The Art of Taking Responsibility for Everything You Own TPS-0117

This is another blessed day of rain that I'm able to shift gears and catch up on projects that I'm able to accomplish well, staying sheltered from the rain, but without the solar power to be able to using my solar powered office.

So one of the tasks that I had been working on piecemeal over the course of a couple few months now, but never until today did I really get serious about optimizing the workflow of it, it was pretty much a scatter, just adding to this process in a disorganized way, but knowing eventually I would get around to squaring it away and organizing an extremely comprehensive, geographically compartmentalized, sort of zoned out, nested tree of a list of everything that I own that's a physical object.

I have modest means and modest objects in my possession overall.

By most measures, even anywhere in the world, I'm barely sheltered and completely houseless, in some people's vocabulary, homeless, but I'm a nomad.

So some of those terms may not apply, but in terms of being a trucksteader, I have a very modest footprint for what I own and I've had this protocol I set myself on years ago where I said I really just want to develop land doing permaculture design and I want most of what is mine to be shared ultimately, and for that to be living organic, ecological systems that I established, mainly with my own bare hands and with the help of others.

But point being, the ratio of plastic objects and electronics and mementos and just frivolous, as seen on TV stuff, your garage filled with things you never even open, or even know what they are.

I get enough beauty from the garden and from wild nature and the sky and the sun and the moon and I don't need a lot of clutter that is even from a down to earth sort of clutter of your spiritual affects if you will, if you have various ways of arranging things to enhance your spiritual life.

To me, again, that comes back to just, I'm surrounded by wilderness.

I don't have to approximate it with putting things inside indoors, in a house that remind me of being outside.

There's no need to have paintings of beautiful landscapes.

That's my view as my horizon. So, with all that said, the idea of having a very minimalistic array of, shall we say, artificial objects, I wanted those objects to be, whatever they were, whatever they had to be, to just basically be tools and equipment and the containers of food and water and medicine that I need to operate.

Militaristic in the sense of no frills, nothing, unless it's part of a mission of some kind, maybe a psychological operation, really, there's not a lot of excess taken in terms of being ornate.

To me that's an aesthetic in and of itself, the aesthetic of military minimalism.

Because a lot of operations occur in the great outdoors, why would you need to embellish much?

Everybody's got their own take on things. Certainly, I know people who are off grid and they're extreme artists. So everything is painted and everything is patterns. They're deep in wild nature or in a city, they're gonna make an artistic dwelling.

I'm not so much inclined in that sense. I'm not a great, fine artist.

I'm about getting things done and having a simplistic way of doing it.

I've been de-cluttering and purging and minimizing, giving stuff away.

I'm a musician. I gave away all my instruments, and I had nice gear over the years real serious nice pro gear a lot of it, and I knew I wanted to eventually give it away to the next generations which I've done. I feel good about that. Sometimes I miss it but I'm in a different chapter of my life. Those were all vessels or vehicles.

I often think about when guitar was my main tool of choice, where did that take me in life? Where did I go? Actually, geographically, it took me places. I went on tour. It helped me establish a name for myself. It got me other gigs. It got me in bands. Those took me places and opened new doors.

Then I evolved to be a drummer and that did the same thing and led me different places.

Then I went to electronic music, and that took me places.

Those things have scaled to get me to what I'm doing now and where I am now, which the main event.

The main kit is the tools and equipment that I need to on a daily basis develop and maintain this permaculture site for my own sustenance, and for the purpose of being able to teach and train others, and to eventually hand it down through my trust so that it can be sustained as a permaculture site, a training site.

And now the focus is really, I don't want anything, I don't need anything that is not part of that mission.

Now, I don't want anything frivolous. I don't want anything I gotta worry about being damaged in the elements.

So it's a very lean operational environment. The tools, the gear, the appropriate protective clothing, everything is just sort of ruggedized.

Everything is following a protocol that I developed over the years.

It's kind of best practices to anybody who's a prepper, you should know where everything is that's gonna be pre-staged for bugging out, to load out when stuff hits the fan.

You have these different scales. I even did a research paper applying permaculture zonation theory to preparedness to where you have the scale of your body, what people will call everyday carry that's like zone one, what you have on your person.

Or you could even say, zone zero is your skills, what you have in your mind, what's in your muscle memory.

So you have what's inside of you, that's your skills and knowledge that you can bet your life on if you train well.

And then there's the things you have that you're wearing, that are in your pockets, that are within reach at all times, your everyday carry.

And then next would be the 72 hour emergency kit backpack, A-K-A go bag or bug out bag and then you Would have the preps that you store in your vehicle or even your bicycle or motorcycle, but your mobility platform, the preps that go into that, and then school or workplace. The place you spend the most time outside of the home, then there's everything you have in your home, then there's everything you have at a remote survival retreat AKA Bug out location. there's some nuance in between there, but I did a whole paper.

So if that is the entire map of reality for a prepper, and without knowing it, I mean, most people's map would be, I don't prep at all. Therefore my map is me freaking out because I have no skills inside my body. I have nothing on my body that's useful whatsoever. So I'm freezing and I'm unable to patch wounds or be of service to anyone else, and I'm just panicking and screaming and freaking out and going into shock while more organized people like first responders show up.

And what do they have, tons of skills, tons of kit on their person, tons of kit in their vehicle. They have access to hospitals and emergency centers at all scales.

So you get the idea, it's a continuum.

If you were a first responder of any kind, your kit is gonna scale into the national level of the stockpiles of weapons and supplies all the way at the national level.

If you're just a civilian like me, you gotta be somewhere in between, mainly keeping track of us stuff and keeping it orderly. I actually built a tool, recently, a web based tool to help people get into the mindset to have a practical tool.

So it's a teaching tool and a tool that actually works in its own right to help people do what I just did right now, which was to create a living list, a well organized living list that can be relatively easily adjusted and navigated as you evolve and grow and move things around.

But in order to keep track of the inventory of your supplies, where they are, where they live when you're not moving them or evacuating, where they go when you are evacuating. Because a lot of things in a bug out bag, they just live in that bug out bag. You're hopefully not stuffing it with stuff from drawers in an emergency.

Hopefully you did that in advance. And you keep track of rotating things that could go bad, like batteries and food and whatnot.

If you take anything out of it, you make note of it so that you replenish it before you need it.

A lot of people will use a bug out bag for just camping and picnics and hikes. You use things in it, but you gotta remember to replace it.

So to me, this is this process of minimizing down to just gear and equipment for the mission, and that is what I own.

That's what's in my life, but then keeping track of it, maintaining it so you don't end up over buying and having too much of something that you don't even need that much of.

There are certain things I would say for me, it's stevia liquids.

It's green tea, it's honey for making mead. Anytime I get a run of supplies, I'm gonna always add those types of items.

I could never have enough, cause I never wanna run out.

It'll be nice to always have plenty to share as well.

But there's other things. I don't need to have a million of a type of battery.

It's almost obsolete because we don't use those types of batteries that often anymore.

Everyone's gonna be different again. For me, I'm trying to make sure that I don't buy something that I can't find.

Certainly, it makes sense to have two or three of an item, that if it wears out, it could be catastrophic. Even if it's not catastrophic, I better have, backups of the of that because it would be lame of me not to have that squared away. But all of that, of course, is within reason.

But as I toss things around, as I rummage through junk drawers and places and tool boxes and things, and I go, okay, if I'm gonna dig for something and find it, I'm not gonna make it a chore, a task, to have to find it again.

I wanna inventory it. I wanna know where it is. If it moves I gotta keep track of it. And slowly but surely, over time, there's only a few areas in my physical footprint of a life...this is a similar process in the digital world, taking care of organizing file systems and whatnot Which in a lot of ways, is just as important.

So that's another story, but it's all part of the continuum of being in this mindset.

I'm pleased to say that, as of today, some of the last nooks and crannies that had been unaccounted, probably less than 5 % of the objects that I own are not in this master list.

If you're able to ensure the valuables that you own, the more that you were able to inventory that, the more accurate your insurance payouts will be.

If you had a flood, fire, theft, whatever you're covered by, if you have your property insured in that way, I don't have that type of insurance that I'm paying for someone to cover, an agency to cover.

But I do like to have the notion that if I were the victim of theft or a natural disaster, that I would know what I need to replace.

To me, it drives me crazy. It's a nightmare to think about losing things and then forgetting what they were, and forgetting that I had those dimensions of capability, whether it's tools or whatever it is, even if I don't use it every day and therefore out of sight out of mind if I acquired it and I didn't intentionally give it away or dispose of it in some manner. I don't wanna forget that it ever existed.

It'd be one thing to forget that I had it and buy it again. That's not as bad as to forget that you had it and then never get it again, and then need it, and then realize, oh, that's probably something that got stolen when my car got broken into or whatever, and then I forgot that even had it.

So the utility of not just being able to find things in an efficient manner, because there's an inventory, and beyond the ability to maintain the quantities of supplies within that inventory, to me, another emergent property that's valuable is the idea that I just know what I own, what I use, what I need, and what I have acquired in this life to get jobs done.

There are tools in a tool kit, any standard tool kit that may never get used ever, even once, but they're there like a ratchet set.

In order to have the ability to not be in a situation, whether it's professional on a job site... I think money's time, and you have to go to take a trip to get new tools that cuts in, that's gonna cost you more than what the tools are worth if you were to buy them when you weren't doing a job and now you're losing money.

But point being, I feel this sense of empowerment to think about how there's no disordered, disorganized, un-inventoried, almost square inch of my physical footprint.

Maybe 5% is left that could still be organized.

Even my junk drawers are inventoried at this point. I don't have much of them, but there are assorted materials that don't really group well together, and then just kind of end up in and more of an assortment arrangement.

My saving grace now is I got a lot of these real hardcore carabiners, and I hang things up as much as I can for a couple of reasons. They're out of the way, they can be easily clipped on and clipped off for ease of use and for emergency evacuation procedures.

They're easy to keep track of, visually I can scan all the things that are hanging in my sort of trucksteading world and I know that the procedure is not gonna be me fumbling around wondering where things are hoping I don't leave something behind.

If I have to evacuate, it's just clip, clip, clip clip, all down the line.

It is field craft in a sense that I'm in a situation where the tactical situation could be one where I need to be in a defensive posture at any moment. Not because I'm paranoid or because I'm playing Red Dawn. It's because of my remoteness and my lone wolfing it. There's no team with a minimum of three people doing an eight hour shift, watching each other while we sleep, so that we won't be very tactically disadvantaged while we sleep.

I have to be tactically advantage at all times, which means whatever I need to respond to a threat of any kind, if it's the weather, wild animals, human beings of any kind.

For me, this system of clipping everything with carabiners is very useful, very strategic and tactical.

But all that stuff is accounted for. A more interesting nuance to this is that it's not just a list of everything that's in the back of the truck, everything that's in the front of the truck...

I broke things down into sectors or zones where let's say, a truck cab, what it ended up being when I accounted for everything where everything's tucked away, to try to group things in some sense.

I made it into the front seat area and the backseat area, the driver's side the passenger side and then what's below the seats or on the floor and then what's on the seats which obviously I'm being sure not to have anything in the way on the driver's side seat.

But I can get away with putting stuff on the front passenger seat I can get away with putting stuff in the backseat of the truck, although I tend to make that accessible for emergency sheltering.

So I keep most of that clear on the seat. But then the whole floor board of the backseat, that's loaded with things, and even under the seat too, of course.

So breaking that up into the passenger side, the driver's side and the center, that's the sort of sectioning that I developed, and then even things hanging in that.

So there's things on the seat. There could be things hanging there could be things under the seat, but it's just organized by front and back, essentially left center and right, and then passenger or driver, depending on how you wanna slice that.

But then, of course, in the truck bed, it's an extension of that concept of what's on the left side, what's on the right side, what's in the center.

And whether you have a utility truck or a camper shell, or just a regular bed, if there's stuff in there...I would hope people would apply this however they see fit but for me in order to reference for myself or if ever needed if people are here for training and I say hey there's a map of everything with the list of where everything is.

If I ask you to grab a tool, I can reference a diagram and a list in an area, and say to use this map, and grab that tool, you'll be able to find it.

That will be based, again, on breaking areas up in these sectors.

So now I scaled that out to where tools are stored outside and what's going on with the trash and recycling area, and where materials are stored.

I kind of created this south to north progression.

I think what I am gonna end up doing is using this computer assisted design software to literally recreate the layout and make a 3D model of my entire site, all of the areas where gear and equipment that I own on the site that's part of the site project will be reflected not just on this list, which gets hard to navigate.

I am gonna indent the sub categories within areas so that it's easier to navigate, like a folder when you open a folder, file folder system that kind of branches out so that you can have a sense of where you.

If you're however many levels deep in the folder system, you usually have a visual aid for that.

So that's helpful in a sense. But I'm interested in taking that master list, indenting it for easier reading when it's just reading down a sheet of paper or a text file but then taking that data and applying it to a 3D model where you could navigate the site and search for a tool or a item of gear.

You would highlight in its appropriate place, and you could navigate and zoom into it and then have a visual understanding.

Part of me was saying, man, that's kind of indulgent. Why are you gonna go to that extent when your time would be better used doing something more constructive?

I thought about it. I said, that's a little bit indulgent in a sense that it's kind of fun to geek out thinking about doing that.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. But how can I justify that expenditure of time? Not that it's not fine to have fun for its own sake, but I do like to have this sort of analysis done, because this could be a sprawling thing that could never end.

How detailed do I wanna get? I would really enjoy getting lost and escaping into that process it. I will get in the zone doing it. That's why I'm worried.

I don't wanna have too much fun. Because what if I spent all my time making the digital version of my site and nothing gets done on the site while I'm doing that.

That's my fear. But realistically, the value-add that I put to that is that thinking in the way that I have been training myself, self teaching based on what I know about what operators in the field of all types of elite military units.

It's often stated across various branches in the military, that those who are engaged in more elite operations, that less is more, quality not quantity kind of thing.

They're not just out there being a blunt instrument of a faceless, military monstrosity, just rolling across the landscape, just being the pawns on the chess board.

These are the rooks and the bishops. These are the more sophisticated players on the chess board.

What that means is they'll say they have less action or less total number of operations.

Once they get into this field, into that elite sector, what they spend most of their time doing...it's not what you see in movies. It's not what what these sort of caricaturized depictions are.

It's table top exercises, white boards, reading manuals, studying, working in a team room and working up the mission for months, if not years in advance, sometimes building replicas of what's gonna be seized in some sort of assault.

So that was a sigh of relief to me, giving myself permission to say, really, take time doing everything in life with that mindset of thinking through the what-ifs religiously, as if it was your job and your life depended on it.

Because for the people in the world who are the elites, who it is their job and their life depends on it, the success of the mission, their survival, the survival of the guy to the left and the guy to the right, it all comes down to how much planning has been done.

And how thorough and exhaustive the exercises are done in the classroom and simulating in the field and whatnot before the day of whatever it is.

And as a way of life, to me, that makes a lot of sense for preparedness and survival.

If you wanna be competent to perform first responder-like rescue operations on behalf of your community and yourself and your loved ones, then you wanna know where things are. You wanna know how to assemble a mission specific kit out of the array of kit that you have, which could be all seasons.

It could be for all kinds of different circumstances, being in a group, being alone, being in public, being on private land, being in a national park, being in a an adversarial, hostile environment, whatever those situations may be.

Going back to why I feel very validated to make a 3D model, and for that to be my base, and my map of the base being a 3D model.

Doing drills for procedures like evacuations, it's one thing to have a list of things to check off protocols and procedures, checking things off a list.

That's the way I've normally done it. But I wanna be in this 3D model utility, be able to say to myself, I wanna walk through in, visualize in the mind's eye, the procedure that I will be checking boxes off while I'm doing it.

But I wanna simulate that, and I wanna drill it, and I wanna meditate on it and visualize it. I can do the walk through with a 3D model environment.

I can use the software, open it up and go, okay, I know I'm taking a subset of these items for this type of an evacuation for this duration.

I need this as the day pack. I need this as the three day excursion assemblage.

There's things that, if I were to evacuate, some things would stay, some things would get packed up to go and in the process, displace things that normally have to be tucked away somewhere else.

So there's an input and output procedure as well. So to me, that justifies it.

That would justify the time and the indulgence to have some fun doing this.

Now that I have the sort of master list of all of the items to be able to then plug those lists into the locations on a 3D map of the site, and then be able to do a drill of whatever kind, it even could be a drill of oh I'm gonna go and procure new resources and I wanna know in advance where that's gonna go because I, wanted to move fast I don't want stuff to be sitting around.

If it's in the sun, it could be problematic. Things can get damaged.

Certainly there's times where, either because it could be the sun or the rain, or a sandstorm or whatever, if I don't pre-plan for the potential of their being time pressure, which leads to rushing and making mistakes...

The more you plan, the more you drill, the more preparation you have.

This goes here, this goes there, this goes there.

And I'm not gonna be wondering, what did I mean when I said the front backside, left corner, upside down, backwards?

I'm gonna be able to look at it. I'm gonna visualize it.

I'm gonna imagine myself, okay, this goes here, this goes there, and visualizing it as much as possible, physically drilling it as much as possible.

This could be something as simple as getting the morning newspaper so that you don't hit your head and trip and fall over and break your sprinkler or something.

It could be anything, it could be how you do anything, that could be optimized by basic pre-planning and being organized and meditation.

I spend a lot Of time just trying to meditate on the hazards that are in my environment and to mitigate them as a spiritual practice, as a practical practice.

I don't think this is the path for everyone, but for me, living the way I wanna live, and having a space that I'm gonna you know this is an, austere setting and there are parameters of it that make it extremely medically problematic if things are not thought through very carefully.

I try to take at least a little bit of pride in my attention to detail when it comes to that.

If it's just me, hey, you know what I'm doing? If I mess up and hurt myself or get hurt, it's on me. But if I invite anybody here, I gotta be responsible.

Where are the first aid kits? Where is filtered water that you could flush your eyes with, those things to think through that are extra intensified in a setting like this, and certainly in the more extreme times of the year.

So wish me luck as I proceed forward with this. Hopefully this was motivating to make a date with your junk drawers and have some fun and really get serious about becoming an amateur organizer if you're not a professional organizer, it's so valuable, and it could save your life.

It could save you money. It could save you time. And all those things are complimentary.

When you need it the most, to be able to have peace of mind and not panic because you've drilled it, you know where things are, for the most part, where they should be and not where they shouldn't be.

And if you had to move fast, you could move very smoothly in a very elegant manner.

And the speed could be not frenzied. The speed could be very graceful and very optimized.

I've got it situated. After last summer, almost dying out here.

I've got a plan for a five minute evac procedure, a five hour evac procedure, a five day evac procedure.

That's essentially the way I think, what can be already in place, so that it does not have to be loaded out for a five minute evac, sort things out accordingly.

If it's 5 hours, I know, okay, it's happened before.

It's like there's smoke on the horizon and it looks about this many hours away.

All right, I'm gearing up, and I'm doing the procedure. So in the amount of time that I have, being ready for a five minute evac has its own set of protocols and procedures.

Again, if you have five hours, five days, I'm not gonna call that the rule of fives. I'm a little more flexible than that, but I do think that way.

An easy way to put it would be the evacuation plans for minutes, for hours and for days, for months, for years.

What's the exit strategy of owning a property, or of climate change affecting your property and whatnot?

I am enjoying this process. I hope you find time yourself to engage in a similar process that suits your needs.