Day 1: Educating Myself

In all honesty, I have had my current mindset since 2007 when I chose to quit my current job in order to be a (single) stay at home mom. I have been educating my self on the idea of (1) getting out of the rat race, (2) living sustainable and comfortable and (3) being debt free.

The back story: The day care that I could afford at the time was less than ideal, but I put up with it to make ends meet. I wanted to have enough to buy us a forclosed home. However, things did not work out that way and the final straw was when I saw my [generally well mannered child] throwing a tantrum and getting her way. The care giver picked her up and coddled her, giving in to the tantrum, (right in front of me) while I was trying to discipline her. Before this, I noticed that my child was learning several bad habits from the daycare mainly hitting and biting. She had never done this before attending that center and was around 6-25 children on a regular basis due to our large family and strong church involvement. It was at that point that I decided no one was going to spend more time with my child than me. Working and going to school at night, my then (2 year old) only saw me for dinner, bath time, and breakfast. It was a big sacrifice, but I just stepped out on faith. Now, five years later, by the grace of God we have been able to get by. There have been seasons when I needed food stamps, but as soon as I was able to survive on my own I canceled them.

Now that I have hope of some sort of gainful employment (at the school where my daughter attends) I am once again refreshing all the ideas that I thought of when bills we due and I had no money coming in. I want to buy some land, and build a nice cabin on it with all the off-grid amenities, but I am sure this will take several years to complete.

The past four weeks, I have visited several websites chock full of information just by googling: homesteads, off-grid, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, etc the most informational community I have found is the http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/ I have stayed up for just about 13 hours reading through this site. I have some work to do now, but I will get back to it before bed. There is tonnes of useful information shared there so many things that I never thought of!

As I am the black sheep of the family, I was planning on making this journey by myself, but I believe that a door is opening to where I will be in charge of aiding people for emergency situations from an administrative point of view. So I do have the hope that if things change soon, I won't be alone.

I still have so much more to learn, but I am excited about the challenge!

One Day At A Time

Hello out there,

I have been debating whether or not if I should start a blog. or a personal journal. Since I type faster than I write I opted for the blog.

I am at a crossroads in my life. I am sick and tired of the way things are and want to change them for the better. I have finally accepted responsibility for my happiness and stopped making excuses and blaming others.

My dream is to life autonomously (off-grid, self-sufficient, and zero waste) in the country for the long term, but I'll have to settle for the city right now. Thankfully, the city I live in has a mixture of both country and city. The first order of business is to reduce expenses and save money. When I figure out a plan I'll let you know!

-Jane