A post in which she crushes your mellow by taking on black and white straight up

I don’t have a degree in anything financial, and truth be told, I don’t balance my checkbook (yes, I know how much money I have, give or take), but I’m pretty good at math and if I’m not mistaken, the fundamentals of our economy are fucked. Sorry—that’s not a very nice word, but they are fucked. And no matter which float in the puppet parade you receive your candy from, none of the people on the float can fix it, no matter how lovely their smiles. The float makers have all of our resources pledged to foreign nations to secure our debt. Be sure to vote.

Sorry to be the harbinger of doom, but any whiff of financial intelligence would have led you to this before it finally hit the talk shows.

Been watching this coming for a decade or so and this knowledge was a huge piece of our decision to roll real estate profits into a cash flow business. Thought we could ride it out with a recession-friendly business. Pay off the business with our last few pieces of platted properties, own it free and clear and start investing in properties again, this time funded by a cash-flow business. Wonderful plan until the real estate market tanked about nine months ahead of our prediction and the local land-lending bank got seized by the FDIC, forcing all of our properties into receivership. We aren’t the only people that got taken down by that. (You’re welcome, all the other banks who received federal money for which you haven’t accounted.)

Had reasonably defensible property with a pond (for water, stocked with fish) that could provide shelter for scores of people, I really wanted a hydro generator and battery panels. We had / have buckets of food, oxygen protectors, non-hybrid seeds, go bags, water purification, an ex-marine neighbor with a garage full of reloaded ammo, chickens (until the raccoons feasted on them), fruit orchard (until the beavers demolished it–night vision motion-detector camera caught them in the act, courtesy of ex-marine neighbor), a tofu maker, a hand crank clothes washer, books about trapping game, growing grains, and making moonshine, wool blankets, non-slime vegetable fermenter for pro-biotics, books on preserving food without refrigeration, salt licks, awl for sewing through skins (not kidding), freeze-dried ice cream (also not kidding), medicinal herbs and books on how to use them, a community of like-minded folks who were / are investing in their real world skills for the event of a massive meltdown. Home schooling curriculum from pre-school through college. Canned butter. The list is but a sampling. I figured my role would be strategic recruiter of Team Remnant, librarian, comic relief, and newsletter writer for the gig. How I will miss my iPod when all the batteries are dead. Some other things that require batteries too.

My point is that when I say I have walked away from apocalyptic preparation, I am not blowing smoke up your ass. I have a ham radio license. I make my own soap.  I can sprout grains and make them tasty enough to eat. And I have enough spices stored to prevent appetite fatigue. No, I am not a Mormon. I just read. I’m strategic. I’m a survivor, and I steeped in prophetic writings from early adulthood.

Politically I am too cynical to be a Republican or a Democrat or a Tea Partier. I think the Occupy movement is a lovely social experiment but if those folks were the ones that could catalyze a movement of effective social transformation, they already would have been hired by corporate and would be making mojitos for their friends while taking vacation on the public dime. I think there is wisdom in social assistance because some people need it and the others need to be mollified so they don’t begin violent riots. If only we had money to provide it sustainably.

Slit your wrists yet? Me neither. I can see political realities in which biblical prophecies could become plausible realities in short order. I see that people would throw silver and gold in streets for just a loaf of bread. (What tastes better when you’re hungry?) I can see Israel leveling Damascus pre-emptively to stop an attack, the whole world putting them in a huge time out, Assad magnanimously stepping onto the world stage, the great mediator with a humble little office right on top of the Temple Mount. If you aren’t familiar with the prophecies, that’s when the trailer becomes the feature. If you aren’t, it makes for interesting reading. Makes one really want to vote for the Mayan scheme and go out in a blazing orgy sometime in December of 2012.

This angst is behind much of my angst. So when I am worrying about money and resource and job skills, it isn’t just that I am wanting income. It is the added pressure of wanting to figure out a way to build up enough resource to be able to…. What? To hide? To hole up in a compound and sneak though unscathed. And I can’t anyway because I am vulnerable everywhere. And my compound is in foreclosure. I live in town now as a partial renter. I have no storage space. I have no rescuer who hunts and fishes and gardens and wants to take me and three school-aged kids on, who has figured out how to transform his diesel truck into something that runs on sunshine and sparkles.

I would lie if I said I could let go of the preceding paragraphs. But I can’t. I choose not to think about it by which I mean I do my best not to fixate on it. I do my other emotional work to try to get to the place of being a whole me, grounded, clear, and ready for a partner or a dream life. Just in case life keeps rolling. But in the background is this pending expectation, and the awareness that I am not ready for it. Honestly, this is one of the pieces that kept me anchored so long. I had to ask myself, if we have only a few short years, is it worth it to try to reclaim me? But if we have more than a few short years, can I afford to not reclaim me? I walked away from my structure despite this. This fear. This fear of facing death and being alone, overwhelmed and unprepared, side-swiped by the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI). I am not sure how to make peace with this and/or if I must.

This is the Black of the black and white. I notice it today. This grand over-arching theme of pending doom which drives me to get perfect (white) and thus able to respond successfully in the face of the adversest of adversities.

I wish I were worrying about retirement. Retirement sounds easy compared to feeling negligent for not being committed to mastering field surgery. Back to the cocoon with this mellow crusher… I need my cape back.