Month: December 2022

December 2, 2022 – Atlas Shrugged 3:2

December 2, 2022 /

I think I can see the end is near, at least I think I can. Have you ever ran a long race? I did a half marathon one time and you could see the mile markers. At mile 10, you didn’t know quite what the finish line would look like but you knew that if you kept going you would make it. That is kind of how this feels.

As books go, this chapter was a long one. At almost 60 pages and tiny font, it feels like I could have read a book just in this chapter. I am going to try and not spoil the plot by talking around what is going on. I will let you infer what happens without me outright saying it.

The citizens of Galt’s Gulch give Dabny thirty days to choose to stay or to leave. It is their hope that they can prove life is superior here to the outside world. I would say that Dabny takes advantage of her time and waits to the last minute to make her decision.

While there are so many parallels to real life in this book, there are just as many results of fiction as well. The book would have you believe that a small group of doers could disappear and put the foundations of a modern society together by chance. Somehow, it would all work out because every person would fill that exact niche in an economy.

Someone would grow all the wheat needed, someone would mill it and package it and someone would sell it. Someone would make the machinery to harvest and process. Someone would make the packaging. Someone would mine the ore to refine to metal, and someone would take that metal and make equipment with it to harvest the grain, even if it is just a scythe. And this is one food item.

I will say, ‘in the real world’ I will talk about two types of people in this category. There are the citizens of Galt’s Gulch and those that haven’t yet given up or seen the light. Within that latter group, there are some that simply won’t give up. I think that this is what makes society work. Just like the song says, the world needs ‘All Kinds of Kinds‘.

There is some advice that I wish I could more easily follow. To find your passion or maybe better, to truly be happy you need to quit. You need to quit doing the things that make you miserable be it a job, an education, a habit or a relationship. As I have eluded to in the course of my writing, the only major thing I have ever quit was my job in 2019. Even then, I only did it because my wife forced me to choose my job or my marriage.

I never give up or surrender if there is a chance that I can still persevere. I was always taught that this quality was admirable so it is ingrained in me. But, it also lacks the true secret to happiness because you spend all your time fighting to win and when you do, it is hollow and empty.

I would wager that a higher percentage of rich people are high school/college dropouts. Why is this? Because they didn’t waste their time, marking time, getting programmed. It is us that followed the path all the way through to start a new journey of someone else’s vision for our lives that didn’t get it. They quit because the status quo didn’t work for where they wanted to go.

I am not convinced that every successful person followed their dreams to what they are doing. I think that their true dreams were to be free and independent whatever business endeavor that manifest itself in. And even then, the creative types try new things, sell their endeavors and try to start over.

Think about Elon Musk for a moment. He was set for life when he sold PayPal. But, then he started Tesla and SpaceX and bought Twitter. I can’t speak for the financial state of the sum of the businesses. But, he didn’t sell PayPal to buy Twitter. He sold PayPal because he was ready to do something else. That is quitting something (like running a company – forever) to try and develop new interests.

To me success is not achieving a goal, it is enjoying the journey. By that definition, there is no possible way to be successful when the journey is miserable. There is a commonly held belief in business that if the business is not growing, it is dying. Why is this? There is no number that a business can achieve that is definitive because it is almost a living entity itself. A business is measured against it’s continual advancement, not what it did, once. So should we behave as people.

End Your Programming Routine: I knew that I would not be successful when I took a job in 2021. The reason being is that nothing changed, only the nameplate on my LinkedIn account. It wasn’t who I was working for that made the difference, it was the fact that I went back to doing the same things as before I quit. The one thing that did was that I started Altf4. The smart person would quit because it hasn’t made a dime. But, you know me: I won’t quit.

December 1, 2022 – My Seed Saving Experiment

December 1, 2022 /

I am very disappointed. I have been anticipating saving seeds from one tomato plant that survived under the lights from my seed starting. I have been waiting for months (since March when I had this idea). I waited for the plant to fruit and mature. I resisted eating the couple ripe ones that made it so that I could do this experiment.

I left the tomato on the vine until it froze. Then I picked it and set it on the counter till I got around to it. It really didn’t look bad when I picked it, but after it sat around for a week, I figured I better get on this project before it is too late.

After reading the article in Self-Reliance Magazine, I was supposed to scoop out the seeds and place them in a vessel containing water. This container would stay in the refrigerator until the gelatinous coating around the seeds decomposed or separated. Viable seeds were supposed to sink to the bottom. All the gunk would be decanted off the top and the seeds could be dried with a paper towel. The dry seeds would be put in a cool and dry location, like in an envelope.

This technique is supposed to work with open pollenated varieties (also known as heirloom). I thought this was, but I could not find any seeds to remove. It is possible that I waited too long and the seeds were buried in the rotting flesh? I don’t know but I searched through this mess. This was the primary reason that I failed.

Back to the drawing board. My gardening success is directly proportional to how much effort I have put in. In the last couple years it has been very little to almost none. But, that is OK because my experiments are really an attempt to align how I want to garden with actual results. So, I will continue low effort type attempts in hopes that I will learn something valuable.

End Your Programming Routine: It has never been intent my to only show successes. In fact, I want to be real with what I do. Of course it wounds my pride to fail at this endeavor. I believe in my heart that I should be able to do anything that I set my mind to. That being said, I am a strong believer of failure as a teacher and the only way to learn is to fail. To be honest, I only selected this tomato because it was the one that ripened. Maybe, if I pay more attention to variety, growing and harvest, I can accomplish this experiment next year.