for all intents and purposes i think this project has mostly ended, at least on my side for the foreseeable future. thanks to everyone who participated in this thread and talked about it with me over all these years, it's been great! very excited to see what'll happen next in life
that's probably the best way in which it could've "failed" given you'll still be able to work on it in your own way whenever you feel like it like you said. it does feel like a surreal end of an era, even as someone entirely on the sidelines. its great that things are coming up reemhouse even if its not in the originally intended way >:)
also that thumbnail is great, did you pick that one on purpose or did it just do a good on its own?
also that thumbnail is great, did you pick that one on purpose or did it just do a good on its own?
the only thing popping in my head in response to this is Task Failed Successfully
Dying of boredom, I'll try it all...
Thank you for sharing your current situation and dilemmas. Interesting to listen to you talk about everything and i am sure you will get to an answer that will have you satisfied
hosimati suisei please
A house built on a sure stone foundation with timbers expertly hewn and fastened may stand for hundreds of years, but one coward with a match can undo all that work and legacy in minutes.
Doubt is perhaps the most powerful force of the mind, tenfold more when you are its subject. There is scarcely any other thing I am more certain of than this, especially after seeing all I have seen these last seven years and being where I am now. Self-doubt can both create and destroy, capable of being both the spark of genius which can slowly build a man's life upon a firm foundation and also the coward's match, quickly destroying his entire self-conception and motivation in one fell swoop. I have now seen both of these things over this lengthy project, and after spending this last half-year away from the land I love wrestling with the demands of the modern world against my own ideas and desires I have at last come to a conclusion on the matter: even a house burnt to the ground leaves behind its foundation, just as sure as before.
While you can wander the wilderness for quite some time sleeping under trees and in grottoes, the desire for permanence lingers in the back of the mind. It is both tormentous and irreconcilable, for there is no material thing that has been or ever will be permanent, but this impossible desire burns white-hot in a man's heart regardless. It is no surprise, then, that after such aimless wandering in my adolescent and early adult life I looked upon this plain of Shinar and a genius doubt stirred my soul with a purpose, a foundation upon which I could build a meaningful life for myself and those I love. I sacrificed everything to come here and to build upon that foundation, and for many years I was absolutely unshakable in my resolve, as documented here. I look backwards now at that man and his purpose with incredible envy, and now at last with some hope.
In these last couple years cracks in that indefatigable resolve began showing and spreading. Worries about my best friend and his family, concerns about my health and future, frustrations with bottlenecks arising from a lack of money, romantic issues, the area's culture changing, difficulty with employment, and many other things slowly took a toll on my confidence. Although the kindling smoldered slowly, it ultimately took much less time for the house to catch fire and burn down than it took to build it up. I have compromised and made concession after concession to try and work against these concerns, at first trying to reconcile them with my initial goal, but over this last year I decided to stop trying to put out the fire and just let it roar. There are only cinders remaining, and I am back to dwelling in the wilderness with the biting misery of knowing what beauty and purpose I have forfeited for a false material surety. Had the man that first came here seen me today, he would be ashamed.
When I first let the housefire go up unabated, I wondered if it was for the better. Maybe I was wrong before, maybe it was time for me to abandon the place and move on, maybe I was a fool for even attempting to build the thing in the first place. Maybe I was wrong, a fool, too weak, etc., etc. It is only over this last month that I realized I was right this entire time. There is no purpose in comfort, and having all of my material needs met again only makes me as miserable as I was before. This job is meaningless, as are all the other ones I've worked throughout my entire life. Having money is completely pointless if nothing you want can be purchased. My life is just as unsure as it was before, though now I make enough to pretend that it isn't (as many others do blindly, might I add.) It's a very frustrating thought to know my younger self was wiser in his ignorance than I am now, having seen enough to know better.
Funnily enough the austerity of the lenten season has turned my mind again towards hope, recognizing that there's still a foundation under the embers and wreckage; it's buried, mind you, but that damned foundation is still there. I can feel it. And I'm going to dig that fucking foundation out again even if it kills me. I have a lot of people depending on me and a lot of responsibilities that I have to deal with now while shoveling out this foundation piece by piece, but I absolutely refuse to let it remain a wreck. It was the only positive force in my life and the one thing I knew had objective meaning, and there is absolutely no way in hell I'm moving on.
Consider this post a part one. I will be at the property today wandering around taking notes and assessing what has to be done, and I will follow this post up with plans and goals shortly.
Doubt is perhaps the most powerful force of the mind, tenfold more when you are its subject. There is scarcely any other thing I am more certain of than this, especially after seeing all I have seen these last seven years and being where I am now. Self-doubt can both create and destroy, capable of being both the spark of genius which can slowly build a man's life upon a firm foundation and also the coward's match, quickly destroying his entire self-conception and motivation in one fell swoop. I have now seen both of these things over this lengthy project, and after spending this last half-year away from the land I love wrestling with the demands of the modern world against my own ideas and desires I have at last come to a conclusion on the matter: even a house burnt to the ground leaves behind its foundation, just as sure as before.
While you can wander the wilderness for quite some time sleeping under trees and in grottoes, the desire for permanence lingers in the back of the mind. It is both tormentous and irreconcilable, for there is no material thing that has been or ever will be permanent, but this impossible desire burns white-hot in a man's heart regardless. It is no surprise, then, that after such aimless wandering in my adolescent and early adult life I looked upon this plain of Shinar and a genius doubt stirred my soul with a purpose, a foundation upon which I could build a meaningful life for myself and those I love. I sacrificed everything to come here and to build upon that foundation, and for many years I was absolutely unshakable in my resolve, as documented here. I look backwards now at that man and his purpose with incredible envy, and now at last with some hope.
In these last couple years cracks in that indefatigable resolve began showing and spreading. Worries about my best friend and his family, concerns about my health and future, frustrations with bottlenecks arising from a lack of money, romantic issues, the area's culture changing, difficulty with employment, and many other things slowly took a toll on my confidence. Although the kindling smoldered slowly, it ultimately took much less time for the house to catch fire and burn down than it took to build it up. I have compromised and made concession after concession to try and work against these concerns, at first trying to reconcile them with my initial goal, but over this last year I decided to stop trying to put out the fire and just let it roar. There are only cinders remaining, and I am back to dwelling in the wilderness with the biting misery of knowing what beauty and purpose I have forfeited for a false material surety. Had the man that first came here seen me today, he would be ashamed.
When I first let the housefire go up unabated, I wondered if it was for the better. Maybe I was wrong before, maybe it was time for me to abandon the place and move on, maybe I was a fool for even attempting to build the thing in the first place. Maybe I was wrong, a fool, too weak, etc., etc. It is only over this last month that I realized I was right this entire time. There is no purpose in comfort, and having all of my material needs met again only makes me as miserable as I was before. This job is meaningless, as are all the other ones I've worked throughout my entire life. Having money is completely pointless if nothing you want can be purchased. My life is just as unsure as it was before, though now I make enough to pretend that it isn't (as many others do blindly, might I add.) It's a very frustrating thought to know my younger self was wiser in his ignorance than I am now, having seen enough to know better.
Funnily enough the austerity of the lenten season has turned my mind again towards hope, recognizing that there's still a foundation under the embers and wreckage; it's buried, mind you, but that damned foundation is still there. I can feel it. And I'm going to dig that fucking foundation out again even if it kills me. I have a lot of people depending on me and a lot of responsibilities that I have to deal with now while shoveling out this foundation piece by piece, but I absolutely refuse to let it remain a wreck. It was the only positive force in my life and the one thing I knew had objective meaning, and there is absolutely no way in hell I'm moving on.
Consider this post a part one. I will be at the property today wandering around taking notes and assessing what has to be done, and I will follow this post up with plans and goals shortly.
Had a bit of an unexpected aside these last few days. When I left on Saturday to begin surveying the property I phoned up my buddy Gabe to recruit him in the effort, but to my surprise he was already there for a different purpose. He works for a company up in Bessemer that tests snowblowers for Briggs and Stratton and a friend he met through that job was in a bind, namely that he was being evicted and had no method of recourse. His car has been stuck in a shop for a month now with an electrical gremlin that no one can seem to fix, and the man's on his lonesome in the dead of winter poor as dirt. The man's name is Adam, originally from Minnesota near Bemidji, and I had heard of him before through Gabe but had not met him until Saturday.
To clarify what I mean by eviction, he lives in a small camper trailer he fixed up to be useable in a climate as harsh as northern Wisconsin. At the start of winter he was living in the nearby national forest with this trailer, moving it all over the place to avoid getting found by the rangers. It's a huge swathe of undeveloped land that the feds use for harvesting timber to sell to other countries, namely China, and they're very particular about the forests they've so unceremoniously stolen from the states they reside in. Eventually some foresters caught onto him and started sabotaging some of the logging roads by building berms and dropping trees along them to block his routes and trap him outside the forest, and he figured it would be wise to take the hint and get out before anything got worse. He struck up a deal with a guy in our town to park the trailer in his driveway for the remainder of the winter at the tune of four hundred dollars a month plus the cost of electric.
Though it may be obvious from the rest of my posts here, please understand that winter here isn't like how it is south of the 45th parallel for the rest of the country. It's not just a minor inconvenience where you get a little nippy, oof augh brr, oh geez im sOOOO COLD ....... , it's a real season and it has killed much stronger men than me in times past and still today. There are very few homeless here because the winters either kill them or drive them south. The endless feet of snow buries everything for the better part of four or five months, and getting anything done or finding anything to burn is very difficult and extremely fatiguing. It's considered the absolute lowest behavior and an unforgivable offense here to betray a man in your trust in the middle of winter, because even to this day it may as well be the same as killing him.
His landlord being a transplant from South Carolina of course doesn't understand this and doesn't care, and was beginning to extort Adam for money to pay off his unpaid utilities and backwards loans as they had no written contract. Being poor and in a bad way himself he refused, and so the landlord served him an eviction notice with a week's time to vacate. Given that he has no truck and everything everywhere is buried in feet of snow it was a hell of a situation to deal with, and when I arrived on Saturday Gabe and Adam were beginning to dig out a space on our property to move his trailer to, and I gladly helped. For reference, the banks at the side of the road are taller than us.
I've been making a bunch of phone calls and doing a bunch of work to get this thing moved, and at the last the thing is on our road just outside of the spot we dug out, but it wasn't flared out enough and the lip off the side of the road was too steep and the tow company refused to put it into place, fearing it would get stuck. On the property we've got a few stacks of side rejects from a lumber mill a buddy of mine runs, and we've been digging them out of the snow to build a short ramp to get this trailer into place. Shortly after I finish writing this I'll be heading up there again to keep digging more pieces out so we can hopefully get the thing into place by the end of the day, though of course it's snowing, windy, and damn cold so it won't be a good time.
Adam and I have hit it off quite well, and being a simple man with little means he's very humble and easy to please, also skilled with tools. He's a thinker, too, and I've spent a good amount of time with him already just talking about life and philosophy, long term goals, etc. He's got an interesting perspective, being forty and having lived a hell of a life, and I really enjoy his personality. He'll be living for free on the land taking care of the livestock, an arrangement I'm pleased with considering that neither me nor Gabe can live there full time anymore and I don't want to give up on raising livestock. The timing of all of this is extremely beneficial, and I'm excited to see where things go from here.
Expect a part three to this within the next two weeks with info on the land survey and goals. I have plans this weekend unrelated to the property and probably won't be back up there for a while, but we've got a shepherd on our team now.
To clarify what I mean by eviction, he lives in a small camper trailer he fixed up to be useable in a climate as harsh as northern Wisconsin. At the start of winter he was living in the nearby national forest with this trailer, moving it all over the place to avoid getting found by the rangers. It's a huge swathe of undeveloped land that the feds use for harvesting timber to sell to other countries, namely China, and they're very particular about the forests they've so unceremoniously stolen from the states they reside in. Eventually some foresters caught onto him and started sabotaging some of the logging roads by building berms and dropping trees along them to block his routes and trap him outside the forest, and he figured it would be wise to take the hint and get out before anything got worse. He struck up a deal with a guy in our town to park the trailer in his driveway for the remainder of the winter at the tune of four hundred dollars a month plus the cost of electric.
Though it may be obvious from the rest of my posts here, please understand that winter here isn't like how it is south of the 45th parallel for the rest of the country. It's not just a minor inconvenience where you get a little nippy, oof augh brr, oh geez im sOOOO COLD ....... , it's a real season and it has killed much stronger men than me in times past and still today. There are very few homeless here because the winters either kill them or drive them south. The endless feet of snow buries everything for the better part of four or five months, and getting anything done or finding anything to burn is very difficult and extremely fatiguing. It's considered the absolute lowest behavior and an unforgivable offense here to betray a man in your trust in the middle of winter, because even to this day it may as well be the same as killing him.
His landlord being a transplant from South Carolina of course doesn't understand this and doesn't care, and was beginning to extort Adam for money to pay off his unpaid utilities and backwards loans as they had no written contract. Being poor and in a bad way himself he refused, and so the landlord served him an eviction notice with a week's time to vacate. Given that he has no truck and everything everywhere is buried in feet of snow it was a hell of a situation to deal with, and when I arrived on Saturday Gabe and Adam were beginning to dig out a space on our property to move his trailer to, and I gladly helped. For reference, the banks at the side of the road are taller than us.
I've been making a bunch of phone calls and doing a bunch of work to get this thing moved, and at the last the thing is on our road just outside of the spot we dug out, but it wasn't flared out enough and the lip off the side of the road was too steep and the tow company refused to put it into place, fearing it would get stuck. On the property we've got a few stacks of side rejects from a lumber mill a buddy of mine runs, and we've been digging them out of the snow to build a short ramp to get this trailer into place. Shortly after I finish writing this I'll be heading up there again to keep digging more pieces out so we can hopefully get the thing into place by the end of the day, though of course it's snowing, windy, and damn cold so it won't be a good time.
Adam and I have hit it off quite well, and being a simple man with little means he's very humble and easy to please, also skilled with tools. He's a thinker, too, and I've spent a good amount of time with him already just talking about life and philosophy, long term goals, etc. He's got an interesting perspective, being forty and having lived a hell of a life, and I really enjoy his personality. He'll be living for free on the land taking care of the livestock, an arrangement I'm pleased with considering that neither me nor Gabe can live there full time anymore and I don't want to give up on raising livestock. The timing of all of this is extremely beneficial, and I'm excited to see where things go from here.
Expect a part three to this within the next two weeks with info on the land survey and goals. I have plans this weekend unrelated to the property and probably won't be back up there for a while, but we've got a shepherd on our team now.
