Ending and Beginning

I keep coming back to this same idea, sometimes it takes me weeks or months, but I always come back to it: the time spent reading about how financial/climate/peak oil doom is right around the corner is time wasted. What possible good can it do you? You’re not going to pick up on some late-breaking news story that will help you survive the apocalypse. Last-minute prep is not really possible except in a very very limited sense. You have to be living a local, sustainable lifestyle that won’t notice when the outside world goes to hell. You have to be ready all the time, because when and if a fast crash goes down, no more preparation will be possible.

I love reading blogs, but doomer blogs are a waste of time. And there are dozens of blogs that talk about people’s struggles to attain the kind of lifestyle I’m working to attain, blogs that can inspire and teach me.

And yet…I keep drifting back to the doom and gloom. Yes, there’s a part of me that wants to be told how bad it’s getting and how awful it’s going to be. And there’s a part of me that wants society to fail, that wants the world to return to a simpler, more honest place. I want all the investment bankers and other cheaters and smart guys to fail miserably. I want farming to be a high-status occupation. I want the world to be set right, and I think the way it is now is wrong in thousands of different ways.

Yes, I think I want all that, even though, truth be told, the chances of me successfully shepherding my family through that kind of breakdown are slight.

I’m hoping that writing this out and acknowledging that part of me wants the world to change in a dramatic way will help me to focus my energy, work on what is possible, and stop wasting time on doomer blogs. We’ll see.