To the Store and To the Shop... the Bitter Taste of Reality

Heidi's gone back to the store... I have moved to Roosevelt Lake. A hundred miles or so closer on the long slow roll north. Trying to stay south of the snow... but many tasks stand ready to be accomplished.

The line is slowly being reeled in and I'm slowly being pulled back that way... back it seems to much of the old life.

Simple reality is... Dollars rule the world. Unless you're one of the gutsy few willing to live with two T-shirts, a couple pair of underwear and whatever else will fit in a saddlebag slung over your shoulder...

... you get in line and put one foot in front of the other toiling for the man... for however long you can stand it... because outside of a precious few outliers... The Man holds the key to the vault that holds the dollars.

Without some of those dollars... Nothing happens... so... don't curse prostitutes for being of low morals... are we all not selling something ever more precious?

I have little ability to tolerate standing in that line of obedient servants... at all.

SO... for me... the prospect of "employment"... in some "normal" way... has become ever more detestable. I might as well just knock over a liquor store and go to the state resort. In my eyes... it's much the same...

One saving grace for me is that I basically have very low requirements for bangles and doo dads. The motivation for those things has become ever less over time. Which reduces my need for the corrupting cash...

That protection seems thinner though as the cost of living rises; faster than the wages it outruns... concealed of course by not raising the prices... but downsizing that which is bought.

Is not reducing the size of a 12 oz. package to 10 ounces, while holding the same price... basically a 16% inflation??? while they report "Success" in managing inflation to hold it to 1.6% ... uh... riiiiiiight...

Shades of that sort of thing runs clear across the board. It burrows its way into every facet of soh-sigh-uh-tee... double the price of phony health insurance... while tripling the deductible and reducing the services paid for... and call it a change to make it Affordable. And then, to make sure those who see the game and try to walk away from it Can Not... Make it illegal to not participate. Fine them if they do. Make sure they PAY to perpetuate the stupidity... willing or not. Legislate the suspension of common sense.

Compound that with the cost of equipment to wander with anything other than boot leather and a back pack... and it's pretty much a mathematical equation... One day that grumpy drifter is gonna hit the wall where there's just no dollars left to push the rig over the next mountain.

So... hunting the trail that brings home the necessities of subsistence... while avoiding the lash of the man's overseer... and the noise that altercation would bring... I'm heading toward familiar ground.

Writing, because the Shades of the twisted economic model have dug themselves deep into googles algorithm (where THEIR profits remain much unchanged as that of the Publishers who produce it plummet) combined with the fickleness of book publishing is not meeting the thin requirements placed on them.

So... a return to the old craft of a "Maker" in a Leather Shop seems in order. Diversify... Which of course... requires an infusion of those %@&   #@&^ ...missing Dollars!... as well as a less gypsy life.

The only place that sufficient dinero to fund that resurrection resides sits in the space between two wheels. :(

So... the way the winds blow...it would appear that barring some unexpected changes in fortune, in the very near future...

... a piece of Red Machinery will be going down the road... carrying somebody else...

You do what you have to do
Brian