In real life, I’m actually a fairly humble guy on pretty much everything. In fact, an outside observer would, probably accurately, say I even have low self-esteem issues. So it should be understood that this post isn’t bragging. I usually don’t brag because if I did something worth bragging about it’s probably something I should have done years sooner or with better results than I actually achieved. Anyway….

I was rolling through some old posts and noticed that several posts where I described changes in my life or courses of action I was taking have realized their potential. I thought it would be interesting to point them out.

After having limited employment opportunities, I decided that rather than agitate that minimum wage needed to be raised to $15, I needed to become the kind of person who was worth more. So..I went back to school. While in school I needed to actually get some direction and stop wandering aimlessly. I needed to develop a principle to use as a yardstick for my activities. And I needed to set some actual, defined, quantifiable goals. I also moved the direction of my efforts slightly from heavy-on-the-materiel to heavy-on-the-financial. And…it largely paid off. I hit virtually every goal I set, once I actually had a goal. The life I have now is far from perfect, but it is leaps and bounds more resilient than it used to be, and more importantly, there is substantial groundwork laid for the future.

It’s all stuff I should have done years ago, yep. But…maybe better late than never

What made the difference? (Other than having no real other options, I mean.) Figuring out goals and setting them. And then sticking to working towards them. Consistently. Short terms goals were easy. Any idiot can stay on a diet, exercise plan, steps-a-day, or other goal for two weeks. Thats easy. Two months? Harder, but within most of us. But…years? Thats a challenge. But…it can be done. I’m the least disciplined person you’ll ever meet. I always look for the easy way out. But if I could get my act together enough to hit some of these important goals (pay off house, get out of debt, finish college, bang Jennifer Law…wait, still working on that last one) then I can pretty much guarantee any person can. Heck, probably be easier for them than for me.

I’m not going to say I did it all on my own. Or that I’m some sort of self-made-man. Nope. I had help. People stepped in and stepped up here and there. Sometimes it was with a check, sometimes it was with an ‘attaboy’, but it was never all just me. And I’m fine with that. The people who helped me were the people I wanted in my life and they added to it as I added to theirs…and they proved that they were worth having in my life.

In my opinion, my life still isn’t anything to jump up and down about. There are still smoldering hot spots that could flare up anytime and start the blaze again, but things are far better than they used to be.

I’m telling ya man….find goals, set them, and then go after them ruthlessly. Worked (up to this point) for me.

So…the hordes are marching down the street towards your neighborhood. Sitting on the table before you is a brand new HiPoint 9mm and a box of Wolf ammo. Next to it is a brand new Glock 17 and a box of Federal ammo. You can only grab one ammo/gun combo. Which one do you grab?

Fairly confident most of you would eschew the HiPoint/Wolf combination. Yes? And why would you not choose them? Probably the most common answer would be something along the lines of “I don’t have confidence in the gun”, “The stakes are too high for me to risk relying on it”, or “I don’t trust the gun to perform as well as the other gun.” These are all perfectly valid concerns. I mean, think about it, when something as important as your safety and security is on the line don’t you want to have the most reliable, trustworthy, confidence inspiring gear on your side? of course you do. If you were jumping into the apocalypse you would judge every resource you have for it’s ability to be trusted for reliability and performance.

So…why do some folks keep people in their life who wouldn’t pass that same inspection? Do you really hold your handguns, flashlights, and pocket knives to a higher standard than you do the people you let into your life, your home, and your heart? Shouldn’t you hold the people in your life to at least the same standards as you do your pistol?

Years ago I thought about the people that I let into my life. I narrowed them down into three categories: people who made my life pleasant and added to my life, people who didnt make my life better but didnt make it worse, and people who made me unhappy and who subtracted rather than added to my life. The first two groups made the cut, the last group…not so much. And that wasn’t a terribly easy decision to make. There’s people I genuinely care about and love out there whom I just simply will not let into my life because having them involved in any facet of my life causes unhappiness. I trimmed out a bunch of ‘casual friends’, acquaintances, and even some family. What remains are people whom I actually care about, who take an interest in me and my life, I trust to varying degrees, and feel comfortable being myself around.

I’m not saying I have to ‘get something out of’ having a person involved in my life, rather I am saying if I don’t enjoy having someone in my life, or if its just a one-way street of intimacy and concern, then there’s no reason for me to let them in.

If you genuinely believe that the life we know is starting a slide into some difficult times, perhaps even really difficult times, does it make sense to expend time, emotion, privacy, trust, and concern on people who seem to only make you sorry when you talk to them? And does it make sense, in these times of…heightened concern… to have unreliable, untrustworthy, uncertain, or uncomfortable people around? No, it doesn’t. And, sadly, that means that some relationships, with people you may have known for years, need to be taken out and put down like a lame horse.

Only you know who in your circle of family and friends is adding to your life and who is taking away from it. Maybe its your cousin who wants to know everything about whats going on in your life but shuts you down when you ask about his. Or it’s the guy from work who you get along great with except for every other Friday when he calls you for a ride home because he’s drunk..again…and needs a ride. Maybe it’s your sister-in-law who seems to do nothing but tell your wife about how much of a loser you are and how she could have done better. Could be it’s even a brother or parent who, when their name shows up in your caller ID, ruins your day. Can you ‘ghost’ these people? Can you minimize their role in your life? Can you just cut them off?

The people that you’re going to ride out Ragnarok with shouldn’t just be an approximation of the random strangers you share an elevator with. There should be purpose and design in who you let into your life. And that phrase, ‘let into your life’, means exactly that. If you have someone in your life that you wouldn’t feel comfortable with driving your truck, housesitting for you, or playing with your kids when you’re not around…..then you might wanna think about whether you have the room for them, emotionally and strategically, in your life.

I own a lot of guns. A lot. And there isn’t a single one that I have acquired that I feel is a junker or a Saturday night Special or just a plain ‘ol piece of crap. I expended resources acquiring each of those guns and keeping a clunker serves my interest in no way whatsoever. I have no problem holding the people in my life to that same standard. I can be friends with lotsa people, but the list of people I take into my house and heart is extremely small. But, those people are, to me, good people worth knowing for what they add to my life. When the end of the world comes (or the end of MY world) , I’ll have no problem having them ‘on my side’ because they’ve been on my side all along…otherwise I wouldn’t be having some sort of relationship with them.

So, my advice to you is that if you really are worried about where things are going perhaps it’s time to triage through your friends/family relationships with as critical an eye as you go through the display case at the gun counter of your local shop.

Just something to think about.

Someone in comments mentioned that perhaps if I was set in terms of gear, perhaps I could opine on necessary skillsets.

Well, this is very abstract, but there is but one skill, in my opinion, that the serious student of survivalism (or even just plain ‘ol Life) should try to develop. Develop this one skill and all the other skills flow from it and are magnified by it.

Learn to think ‘outisde the box’. What does that mean? It means always be open to the previously unthought of, to new ways of thinking, to expanding your outlook past it’s present limits. Lemme put it another way….theres the old joke about what book would you want if you were stuck with only one book to read. The smartass answer is ‘a dictionary’ because it contains ALL books.

Learn to think for yourself, think critically, be able to see from other viewpoints, and whatever skill you try to learn next will be easier and more thorough. Don’t let yourself be limited by religious, political, social, or classist dogma. Keep an open mind so you can see things from every angle and point of view. You don’t have to agree, support, or believe in other viewpoints and perspectives in order to see things from those angles…you just need to be willing to try it so you can explore a topic as thoroughly as possible.

A zillion years ago, armies used to line up facing each other and start shooting until one side had enough and quit. That was how wars were fought. Everybody knew that, right? Hiding behind rocks? Shooting and running? Taking out the officers first? Why, thats the tactic of the heathen savages! And, because of racial, political, and cultural dogma, a lot of European wars were fought the same way for a hundred or so years. And then finally someone thought outside the box, decided to ‘stoop’ to the level of the savages, and discovered that..hey…they were on to something with that whole ‘shoot from cover’ thing.

Being willing to explore previously ignored, undeveloped, or undiscovered ideas is like suddenly discovering the switch for the high beams as you’re driving down a pitch-dark road at night. Not allowing yourself to be constrained into a narrow or rigid way of thinking makes it easier to recognize new ideas, opportunities, and alternatives.

Ayn Rand said that man’s mind is his primary tool of survival. You don’t have to agree with Rand on everything but I think we can all pretty much agree on that one statement. The ability to think….think clearly..think for yourself…develop your own ideas and outlooks….is the starting point for learning everything else worth knowing. Sure, you can grab Ham radio For Dummies and pass the exam.. or you can think about how radio works, find some topics on the subject, perhaps some history, that interest you and lead you to learn more, build a few primitive made-from-parts-around-the-house radio receivers because you have a burning need to know how things work…that sort of thing. Develop a curious mind and learning things will never seem like learning.

Everything I’ve ever wanted to know…I mean really wanted to know about…I taught myself. Of course, back then it was more difficult since your only recourses were library cards and first-hand experience. Nowadays genuine world-class experts can show you how to do anything for free on YouTube. How incredible is that? If there’s a skillset for anything that isn’t taught somewhere on the internet…I can’t think of it.

So, yeah….for me…the most useful skillset is being able to think for myself, draw my own conclusions, be willing to explore opinions or ideas that are foreign, uncomfortable, or even opposite of what I believe, and to be open to new ideas.

It’s really a hard task to try and put it all into words, but there you have it. I probably didn’t explain it as well as I could have but maybe some of it resonated. Once you have that mindset, you won’t need anyone to tell you what skillsets you should bone up on….you’ll already know because you know whats best for you and your situation.

Focus, Zero, focus…..

I’ve been a bit remiss lately on the physical side of preparedness and been spending too much time on the theoretical end of it. What does that mean? It means I’ve been staring into the computer too much making plans and strategies for the upcoming year and not spending enough time walking through CostCo, WalMart, and Home Depot getting things to improve my resilience.

What sort of planning? Honestly, mostly financial planning and reviewing. I’m reviewing how I did on my financial goals for 2020 (nailed them…nailed ’em hard), thinking about where the goalposts should be for 2021, and figuring out how much money I need each month to hit those goals. Thats the easy part. The more challenging part is adjusting the calculations for if I miss/surpass the monthly goal. I’ve a spreadsheet for that, but it takes a bit of fine tuning. Like I said…its all theory. But theory doesn’t fill the freezer. I need to remember to do the more practical stuff and get out there and buy the items, stock the shelves, fill the freezer, rotate the fuel, check the expiration dates, evaluate the quantities, etc, etc.

I’m still sitting at a pretty good level of preparedness from all of 2020’s renewed urgency. Just need to keep that motivation going. The Kung Flu thing has sort of had all the shiny taken off it and many people aren’t as frantic about it as they were last year, so motivation might seem a bit reduced. However the new(er) motivation is the upcoming economic…activities…supported/fomented/mandated/foisted upon us by the new administration. And that’s something I prepare for more with bullion than bouillon. As of late I’ve been just as concerned about stacking cash ( and cash like instruments) and investing as I’ve been in stacking ammo and stockpiling. I really am exceptionally diversified.

Inauguration is this week and even if it doesn’t turn into a boogaloo theres still those ‘first 100 days’ agenda items that will try to get ramrodded into law in a hurry. All in all, the year has barely started and its just fixin’ to get more interesting. Sell the jet ski, cancel the trip to DisneyLand, and start making more trips to CostCo.

Tam (aka ‘Our Lady Of Snark’),  has a post about how the Current Situation has us swimming in stress hormones and that regardless of whether the stress is from being chased by a lion or having to queue for TP at CostCo, the physiological and mental results are the same.

No doubt, there are stressors aplenty in the wind these days. How do you avoid stress? Remove (or mitigate) the situation that you are stressing over. Do I stress about getting eaten by a T. Rex? No, because there ain’t no T. Rex anymo’. So if I want to not stress over, say, a toilet paper shortage the solution is…have plenty of toilet paper.

I’ve touched on this in an earlier post.

The solution is simple, it just isn’t easy – remove the source of stress.

Every year I stress about my property taxes. I worry that I won’t have the money to pay them and that I’ll lose my house. What eliminates that stress? Paying the taxes (or having the money to do so). So every month I force myself to set aside 1/12th of my property taxes and once a year I pay them for the upcoming year. And the stress disappears (for that year). I don’t worry about getting eaten by that T. Rex because, for that year, the T. Rex doesn’t exist anymore.

Realistically, virtually any single thing you are stressing about can be resolved with enough money..housing, food, health, security, etc….all fixable with enough greenbacks. But, addressing the issue directly is often the best choice… worried about going hungry? Stockpile food. Worried about not being able to make your car payment? Pay off the car or downsize it. Worried about your neighborhood being unsafe? Move or change the character of the neighborhood. Etc, etc.

I hate to use this word, but the secret to avoiding stress is…..control. If you can exert control, of almost any degree, over the situation then your stress is reduced. Sure there are situations you can’t completely control but you can exert some control. I can’t control if I’m going to suddenly have a debilitating stroke..but I can exert some control by eating well, watching my health, etc, etc. I can’t control the goobers in Washington in regards to guns, but I can exert some control by having my mag and gun needs met before they can start their shenanigans. I can’t control what 2021 is going to be like but I can control my supply of food, money, fuel, resources, information and all the things I need to mitigate 2021’s sting.. and that modicum of control reduces any stress I may have.

Probably the best example is my water heater. Years ago, I was informed there was a puddle under my water heater. A prior version of myself would have suddenly had the whole day go dark, and I’d have spent the next few days brooding and being upset wondering where the heck the money was going to come from for this repair and why was my life so crappy that I can’t even get the water heater fixed and..and…and…you get the idea. But, no, it was simply a shrug, “that sucks”, and write a check to the plumber off the emergency fund. No muss, no fuss, no stress. In this particular case, having money was what gave me the control over the situation and eliminated the stress.

Personally, I have not stressed about 2020 (or 2021) enough, in my opinion, to be experiencing negative physiological reactions. Or maybe I am and I’m not noticing it. But I don’t think I am. Why? Because I try to control what I can, and for those things I can’t control I prepare against. Between control of a situation, and being prepared against if the situation arises, any stresses I have are pretty manageable.

Of course…this only works if I’ve foreseen all likely outcomes. As I read on the interwebs, 2020 was the equivalent of stepping up to a crosswalk, waiting for the light, looking carefully both ways before crossing, stepping off the curb….and getting hit by a submarine. Didn’t quite see that one coming. But…by and large….yeah, not stressing.

The low hanging fruit of the blogging world is the reviewing the previous year and speculating on the upcoming year. Not being proud, here we go….

2020. Holy Drokk, where to start? From a survivalist standpoint is was a fairly validating year. I didn’t wind up needing to use any of the stored food or supplies. Even toilet paper needs were met handily just by the ‘on hand’ supply that exists outside of the stored stuff. But, the situation did give me the impetus to double-down on a lot of stuff. Most notably, the Preponomicon was thoroughly examined, revised, reviewed, and adhered to. While I was doing quite well on most things, I took this time to really polish off a few glaring weak spots and beef up what I already had.

Gunwise, it was a freakin’ Mardi Gras. If I told you what I spent on guns and magazines this year you would be aghast. But…I did what I believed was necessary for the continued safety and security of my future self. So..I regret nothing.

Financially, there was a little bit of a hiccup in March when things really hit the fan in terms of the Wuhan Flu becoming A Big Deal. I had to dip into cash reserves a tiny bit but then the income stream resumed it’s normal flow and I made up for it. In fact, 2020, despite my outrageous purchases, turned out to be a good year in terms of making progress on finances.

There were, of course, some down moments. Most notably the election. Because I had my doubts about a Trump re-election, I decided early in the year to get a start on going heavy on Uncertain Goods. Unfortunately, I was not the only one and between political maneuvering, race riots, a pandemic, and gasping economy, there were plenty of moments where things I wanted were either unavailable or grossly overpriced. However, I managed to get it all done with a bit of time to spare. Yay me.

All in all, 2020 was actually…and I hate to say this because it makes me sound like a colossal jerk…a really good year for me. I got a lot done, hit a bunch of goals, had virtually no hit to my income or finances, and pretty much skated through a year that left a lot of people crashed and burning by the side of the road. And…it wasn’t luck. By living below my means, getting the house paid off, not carrying debt, having multiple income streams, and keeping a cautious eye open for opportunities, 2020 wound up being, on paper, a good year for me.

What’s my prediction for 2021?  The likeliest thing I see happening is economic uncertainty. Keep in mind, I say “uncertainty” but that doesn’t indicate good or bad. There could be an economic revival of sorts as the ‘dead wood’ is swept aside as businesses that were long past tenable finally disappear, leaving behind smaller, more agile, better run businesses to take up the slack. The void left by businesses closing is an opportunity for new businesses. The forced acceleration of the inevitable switch to more ‘telecommuting’ or ‘remote’ jobs may open avenues for people who have wanted to work for East/West coast companies but never wanted to leave Kansas. So, there is a perspective that says 2021 might be a good year.

But, then theres the other side of the argument….businesses close or reduce their workforce, long-term leases for business space dry up creating commercial real estate ghost towns, unemployment increases, .gov starts printing money for benefits, state and local .gov get carried away with their newfound powers in the name of ‘the public health’, the Trump tax changes get repealed, we all lumber through a prolonged recession….that sort of thing. Telecommuting means a broader pool of competitors for a job opening, possibly even outsourcing. A larger pool of candidates means employers can offer less compensation and be reasonably sure someone, somewhere, will take it. Could go either way. So….yeah, changes ahead….and those changes could swing in either direction.

And that doesn’t even touch on whether or not the new administration (or whoever is pulling their strings) finally gets around to the old chestnut of ‘reasonable gun control’ that has become a rallying cry for the left.

Personally, I think 2021 will be a year that is full of the consequences of 2020. I think the economic impact of the everything that happened in 2020 will ‘come home to roost’ in 2021. My personal plans for 2021 include reducing expenditures and maximizing income as much as possible, spreading my assets out into various forms…cash, savings, metals, etc., working on some sideline gigs that will generate some cash fairly consistently so there’s always something coming in, and overall just working on increasing my resilience against whatever is coming.