“LIBERTY MEANS RESPONSIBILITY, THAT IS WHY MOST MEN DREAD IT” – GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Wow, has it really been that long? Well, there are a couple of random thoughts I wanted to throw out there while they are fresh on my mind. First, liberty and the American Way are everything I have stated, but I have one more tenant to add: America was originally conceived to have people depending on each other – depending on their neighbors rather than the government or some other organization. Understand that I put the church in the category of neighbor, as opposed to organization.

The second thing is I had another opportunity over the holiday weekend to get my wife to see the value of prepping and resilience. She was out of sugar on Friday night and had already spent an hour at the grocery store. We were going to attend a cookout over the holiday weekend and she was going to bring brownies and carrot cake. The entire weekend was booked solid. As she started slipping toward clinical depression I stepped in and said, “I have sugar.” She replied “you do, really? Where”? I told her I had some in our food preps, and she asked “How much? Is it enough to make the brownies and cake?” I said “I don’t know, but it is a typical bag of sugar you buy at the store. 5 pounds I think.” She became elated and told me how wonderful that is. Jim Dandy to the rescue, just call me Johnny on the spot. So on top of getting to be hero for the day, she doesn’t see having redundancies in place as pointless as she did; and on top of that, she is going to replace the sugar for me the next time she goes to the store, so I now have her participating in prepping, she just doesn’t know it!

ACTION TAKEN TOWARD BECOMING RESILIENT

• Put primer on some more of the house, getting ready to paint it. I think preventative maintenance should be considered a form of resilience. It leads to reduce expenses down the road.

• Cookout with friends we haven’t seen since Christmas. Building a strong social network is vital to resilience in a SHTF situation. Note, I said ‘vital’, not ‘important’. That will be a topic I cover in a future post.

“Indecision is the greatest thief of opportunity.” – Jim Rohn, Facing The Enemies Within.

That statement seems so incredibly applicable to the concept of this blog. How many times did I look at or hear about awesome gardens, bug out locations, stockpiles of preps, AR-15s, and other expensive and/or time consuming stuff, and feel completely overwhelmed? Or feel like the things that people in the prepper/survival community are doing and acquiring are hopelessly unrealistic for my situation? I was left with the sense that even when they were beginner preppers, they did not have the burden I do of extremely limited resources. I didn’t even know where to begin, and I definitely felt like there was nothing I could do to become more resilient and independent until my circumstances changed.

Since I was determined to become independent from the systems to which most of society is unwittingly enslaved, I knew I must change my situation into one that would allow me to start my prepping. Thankfully I did finally realize that I can start working toward changing my situation in ways that are also steps toward resilience – steps toward living my life envisioned by the founding fathers. They may not seem like much right now, but they are getting me closer to the dream. Even things like working on my resume and paying off credit cards, or working out consistently count; the former gets me closer to independence from the system and the latter makes me more likely to survive a disaster. Don’t wait, do something to get you on your journey now. Today!

Actions taken toward resilience 5/3/12:

• Worked 18 hours of OT so far this week, may go in tomorrow for a couple more hours. I will now be able to pay off one more credit card with my next paycheck