So, while my plan to pay off the last of my credit cards is well in hand (if I can resist the spending or “stockpiling” urge) my thoughts turn to what to do next.
Part of me want to just get a little place in the city that I currently live, continue working and just have a regular “normal” life (without crushing debt).
Sure, I would have a mortgage, but I would also have my savings (that I still have) and so it would be balanced out, and never become a huge part of my monthly budget (I would make sure of it).
Then there is the concept of buying a nice Class A Motorhome, and live in that for the rest of my life. All in all stay mobile but do so in style and comfort.
The cabin in the woods also sounds like a nice little existence to me as well.
Yet, with what is coming, what I know is coming, what all of us feel is coming, economically and geopolitically, that does not seem like what I want . . . who I want to be.
I am not a selfish person, yet at this phase of my life I have had to be ultra-frugal and so ultra-selfish in a way. I have not donated to charity, nor I have not done things for others.
I go to work and go home. I move my trailer once a week five minutes down the road to check my mail and buy my weekly groceries and supplies.
I do this because that is the cheapest way for me to live and in so doing I can get through this phase of my life of paying down debt and building up savings.
Yet when all this chaos of what I fear is coming, actually comes, I don’t want to: hide in my cabin in the woods, barricade myself in my home/Dreaded Condo in the city, or stay on the run in my nice Class A Motorhome.
I would much rather be the refuge that others seek, be the place that people can gather around and get the help they need.
I don’t mean in a refugee camp kinda way, or even a hippie commune, no, not at all, more like in a “Gene Roddenberry future” kinda way, if you get my meaning.
I certainly don’t want it to be a place where someone shows up, sticks their hand out and says, “Where’s my free stuff? I want my free stuff? You promised to fix all of my problems, a**hole, so just do it already!”
I mean that I want wherever I end up to be a bastion of civilization where each of person there has what they need to live, yet you are still encouraged (prodded) to contribute to that community with your skills and yea better your own lot in life.
I see it being a place that is a mixture of capitalism with a safety net, with an overall focus on the pursuit of science and knowledge.
To do that I would need a crapload of help and a tone of money and resources.
I’m not holding my breath for the crowdfunding campaign as that is not how help works . . . I am expected to help others, others don’t help me.
I’m on my own to start this, I know that.
So . . . unless I win the lotto, the start of it will not be much than a patch of ground that I can somehow scrape together enough cash to buy, but it would be a start.
I also see this going horribly wrong and descending into madness and anarchy in a Mad-Max sense as everyone tells me that this was I deserve for trying to help people.
All while I stumble away from the burning inferno that was my home and all of my possessions in the bloodied rags that would be all that I have left in the world . . . so yeah, I have no fears at all in starting this at all .
Yet, with real fears set aside, that is the type of person that I want to be. I want to be someone who is the last bastion of civilization in a world gone mad, that beacon of light in the descending darkness.
So, wherever I end up, I will fly a flag as high as I can fly it which will read, “Find Refuge Here, All are welcome.” (And hope for the best).
PS: Designs are now being accepted for just what that flag will look like.