my goal is for everyone there is, I can do at least one thing moderately well that they don't do at all. 
Maybe there is someone who does a little carpentry and electronics soldering and computer software troubleshooting and lockpicking and sailing and shooting guns and bow and arrows and swordplay and bicycle repair and auto mechanics and unicycling and gardening.
Just in case, I'm taking muy thai and jui jitsu and I just took a seminar on making fire with natural materials, another on edible wild foods of the East Bay, and today one on tracking animals, and also took my first parkour class.  Judging by the skill level of my classmates, watching YouTube videos and practicing on my own at the playground and on random obstacles I find walking around the city has been more beneficial than I realized.

I feel more and more like a character from an action/adventure movie, where the hero somehow knows how to do everything. 
And yet what strikes me continually is how much I still don't know.  Not even counting all the stuff I am not interested in learning, but the skills I still want, if money was no object, would take a lifetime to learn.
And money is an object.
So one lifetime isn't enough.

I have had debt for a few years, collected over a cross country trip/move and major vehicle failure, months of unemployment,  going back to college, buying a newer larger trailer, and having to buy my ex out of said trailer when she moved out.
I am getting tantalizingly close to paying off the last of it.

I decided once I do, classes take priority one.  Jobs will be fit around them, not the other way around.  I'm looking to work about 20hrs per week.
I am saying this publicly so as to have some accountability.  If you hear me say I am working too much come next summer, remind me I said this.
Thanks

2 comments:

  1. I wanted to say hello. I've been reading the MMM forums a lot and you seem to always have something helpful, positive, and hopeful to say. So hello!

    Good luck on kicking the last of the debt. My husband and I are down to the last $22,000 on our mortgage, and then we will be debt freeeeeee. It's exciting to be so close.

    Regards,

    Amanda

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Amanda, welcome, and thanks for writing.

      This is actually an old post - I've been moving over the articles from my old MySpace (remember MySpace?) blog, one at a time, to this one, so most of the "new" posts are actually ord (they have just never been read by anyone)

      I paid off the last of my debt Feb. of 2010 (about 2 months after I wrote this post), and opened an IRA for the first time. 7 months later my YouTube video of the low-cost low-impact life of living in a RV trailer became briefly popular, and I started getting fan mail on FaceBook. One of them suggested I check out Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme, who happened to live near me, so we met in person. He passed the torch to MMM, I started following his blog, and now his site is the single largest driver of traffic to mine.

      Super congratulations on being so very close to paying off the mortgage! Most people don't even consider that to be "debt"...
      The next thing I'm looking forward to is owning property - even though I'm debt free already, yall are a step ahead of me really.

      Delete

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