mental fatigue 3 of 3

MENTAL FATIGUE 3

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There is far too much focus on discipline in the prepper community.  As in, everything needing to be done to prep is possible with discipline.  Once again, the idiots who never served in the military ( or, the idiots FROM the military ) think that anything the military does is so wonderful that preppers should do it too.  I won’t go off on a rant about that, and you know I could-you are welcome.  Discipline is necessary to succeed in any area of life, but disciple is NOT a cure-all.

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When the experts insist on preparations that are simply too expensive for most workers to afford, they bring out “discipline”.  There you go, just don’t spend any extra and you can afford a $55 can of freeze dried meat.  Multiple times.  For multiple people.  Which, on the face of it is true. Until you add in all the other dozens of expensive items they think you need.  Just don’t drink Starbucks and you can afford a FLIR scope!  Sure, save a $100 a month by avoiding Starbucks.  Why, in TWO friggin years you can have a FLIR!  But multiply that by freeze dried food and AR-15’s and crates of ammo and countryside concrete bunkers and BOV’s.  There isn’t as many budget items to cut as there are “must have” prepper items.  Discipline doesn’t pull money out of its ass, does it?

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Instead of watching TV you are supposed to go to karate classes and visit the range and learn first aid and go to the gym and…you guessed it!  Discipline!  So, you live out of the city because of crime and work in the city because you need lots of money to prep, so you work eleven hours a day with commuting.  And you are supposed to make time to cook from scratch for a healthy meal, then still have the time and energy to go to all these classes?  And if you don’t you are a slacker?  You are just not disciplined, right?

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Wrong.  You are mentally fatigued, and that is no sin.  You are disciplined enough, to even add prepping to your daily to-do list.  And the “experts” want you to add another full time job learning to your job of provider and family unit social interaction specialist?  A lot of prepping does just consist of accumulating of stuff.  Not because it is smart.  It isn’t.  Skills always trump stuff.  But that is what happens when you are already losing sleep from stress and “just regular life” takes almost all of your time.  You compromise with stuff. 

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We ALL have extra money.  Even the meanest paying job gives us enough extra-if we have any skill in budgeting and sometimes even if we don’t-that we can distract ourselves with shiny baubles.  It is easy to buy preparedness.  It takes far less mental energy to spend less money to save money to prep than it does to learn all this extra crap we are supposed to know.  Heinlein, who gave us that GottDamed awful quote on specialization being for insects had the extra time and mental effort to learn new skills.  Writing only takes eight hours a day if you aren’t very good at it.

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To add skills, for most of us, is not a matter of discipline.  It is a matter of regaining chunks of our lives for ourselves and hence recovering from mental fatigue.  Discipline is just another way of saying “suck up the stress”.  And most of us are ALREADY doing that!  Life is already stressful enough.  In our lifetimes our real pay has plummeted and the amount of work per hour has increased significantly.  It is much more stressful just to work than it used to be.  Relationships are much more stressful, as cultural mores have changed.  Kids are much more stressful, since we are no longer allowed to discipline the unruly idiots.

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There is only one cure for mental fatigue, and that is exiting the rat race treadmill.  That doesn’t necessarily mean you stop working for Da Man ( although that would certainly help ).  It means you reduce your expenses.  I did it by giving up driving cars and living off grid so my only rent was a $100 land payment ( with shelter paid for with cash ).  As you are all hopelessly addicted to infernal combustion engines, your mileage may vary.  Go from two cars to one, or from a new one to a used one you ( mostly ) fix yourself.  Declare bankruptcy.

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Live in a smaller house, or accelerate your mortgage payments.  Stop using credit cards.  And etcetera.  You just need to get enough ahead so that the daily drudge now has a light at the end of the tunnel you can see, where you can work less, stress less and have some peace of mind in the near future.  Otherwise, you’ll never win.  Well, okay, the system is rigged against you winning.  But you can be less of a loser.  As you are living now, you pick a hobby and divert all your extra funds there.  It might be shooting, or archery, or woodworking or something vaguely prepper related.  And you get really good at it, as you desperately cling to it’s stress reducing qualities.

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But if you want to go beyond that “consume to reduce stress”, you need to reduce stress without spending money.  At least after a time.  Such as, you spend more, pay off your debts, then don’t spend at all.  THEN you’ll have the mental energy to learn post-apoc skills just for their own sake, without throwing money at the skill since you now have the mental energy and more important the extra time to devote to it.  While it’s a hobby to forget the serf worker treadmill, you can only do so much.  Once you have as much time as you need, freed from scratching out a pathetic living, you can achieve a Zen understanding of the activity and truly master it.  Before that, it is throwing money at a distraction. 

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So, basically, follow your bliss is the easiest way to describe it.  Don’t “earn more to have more toys”.  Rather, earn less, have less toys, and enjoy life for the experience rather than the trophies.  That of course is the end goal.  In the meantime, recognize how you’ve drained your brain battery and work to fix that.  And stop with the damn unrealistic expectations, Super Mom.  You can’t do it all. 

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