Where to Find My Work (It’s Not Patreon)

Last year, some friends convinced me that I needed to start a Patreon page to earn some bank with the stuff I do. Not long afterward, I read the terms of service for Patreon and became uncomfortably disconcerted. You see, I’m a diehard, firmly-rooted anti-feminist, classically-feminine-lover-of-Real-Men-Who-Are-Masculine-As-Shit, unabashed proponent of the imaginary patriarchy (DOWN WITH NOW & NARAL!), totally anarchist, fiscally conservative, socially liberal, anti-war, womb-to-tomb prolife, progressive-despising, homeschool-championing, anti-establishment, moderate-trad Catholic Distributist, pro-Weed/anti-Big Pharma, D&D dice-tossing, Barefoot-in-the-Kitchen-and-loving-it, ultra-crunchie, tie-dye-wearing, long skirt-flaunting, organic-gardening, moonshine-making, slingshot-hunting, shameless meat-eating unwashed hippie (who usually ends up voting Republican, sadly), reasonably convinced of aliens, moonlanding skeptic, climate-change-denier with absolutely NO respect for corporate authority, The Government, liars, or con-artists who has a big mouth and zero filter (it’s just not possible, I’ve tried…repeatedly). Half the shit I love and firmly believe in is illegal or, at the very least, morally questionable to varying circles of teetotalling fundamentalist psychos. And half the shit I say makes at least one person cry…every time. Last week, someone called me “Bambi with a Bazooka.” I like that. It fits…I need to trademark it. But my personality, beliefs and my penchant for telling the unvarnished truth with absolutely zero regard for spineless, mewling persons causes serious trouble for me. I’ve been in Facebook jail over the years more times than I can count; Libtards, FemiNazis, hipsters and snot-nosed millenial snowflakes who think they know shit freak out and start screaming for the hall monitor when I tell them that their version of “reality” is psychotic bullshit. And, quite frankly, I just think that social media is emotionally and physically exhausting, not to mention spiritually vacuous; if it weren’t for the fact that all my photos are there and it takes so much time to move them, I’d already have deleted every account.

Patreon and Twitter have become like Facebook, run on despicable predatory advertising, Socialist models of censorship, group-think and neighbour watchdog reporting policies of renegade terror; GOD forbid that anyone have an insightful opinion that differs from the consensus of Ye Ol’ Hive. Well, I ain’t a worker bee, Borgeans! I’m a princess, a daughter of the King. If you don’t like my spoken thoughts, then get bent…and suspend my account. Or, in the case of Patreon, delete all of my content without warning or recourse. Dammit. …Not a good plan.

This is the scenario I was looking at before I became too seriously invested in posting anything substantive to my new Patreon page, and it bothered me deeply enough to lose sleep over. I don’t deal with change well, anyway. When I start a project, I expect it to go on forever. I also expect to find my shit where I left it, not wake up to learn that some uppity little thought terrorist with a mouse clicker decided that my position on making your own medicine, booze, butchered chickens or [insert activity here] at home was so “offensive” or “threatening” to the weak-minded masses of consumerist sheeple that it needed to be erased and banned from public view post haste! So, I’ve been searching for an alternative, and I think I’ve found it.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and his buddies are launching a new platform this month, and guess who’s on it? Stay tuned for details….

Edit: there’s also a sad little problem with the way patrons and fees are now being handled. If you’d like to read the scoop on that trouble, lookie here:

https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on-patreon?zd=2&zi=m7opw225

My New Experiment

If you know me, then you’re well aware that I hate heat. And humidity. And I’m always hot. For instance, this morning I went out to open the barn for the chickens and to feed the other furmonsters dressed in nothing but a teeshirt and barnboots, and I was sweating like a stuck pig within 20 minutes and needed a cold shower. It was 36°F. In Ohio. In December.

I’ve been waiting with impatient anticipation for this turn in the weather for months on end – the time of year when the days hold more soft shadow than light, when cold cheeks and cups of hot cocoa make buddy-buddy, and pulling weeds no longer feels like endless torture in a furnace, but a nice workout. This is my season!

So, the other night my friend Kamilla sends me an email about how she’s looking for a local butcher because CAFO hamburger and imdustrial romaine lettuce are killing people again and she ordered a grinder attachment for her mother’s stand mixer and, because I’m too lazy to text her, I emailed back….

“My butcher is saving neck bones and pig’s feet for me for Christmas Octave, and my dairy guy called me the other day and told me that his milking season is ending in two weeks. I ordered extra to process and freeze (they start back up at the end of March when the herd freshens), but it made me wish I had a chest freezer. My chickens aren’t laying because the days are cold and dark, so I don’t have to worry about anything but feeding and watering them…I am glad for the coming Winter because I’m going to spend half of it lying outside in a snowbank morning and evening, working on my immune system and inflammation, but I can’t wait until Spring when I can start hunting bunnies and groundhogs again, and have more variety for herb and veg.”

To which she responds by asking about my snowbank napping attire (preferably nada) and why would any sane person do something so freaking ridiculous (not her words, but I could hear her wheels spinning clear over in the urban wilds of Denver), and the conversation eventually wound it’s way around to:

“I love what the cold does for me. And, supposedly, there’s some dude they call the Ice Man who’s been tested in medical schools worldwide up and down the wazoo who is proving that this isn’t just a hot-blooded injun thing.”

Kamilla tells me that she was traumatized by snow-onesies as a child in Minnesota, and all I could think about whilst I went looking for info on the Ice Man was how often I got screamed at every Winter for running around outside half naked for hours on end. I have proof that you will not catch your death of cold from losing [read: “accidentally” discarding] dozens of new hats, mittens, scarves and jackets all over hill and dale, and I am that proof. But I went looking for this thing I read from Michigan State about the Ice Man dude to show to Kamilla, and I ended up falling down a two-day rabbit hole of wonder. Have you seen this guy? You should.

He calls cold his “god.” He says he hates it, but he’s also repeatedly demonstrated for scientists how submitting to the cold over the years has helped him to learn to control everything from his breathing to his circulation to his autonomic nervous system. At first I’m thinking this is just yogic breathing, I already do that, but no….

I tried this guy’s “method,” and after two days, I’m a believer. The other day, I brought home 5 – 50 lb bags of feed for the beasties, flipped every single one of them over my shoulder and carried them like bags of Sta-Puf marshmallows up the stairs from the driveway to the porch one after the other without stopping. I shocked even myself. This is the strongest I’ve been since I was hit head-on by a drunk driver in December of 2009 (and subsequently spent a solid year, three-to-four days a week, in physical therapy to avoid spine and hip surgery). I have no explanation for this sudden surge of strength.

Of course, I’m cheap and broke. So, instead of paying $300 for the Wim Hof Method ten week course, I downloaded the app to my phone when I went to town and paid $2.99 for the extention. I’ve been doing the breathing exercises each morning this past week before I roll out of bed. I’m definitely adding this to my Winter napping habit because, holy cow, I feel freaking fantastic and I’m excited to see where I’m at healthwise come Spring. Who knows? I may even have the energy to pound in the remaining 200 – 8ft fence stakes all by myself. Oh my Lord, would that be awesome, or what?!

When You Feel Well

I absolutely hate it when people say “I feel good.” Good is chocolate chip pumpkin bread still warm from the oven, spread with a fat dollop of freshly made butter. Good is finding out that you ran a $20 bill (that you really need) through the washer and it survived. I have the same reaction to the word “good” as a descriptor of emotional stasis as my daddy has to the word “fine.” It sets my teeth to grinding; it’s just nuts.

Except for the smell of a dead deer getting ready to explode behind the house (which I did not find until today), the last four days at Chez Verdant on the Hill have been heaven on earth: 50°F days filled with sunshine and no wind meant that the chickens get to roam free from dawn to dusk for most of the week, and that the ground is still soft enough to pull up grazing stakes and move them to virgin pasture. It meant being able to mix up 250lbs of Winter feed rations out on the porch and move it all to the bins in the barn without horrible pain in cold hands. And it meant composting the remaining cardboard boxes I’ve been unpacking in the house – I hate cardboard boxes more than I hate communists; that should tell you something.

Today was so much fun, I even made a new batch of Kailua (half moonshine, half rum, extra strength coffee syrup reduction with tinctured Mexican vanilla bean) on the stove whilst I worked on all my other weekend chores. It was a good day, and I felt well. I felt healthy and strong and settled and genuinely productive for the first time in many months. Not happy, necessarily, but much better than I did on this day three years ago, or last year, for that matter.

I’ve had this ongoing exercise in gratitude going on for quite some time now, forcing myself to acknowledge at least one thing everyday – no matter how small or insignificant, no matter how bad the day has been – to be thankful for. A wise man once told me that this is the way to not want to die, and he was right. Today was the very first day in a long, long time that I woke up and wasn’t disappointed or angry about it.

I am well, and it doesn’t suck. Imagine that.