mental fatigue 2 of 3

MENTAL FATIGUE 2

I think I can sum up yesterday’s hot mess of an article with: with age comes mental as well as physical fatigue, which while not an excuse to use carte blanche is a consideration and concern.  Just as you cannot bench press 300 pounds at sixty years old, it takes more mental effort to fight against the natural tendency to avoid change and all other road blocks the mind puts in front of the prepper.  You must plan ahead for the day you can’t be as effective with your muscles, and you must learn the tricks against your brain.

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Not that age has anything to do with stress and mental fatigue.  Age is more a consideration in that you are looking at a lifetime of stress that can be cumulative.  After a certain point, once you know you’ll die soon anyway, can you even give one crap, let alone two?  I keep harping on the condition of the medical industry here in this country.  Long ago, as with Windows computers, nothing much new is being discovered and only the color of the paint keeps getting changed.  Have you noticed how most focus on medical tech is in customer record keeping rather than new innovations in you know, life saving stuff ( I’m not in the industry-I’m speaking from a general perspective I pick up from the news

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I am totally convinced that we have already passed the point where medicine can help you, in a general non-trauma event way, but rather hurts you more often than not.  I’m not trying to discount the many ways medicine can help.  You read stories from the Great Depression where poor people died from conditions now very simple to rectify ( one story was of a worker who herniated moving a large stone ).  I’m merely saying that we need to give up the old folkways where people  could count on living to a minimum of mid-Seventies.  Medicine was cheap and affordable and was advancing, in the good old days.  Newsflash!  The good old days are over and done with.  You are NOT allowed to pick and choose from a menu the stuff you don’t want to change.

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No, Social Security cannot last indefinitely.  No, your job is certainly NOT secure.  No, your home value doesn’t need to increase or even stay stable.  No, medicine no longer will keep you alive very long.  I’m convinced that I’m now better off staying out of the hospital for longevity.  Because it is no longer “treat to cure”, it is “treat to avoid litigation”.  Not to mention the financial aspect.  I don’t mean I WON’T go to a doctor, as much as I mean I think we are already back to the Great Depression era of earlier deaths due to financial considerations.  I have no expectations of living through much of my sixties. 

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And while this expectation relieves a lot of stress, it also means I give in to mental fatigue a bit easier.  As in, oh, what the Hell, I’m good enough.  I’ll relax now.  Stop sweating living in town.  That kind of thing.  But mental fatigue is nothing new to me, either.  I’ve needed to fight it for decades.  Yes, mostly I had to carry on, to plow through, to force myself to act.  But I never had an iron will, an indefatigable discipline.  I had to come to terms with the fact that I had too much to do and not enough time or mental energy to so.  I had to accept a slower pace.  We all work hard.  I did little more than most by working two to three jobs at a time.  When I had two other actual paying jobs my writing tapered off to almost nothing. 

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Not because it was a matter of discipline or scheduling, but because of mental fatigue.  You can only force yourself to do so much.  Throw in children and a disintegrating marriage.  Add in extra stress at work.  Pick your poison-it is in actuality a miracle we are as productive as we are, with all the obstacles.  When my writing pace picked up along with the demands at work, I tended to avoid putting much effort into a long ago doomed relationship.  Yes, da bitch be to blame.  My point only is that you can’t do all the required and necessary tasks in life.  Something always has to give.

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Looking back, it is amazing some of the “prepper required” skills I blew off learning for far too long.  I didn’t learn how to wash my own wool.  I kept postponing leather working.  I kept taking the bike to the bike shop rather than learning to perform my own mechanics ( at one time pedaling one bike while pulling another, six miles, the other one bobbing and weaving and banging into my leg, tearing skin and bruising muscle-which was finally the push I needed to learn the skill ).  I’ve been buying laundry soap rather than making my own, even though it is as simple as boiling water and using a measuring cup.  I ate nasty store bought whole wheat flour rather than grinding my own ( you can REALLY taste the difference with fresh ground ).

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I’m sure there were many more not coming to mind.  You know the stereotype.  The wife comes home and husband is watching TV, while something simple like a picture being hung up was neglected.  The wife goes ballistic.  She brings up all the things previously mentioned.  Lazy, fat bastard, won’t do your share, you had all the time in the world.  She isn’t taking into account mental fatigue.  In a way, a lot of preppers with unrealistic expectations are acting like a shrill wife berating a suffering husband.  There are a LOT of prepper skills we need to know ( not just end of the world stuff, but replacing money with skills stuff to deal with the unfolding economic collapse ). 

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But we only have so much mental capital we can cash out.  We remain in the trap of spending money rather than time.  You know, since a gallon of laundry soap is $2 at the store, why not just spend the extra $1.70?  A container of soap lasts a few months if you do it right.  It’s less than a buck a month to pay to NOT worry about yet another chore ( in this case, making your own soap ).  YES, we all understand the cumulative effect of this is to keep us wage slaves from unlocking our shackles, but we are also so frigging tired mentally from dealing with work we just tend not to care much.  That is the fight, isn’t it?  I’m surprised I have much more to say.  I’ll continue tomorrow.

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