Welcome to what is essentially blog post #1, as it gives a bit more of glimps into who is writing it, and hopefully sets the overall theme of the site. As I say in the About Me, I just see myself as another person on the internet. There is nothing inherently special about me. But I do spend a lot of time thinking about life and the most sensical ways of approaching it – from the best way to wash and dry clothes, to building a house, to earning money, to structuring a society or economy, to strengthening a relationship, to growing and preparing our food, etc..

 

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m strictly logical. More accurately, I like to look at ways of living life that make total, perfect sense from a logical perspective, and also feel totally perfectly right in my heart/soul. If something doesn’t jive with both, I keep looking. Being a very… “spiritually in tune” person (or whatever the cheesiest, new age way of phrasing that is) this means I also apply logic to spirituality as well, which I’ve actually found has really enhanced my ability to “go there” and empowered me to move my life towards one of more spiritual fulfillment. And, no, I’m not using the pseudo-logic that people use to justify believing in creationism and I’m not going to use the word “quantum” over and over or stuff like that!

 

Now I don’t think I’ll be talking too much about myself on this blog, but I thought it’d be good to give a bit of background about where I’m at and where I’m coming from. But, this isn’t what the blog is about ongoing! It’s just to give you a peek at who’s writing it. When you come back and read more posts about the kinds of thoughts I think, you’ll be able to picture how I’m applying things in my own life. So what’s my story thus far?

 

Just a smidge over two years ago I lived in a big city with a medium family in a small apartment. The work I did benefited others, but wasn’t anything I could use myself (you know, like being a car mechanic means you can do your own car repairs, being an investor helps you invest your own money, etc.). So instead of being able to provide or do anything for myself, I always had to pay others for everything I needed to get or get done. This didn’t feel right at all.

 

A few years ago I started reading about “Peak Oil” (the idea that oil production will peak soon, or has peaked already, and all the stuff we rely on oil for will rapidly start to get prohibitively expensive – don’t worry, it turns out the planet will be uninhabitable from global warming before we’ve used up all the fossil fuel). Now while I don’t think the world is imminently going to collapse (though it might, I dunno, and even if I did claim to know you shouldn’t take it seriously cuz, well, I’m just somebodyontheinternet) I did start to think about what kind of world we’d live in if we gave up fossil fuel – whether because it ran out or we voluntarily stopped using it…

 

And I really liked what I envisioned!

 

In fact, what I envisioned held numerous benefits on many levels, not just dealing with global warming or a spin-down of oil production. It made logical sense, and was a lifestyle that really appealed to me at a core level. I’ve been thinking about it and expanding on it and taking action on it for years now, and it just keeps getting better and better, and has more and more evidence (and my own experience) in support of it. Again, what I’m doing isn’t the focus of the blog, just letting you know where I’m at with my own application of my ideas right now…

 

So we (my wife and I) came up with a plan. Two years ago we moved to a smaller city where I could still easily find work, and which is closer to the rural areas we wanted to end up living in. Then, 1 year and 7 months later, we moved to a small, rural island community with a lot of progressive “back to nature” types. We rented a house on an acre close enough to the ferry that I could cycle there to commute into the city for work, and close enough to the island’s shopping and school and beaches and restaurants/cafe that we can walk.

 

Our house is surrounded by nothing but trees and sky. We have a big deck, hammock, hot tub, a nice outdoor fire circle, outdoor kitchen, garden, and playhouse for the kids. The house has a wood stove for heat. We’re on well water and rain catchment with 2000 gallons of currently full water tanks. We have a propane stove/oven as well, so power outages aren’t a huge deal. Plus, we’re actually paying less rent now, and still come out ahead even when you add in commuting costs!

 

A couple months after moving in we built a chicken coop and bought 8 chicks for eggs… which turned into 5 roosters and only 3 hens… so now we have experience raising and butchering our own meat animals!. (We’re keeping one roo to help build our flock and we’re buying more chicks in the spring, as well as a couple turkey chicks for the holidays).

 

Remember – less than two years before this we were living in a tiny shoebox of an apartment in the middle of a big city where we’d been born and raised, and working our butts off to afford it. What a change!

 

We’ve also started integrating more intention, ritual, and symbology in our lives. We don’t subscribe to any religion, but pick and choose what feels right for us from a variety of backgrounds. We’re primarily drawn to paganism, as it celebrates the natural world, but we also pull from Native American traditions, Buddhism, Sami, South American shamanism, Hawaiian, etc. I feel one’s  spirituality should be a deep reflection of who you are and be entirely heartfelt. Obviously, by taking from numerous backgrounds, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but something has to really resonate with us before we do it, and everything is tweaked as needed so that it reflects our values and our core feelings. We don’t do any of it just to pay lip service to something we think sounds cool.

 

In the future, our goal is to get our own property that we can farm both for ourselves and commercially. We’d like to be as self sufficient as possible, but do so using the smartest low tech ideas, not loading up on a gazillion solar panels and wind generators and such. We do like our internet and refrigeration and electric lights, so we’re not talking pioneer living!

 

Now, none of this may be anything you’re interested in, and that’s totally fine. This is not a site that gives precise prescriptions on how to live. The reason I’m giving a bit of a window into my life is so that you can appreciate that this is a site that would encourage you to take action on creating whatever your ideal is (though mainly by changing yourself – not forcibly changing others). The point of this article is to show you that this Somebodyontheinternet character is not someone who talks about making life changes and thinking about ideal ways of living on a purely theoretical level. I’ve spent a long time thinking about what kind of life I want to create, and even though it’s very different from how I was raised, and it hasn’t been easy in the slightest to get here, I’m committed to living my life in a way that works and feels right for me. I hope the information and thoughts on this site help you and inspire you to figure out what kind of life you want to lead, and then take action on that dream.
Thank you for joining me!