A Living Magazine - Tap Root: Supplemental - Publishing Changes and Clarifying the Plan

I think I'm going to just do a large IWALLK blog post next covering all the days up to now, in order to catch up. Then I'll only post when there is something interesting going on with the land or I have some kind of commentary to share in essay form. I hope there will be at least two posts a week, but my ambition is always bigger than my capacity to match it. Right now there are just not enough things to say to cover each and every single day. Life now is a pretty steady routine. 

When I was on my Journeys it was easy to report each day, since I'd be in a new place or doing new things so frequently. This is just a different kind of situation. I don't want to bore people. It is not banal, but would seem pretty close to it to most folks.

This new strategy will not only be more realistic, but also should ease my mind a bit from always feeling like I'm behind. I write this on the 41st day of this property development project, which began when I closed on this property on July 21 of this year. I have been residing at said property for the last 33 days (this being the 34th), since moving here on July 28.

I think once I begin construction next week there will be more pictures and content to talk about.

I believe I haven't been overly clear about what I'm trying to do here, nor the ultimate goals. So here is a more concise description that I hope helps explain things a bit better...

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As most readers know. I was essentially homeless - lived at places that weren't mine and also spent three years traveling - since 2011. I used to have the conventional life, was a direct support worker, banker and financial advisor up until May 2011. I had what might be called an "epiphany" and that's when this blog was started. 

All the details are pretty well known now and are published in these virtual pages for anyone to read. for those just becoming interested. I needed simplicity and natural things in my life. I wanted to not feel like a hypocrite working in a societal game that I felt was ruining the planet and literally killing me (I had a heart attack due to stress in 2006). I literally walked away from that life and toward this new one...

After the two crossings of America recorded here (see the Journeys recorded during 2014, 2015, and 2016), and a second heart attack that put me in the hospital (where I still was exactly a year ago) I found myself unable to travel in the same way anymore. I was stuck in a pathetic situation where the choice was to either join the game again or find a way to continue my life independent of it. There really wasn't a choice though. I couldn't go back to artificiality after witnessing so much of reality.

Through the help of someone very special I was able to buy this land in Farmington (Maine) and somehow ended up with the extremely rare opportunity to be in an owner financing situation. 

Just before the Journeys around America (in 2014), I had planned what I would do were I ever able to own a piece of land. I swore that I would put my philosophies about simplifying life into effect. Back then, this was all fleshed out at my other blog: SelfSustainingProperty.Blogspot.com. Nonetheless, it had always been my dream to own land and build a house. It's just that the dream became more and more modest over the years and much more practical. By this year the concept had been honed and perfected over the last decade and is now being put into practice.

All the while, I still have both personal and public goals with this project. I think they sync together rather well. My life has pretty much been an open book for many years now. Why not try to continue the story and really make a difference if I can while more and more folks are paying attention?

THE PERSONAL GOALS

I needed a place of my own to live, and now I have one. I guess that is the largest and most helpful change. To be constantly be beholden to another person can destroy one's dignity after a while.

I have also wanted be in a financial situation where I so few expenses that I could support myself exclusively with my own creative work. I used to counsel people about how they could obtain more money. And, without trying to be coy, told them that spending less money is almost exactly like working more hours to gain it, except that you don't have to work more hours and the supplemental amount you have is tax free. I have done my best to practice what I preach in this regard.

I want to make my life my own; capture it back from those to whom it was lent...and the one to whom it was nearly lost. As readers of this blog know, I love nature and being able to live in a beautiful and natural environment is probably the most healthy thing I could do for myself.

I have been cautious about enjoying it so far though. So many dreams of mine have turned into nightmares. It is hard for me to believe that I may have finally found a place where I can search for the peace of mind which has eluded me for decades.

In whatever mangled sense of self I have left, I actually feel guilty about having something I've always wanted. But, shit, that's my baggage to get over. I can not think of a better way to do that than on my mountain lot.

Now that I am back in Farmington, I may explore taking classes for at least one other degree.

I have one other thing to complete, one way or another. I have - literally - some hell to pay. There is chapter of my life about which I have never written. For those who followed just how strange my experiences have been in recent years, knowing understanding this excluded information will fill in all the spaces. Without my realizing it until finding this land, the Spark has brought me back to the spiritual battleground of my youth. The event to which I refer happened exactly 30 years ago during my freshman year, here at the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF). I have tried to let small bits of this subplot slip out to you and my Facebook friends. I'm not sure anyone is really getting it. Some folks whom I've met in person know of this strange happening. I'm hoping maybe they will tell the tale if I never get a chance to. Over the winter, in the cold of the wilderness (literally and figuratively) I will face the trap maker. But this time the Spark will be burning above my head; shining forward into the darkness...

When spring comes I expect to be a much more complete human being, or will have ceased being. I'm not trying to be melodramatic. I'm only expressing this in a way that might imply how important it is to me.


THE PUBLIC GOALS

Blogging - Since I will be doing all of this anyway, and have a vehicle for sharing it (this blog), I figure that I might as well bring you along if you're interested. So, the blogging about this property development project will essentially cover the 12 months from July 21, 2017 to July 21, 2018. It is related to IWALLK in that it is the culmination of the period between leaving my old life (in 2011) and establishing a new life (in 2018). That doesn't mean there will be no more posts here, but other projects should then be forming if all goes well. And those would be...

Books - I have a backlog of books piling up in my mind. I plan to use my isolation and extra time this winter to begin publishing them. Among these will be...

* Printed journal versions of the two crossings: (1) A Manifest Destiny: America from the Bottom Up and (2) A Living Magazine: Homecoming.

* A compilation of my essays: The Peppertree Essays.

* A book about my spiritual philosophical experience: The Spark.

* The autobiographical novel which will include the event I touched on above: Apostle Teardrops.

* A compilation of my short fictional stories: [Title to be announced].

Music - In a sense, just to be able to return to music (my first real love) would be reason enough to have done all that I have attempted to do in these last seven years. Albums which I have been composing in my head or collaborating on (or plan to collaborate on) with others, while doing all that walking, will finally be translated into audio recordings and will include the following...

* Three vocal albums. Two solo albums: (1) Reflectivity and (2) A Million Ways. And, the production and collaboration with a musician I met in Portland, Oregon, self-title (3) Anowav (Anonymous Wave).

* Two ambient albums: (1) Sherbet Chainsaw (an experimental work) and (2) Fields.

* A lo-fi retrospective of my complete early-recorded song catalog: [Title to be announced].

*  Co-writing, recording, engineering and producing music with other people who are yet to be announced.

* Some live performances--solo and in bands.

Business - I would like to start a coworking cafe and cyber livingroom. The business plan for this is already complete and only awaits my creditrating's reappearance.

Lecturing -  If there is any kind of market for my books, I'd like to explore the idea of doing talks, workshops and seminars based on what I've learned during all these adventures. Not sure how that would work yet.

Non-Profit - Once I have developed my property and prove that it is sustainable, I plan to use it as a prototype to help other low income, homeless, veterans, marginalized or other at-risk people do what I have done--but without all the struggle. This is one of the most important goals for me. I am looking into cooperation with the Maine USDA for replacing some so-called "welfare" programs with one-time grants for the groups I mentioned. We would do something like find land, develop a prospectus for its development, including a completely self-sustainable, energy neutral, small house, with organic gardens, then provide the funds to do it all, possibly with the agreement that TANF, Section 8, SNAP ("food stamps"), etc. would no longer be necessary. This would be a social program to allow people to be self-sufficient, pursue their creative interests instead of working at multiple minimum wage jobs, etc., while also helping the state save money.

Now, I realize that all of this seems like it would be over-board. And, as I mentioned above, my ambition issue of figuratively biting off more than I can chew will surely come into play. But as I have also asserted many times, If you're not going to dream big, don't bother dreaming at all.

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Whether any of this is going to happen or is realistic in under any stretch of the imagination is still to be determined. The future is not a thing to obsess over, but it is something that can be planned for. Whether I live 30 more years or get hit by a logging truck on my way home today, I think there is enough in what I've already done, to inspire one or two people to kickstart their own versions of these things, or at least make the will-choice to exceed their own expectations, and forget about the expectations of others. They will find their own versions and interpretations of the Spark in their lives. And, those who watch these coming generations and observe how they were willing to do actually DO something to make our world a better place in which to live will see a new kind of world citizen emerge. I think the lyrics I once wrote after my first Journey sum this up...

And we will wear our souls.

And they will see our souls.