Hot and hotter. There is a rumor of rain and cooler temps but I’m not holding my breath. It was plenty hot yesterday. I was soaked to the skin and feeling very hot as I loaded up my truck and sorted out some bins of auction stuff.
I had to sit in the air conditioned truck for a while and cool down.
I did get another load to auction. Failed to pick up from two others. Those were the pickups I had missed or delayed thinking I’d have time. They both close early on Friday, which I know now…
I’ll have to take time next week to get the stuff.
I ended up at Costco instead, where I got a few pleasant surprises (prices for protein, and for rice) and a bunch of the things I buy regularly were on sale. The overall ticket was still shockingly high. I haven’t bought stacks of meat in a while. I used to feel like a certain number was a big number, but yesterday I was double that, and didn’t buy paper products or purely prep items. Double, despite the discounts and the actual low prices on some items (pork roast was only $2/pound).
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Today my non-prepping hobby meets. We’ll show and tell the stuff we picked up at the show, and management will do a ‘lessons learned’ AAR following the meeting. It went very well, but there are always things you can tweak. I just don’t want to get shanghied into running it next year. I’m willing to be support, but shouldn’t be in charge.
I think that is the best description of how I see myself- as an expediter, clearing the path for the other people to do the work, managing the problems so that they can keep going toward the goal. An awful lot of my various careers boiled down to that, when I wasn’t holding tools myself. In the most extreme application, people don’t even see that you are working, because they don’t see the resources already put in place, the permits already obtained, the backup shipper waiting to be called in if there is an issue… the drawings, plans, schedules, money, or relationships. It looks EASY.
There are parallels to my prepping too. We didn’t skip a beat when the lockdown came. I did my “last run” but probably could have skipped it. We had masks, disinfectant, TP, food, etc. When it was time for the kids to do school, we had stuff to make that transition. When my wife wished she had a second monitor for work, I offered her a choice from ones I had stashed. Of course there were things I missed and stuff I didn’t have, but the stuff I did have made 90% of the transition easy.
I’m starting to feel like the next transition will catch me more flat footed. I feel like I’ll be lucky to get to 50%. It’s not a question of taking it seriously but of taking it seriously ENOUGH. I feel a crisis of faith coming. Stacks are comforting, but not enough on their own. I need to figure out what else I need to get ready. And then I need to actually do it.
Ay carumba. So much angst. You’d think I was in my teens again.
Look around and ask yourself it things are getting better or worse. Ask what it would take to make it better. Do you see that thing actually happening? If you don’t see it getting better, or can’t see a clear path to better, you should be topping up your preps and making plans.
Expedite your own survival and success. And stack, always stack.
nick