A Survial Strategy

it has been some time since I actually sat down with this blog to think about the future; much has happened and is still in flux since January of 2008; to be brief, I had a heart operation, declare bankruptcy and encountered a patch of ice at 6:33 am on a dark February morning, resulting in a knee operation to reconstruct it and then learn to walk again, though I will never walk as well as before;

   I have had to sit down and think through the future and accept that building my own house is not going to happen, without a lot of money to hire people to do it for me; but that has not stopped me from dreaming and working out my life as if I were living the dream;

   In one way I have been forced to by my circumstances, [living on a minimal pension, in my brother's basement, with 3 rooms and a shower / toilet,] to become more conservation minded; the 3 R's of Reduce, Recycle, Reuse; which to me means reducing my life style to the basics, but still living well, though at a slower pace and with fewer outside perks;

    For the next few blog posts I will described a couple of the strategies that I have incorporated into my life so that I can attempt to live well, and try to get positioned to move beyond the present struggle to live a better life;

    You may be wondering why I use the term living well and what it means; simply put, it means to eat, travel and experience a quality of life beyond my means without spending beyond my means or borrowing to make up the difference; in my case it means specifically, to purchase, store, and process food stuffs, such that my food expense is low on an average month; to keep my travels to walking distance, my other purchases to the absolute necessities (other than the occasional bottle of wine)and to be able to put money into purchasing items to make living cheaply easier; as well as to purchase tools or technology to give me a hope of advancing my chosen life style; more on that as we move along;

What about the Extras that make life worth living

Ok, this is a wee bit off topic, but not too far; we are interested in Sustainable Living / Life (SL); to me that is taking an Holistic approach to life, just as Thoreau did; the House may be the main emphasis for some, in that it is geared to sustainable energy use, but what of the rest of a person's life; the areas that make the sacrifices to get the house operational worth while; these could include the Garden Root Cellar, Orchard, Workshop, Craft-room and other attendant areas that would make living the SL worth while; such as a Wine/Beer Cellar, Cheese House, Sauna, and whatever you can think of that has added value to life; some may want to add boat building, while others an artists loft or shed, and others may find that a sewing room come sun room / reading room might be essential; we are all different and we shouldn't sacrifice ourselves totally in the process of building a Sustainable Energy Efficient House;