I have an addictive personality. My biggest addictions have been food and gaming, closely followed by photography, shopping for kit and
Facebook. As I write this, dozens of others spring to mind . . . Geocaching, summit bagging, mountain biking, writing, fantasy fiction . . .
I have learnt that the best solution for my own state of mind and the happiness of the people that share my space is to replace one addiction with another. Addiction for me is tied to sense of worth and purpose. No addiction, no purpose, no sense of worth. Finally I have a positive addictions! My current dominant addictions are Permies and
PEP. It’s been that way since 1st of September and now, three months later and this, my 100th
post thread (thank you Pearl), I’m owning it. I’m happy, the people around me are happy, it’s not something anyone conciders a problem. . .
So when I say PEP, it’s not just doing new badges, it’s repetition and building knowledge. I’ve already said a lot about PEP, why I want more people trying it and the reasons why I’m levelling up. I totally understand why it’s not for some people - we’re a very diverse group of people with different circumstances and beliefs.
I’ve come to the realisation that I need to slow down and do more studying, so I’ll be posting less new ones. I’m writing this as a recognition of my addiction and writing helps me accept and understand problems way faster than just thinking.
1) There is a cost and I have a finite budget. I’ve discussed this before. I have a budget each month and I concider PEP as educational, benficial to me and my family and the people in my circle of influence. It’s way less expensive than my photography addiction. I went over budget last month. December is an expensive month anyway. I’m going to have to come up with smart solutions.
2) Many, many tasks are linked. I need to find and document all the connections. A simple example would be the
Cooking grain with a solar oven. I messed up here. I bought a
solar oven*. I’m happy with it but it was expensive - see previous reason. I hadn’t read through Metal Work - I wrongly assumed I didn’t have any
experience, tools or a place to work. If I had, I would have seen
a task to make solar reflectors. I would have connected the dots. All I needed was some tin snips. Meanwhile, I’m working through the dimensional lumber PEP and
PEA badges. I’m going to need to build a
crate / box which I could then use as the cooking box for the
solar oven. I could also make a second one and turn it into a haybox which I’ve discovered are awesome. There’s also a badge for
using a haybox - yes, you can do this without building a box from scratch but once you discover the benefits of a haybox you’re going to want a permenent solution. It turns out making your own
wood boxes and crates is a really useful thing to do and there’s a
nest badge up for grabs. I’ve already done it, but I’m now looking at all the
cardboard boxes I have and plastic crates, most are broken the wrong size. As you can see, I need to stop and find the connections that work for me.
*Side note on shopping addiction - My shopping addiction got the better of me in a moment of weakness. I comfort shop. I shop when I’m sad. It’s a vicous cycle that I share with my wife and was a contributing factor to why we nearly went bust, sold up ten years ago and risked the expat lifestyle of high rewards with high risk.
3) I don’t know if it’s an age thing, my over eagerness, or just plane stupidity, but I keep messing up. Here’s an example. Once I read through the Metal Work badges, I saw an easy win and something I needed -
A centre punch. I added it to my
project list. I bought a rod of 3/8th steel, cut a 6 inch section with a hacksaw, sharpened to a point with a file, baked it heated the tip until it glowed, in the bowels of my pellet BBQ, made 10 perfectly acceptable punch marks, had everything photographed except the point wasn’t a sharp tip anymore. It was still good and I’ll use it for carpentry construction grade projects but it didn’t meet the requirements. I had bought mild steel not hard steel. The heat treatment had hardened the point but it didn’t meet the requirements. I have dozens of other tasks where I’ve messed up. I’m posting less of them, but many I don’t realise until I’m about to hit submit. I’m only going to fix this if I slow down. Read the requirements, watch the examples. I’m a visual learner and I pay too much attention to the photos of previous submissions. I work through the task with those images in my head rather than the written words.
4) When I started my
permaculture journey, I started a blog. I wrote a bunch of articles and then discovered permies and started writing here instead and stopped writing posts. I hadn’t launched the blog. I wanted to go live with a couple of months of articles, good to go for the weeks when I hadn’t written anything new. I have friends and family who are very interested in what I’m doing. They are people who like my writing and enjoyed blogs I’ve written in the past. I’ve directed some of them here but my conversion rate is pretty poor. My grand vision is a PEP /
Permaculture blog that goes behind the scenes. I once had a blog called “Don’t buy it, make it”. It would be a fusion of them both. When I post a
BB submission, it’s to satisfy the requirements. I often post way more but I’m still constrained. I’d really like to talk more about my mistakes and reasons. I’d like to post my failures without getting black marks. I’d like to eventually have a reference resource for other PEPPER’s with a grand web of interconnections, a list of other badges you could consider doing first and what a badge leads onto. If I’m going down this road, I need to carve out some time, time I’m currently doing PEP and PEA tasks.
Well, I’ve already said
enough. It’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining on my garage /
workshop. I
should make the most of the warmth and go build something.
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