2023-01-23 — All Over the Place

Man, I am so far out of the habit of writing every day.

I can’t remember what all’s been going on. Let’s see… I’ve basically shut down my tree service business for the time being. With neither of us physically able to do the work that needs to be done, it’s pretty crappy, as I’m down more than $20,000 in the effort of starting the business.

If you’ve ever wondered why I always bootstrap my business avengers, this is exactly why. I did things a lot differently this time, my first effort to start a business by funding it, but having someone else run it. I didn’t like spending so much money on new equipment and so much upfront, but since I wasn’t going to be the one putting in the bulk of the work, I was doing my best to provide the equipment necessary to make it easier to be successful.

One of the reasons that I bootstrap is that sometimes you start something and realize that you don’t even want to be in it. In such cases, you don’t want to have spent gobs of money only to realize you don’t even want to be a part of what you’re doing.

Another reason is that you can’t really ever foresee what might come up, so you just spend the money to improve the business as the business makes money, and then you’re never spending more than what the business brings in, nor are you going into debt for anything.

It’s a philosophy that I’ve followed pretty much my entire life, and I’ve pretty much always been successful. My businesses don’t work out, not because I couldn’t get the work and make it successful, but because I didn’t want to do it anymore.

And let’s just say that after trying the pre-funding route that so many do, and now being down more than $20,000, I think I’m going to stick with my bootstrapping that I’ve done all my life and been successful at. 🙂

I’m not mad or frustrated or anything like that. It just is what it is. Certainly, my brain is trying to think of ways to recover the money. Trying to think of ways to use the equipment that I bought to bring in enough money to cover the losses, but whatever. I might just move on and shut that door altogether.

I had a chat with my nephew, and he’s cool with letting it go. It’s a bit of a load off my mind to not have the financial obligations hanging over my head when I’m bleeding money.

We’re thinking of other things that we might be able to do. I’ve got lots of equipment, but that equipment is also older, and it needs to be maintained, and is in need of quite a bit of repair.

(sigh)

I’m tired. 🙃

I just want to help people, just spend my life doing the heartwarming things that make you smile and cry. 😊

Been looking at different places to volunteer. Spent a little time looking at the opportunities as part of the Peace Corps (georgia, Costa rica, and Mexico are looking for people to teach English. That’s right up my alley, given that I did that for years already at the University level.

Really want to start my own thing, though…

How is it that lack of a name can be so debilitating and finding a name so… elusive? 🙃

Getting closer, regardless. Bit by bit. It’s time to love life again, and for me, that means spending my time helping bring joy and hope and laughter and love encouragement to others.

I’ve been trying to do that here on Haven Hill since I’ve been home. I’ve been slowing down, despite both my businesses seemingly falling apart.

I’ve been working on trying to help my Hill family with the things that will help make their lives happier and better.

It’s nice. 😊

I had a great conversation with my Hill brother Jim on… Sunday? Yeah, Sunday. I think. We talked for a few hours about life and stuff. We talked about things to do here on the Haven Hill.

We’ll be getting the power to the deck fixed tomorrow, so that’ll be good, and we’re talking about getting the greenhouse moved up to the upper field. It’s sort of an out-of-sight-out-of-mind project right now, but if it’s in the upper field, that should… fix that. It’ll be closer to everyone and much more likely to be worked on.

We’ll start as a family greenhouse, and if successful, perhaps we’ll try to make it a commercial venture. We’ll see. 🙂

I don’t even know how long I’m going to be here. At the same time I’m doing all this stuff for the Hill, I’m also actively looking at houses for sale. There’s a 12,000 sq/ft church for sale for $400k. Could make a fun home, no? 🙃

Talk about a hefty power bill. 😬

Still… maybe a fun idea? It’s got 12 rooms. Maybe I could rent them all out. 🤔

And you think I’m joking. 😆

What else… dating. Yeah, that thing. Can i just… Vent for a moment? I guess I’ve been out of touch with the female population for long enough to be rather shocked by what I see. Somehow, while I’ve been”gone,” nose rings, tattoos all over, and flipping the bird at the camera have become staples of the current social trends.

Oh, and I guess mom jeans have come back.

😶

I’ve talked about my attractiveness meter being fairly picky, and good gravy 😆😆😆.

I don’t think I’ve met a single guy who thinks that mom jeans look good on women.

And I’m one of those guys. 🙃

Nose rings are a huge turn off for me, as are tattoos. At least the current trend of tattoos that seems to be pushing people to ink up their whole bodies… sleeves… and… Whatever you call sleeves when they’re on legs. 🙃 I don’t mind the little tattoo here and there, but the painted body, not so much.

And flipping off the camera? Really?

I’m so out of touch 🙃… and… so far outside that world even were I in touch.

You know what’s funny? I’ve been having all these stomach issues, super bad acid reflux, esophageal ulcer or whatever the heck all these things are. When I got home Friday night, I think I mentioned in my post that night that I had gone and spend a whole bunch of money on foods I shouldn’t be eating, and I went ahead and ate them.

I think I ate somewhere around a pound and a half of candy, as well as soda, chips and salsa, and a heck of a lot more as well. My stomach should have gone completely bonkers, right?

Nope. It was completely fine.

😶

I fed it all sorts of stuff that should have completely pissed It off, and it just stared at me, blinked, shrugged its shoulders (yes, stomachs have shoulders. Don’t know where you’ve been), and that was it.

Really?!?!

So there’s got to be something that I’m eating that’s causing me so many issues?

Anyway, I’ve eaten a lot more crap last few days, and I’ve had a lot fewer stomach issues, because of course that makes complete sense. Apparently, I’ve conditioned my body to love crap and to run on crap and to hate it when it’s not full of crap.

Guess if I weren’t already full of it, the future might well need to be a future where I’m just full of crap.

Hmmm…

😁

In other news, the joints mostly hurt, but I’m trying to be gentle with them in the hopes that they will heal.

I dropped the temperature of the house from 67 to 55, in an effort to reduce the amount of propane were burning to keep the house warm. My nephew who lives here likes it cold, and I don’t mind wearing multiple layers to keep warm. Hopefully, that will reduce our consumption. I would much rather heat the house with the wood stove, but unfortunately, the house is not designed at all to be properly heated with a wood stove. And I guess we don’t really have a wood stove, anyway. It’s just a fireplace insert.

There’s so much dead wood in the forest around us that we could heat the house for quite a long time, several years at a bare minimum before we burn through it all.

Spent a good while today burning all of the last of the tree service branches that we brought home from jobs. It was all in the way of where the greenhouse will be going in the upper field, assuming that all happens as I think it will.

I wasn’t very smart and did all of that with my nice pair of jeans and nice shirt. I learned, thanks to the fire, that my shirt is not made out of cotton. It’s nice and soft and feels like cotton, but it melts. 😶 After many hours of burning quite a huge burn pile, if you take my shirt off and hold it up to the sun, you’ll find that it now looks a little bit like Swiss cheese. 🙃

Oops.

I guess that shirt has now been, uh… upgraded to the work-shirt drawer. 😁

While I was burning everything, my other nephew and I cleared some of the smaller trees and shrubs from near his house and shed in order to create a new path out of the woods that will eventually be a road, once we fill up the holler enough to level it out. One of our Hill family friends is a mason, and he’s got a huge wall he’s knocking down and needs a place to dump all the leftovers, so we cleared out those trees to make it easier to dump all the leftovers in the holler, which will slowly but surely, help us build everything up to level out that back road through the woods.

Unfortunately, I found more leaking hydraulic cylinders, this time on my skid steer. Both of the main hydraulic cylinders are leaking a little bit. I suppose it could just be winter, with everything shrinking down in the cold. Perhaps it’s increasing the gap between seals and allowing more fluid to come out than normally would. Hopefully, that’s the case, and the leaks will either go away or stay very small once the temperature warms up.

Speaking of temperature, the 14-day forecast is looking pretty cold, with snow tomorrow and wednesday.

I might have to up the temperature in the house if it gets too cold, so we don’t risk bursting pipes.

Realistically, pipes probably wouldn’t burst unless we got way down into the negatives, as we were just a month or two ago way down in the negatives, and we didn’t have any problems with pipes. That however also came at a time when the house was set to 67 and not the current 55 or 56 or whatever it is that I have it at.

In other other news, I know a woman and her son who don’t really know much at all about their biological family but would like to know; so I gathered what little information the woman had, and within probably 15 minutes was able to find a whole bunch of information, including–where her dad was from, when and where he died, who her grandparents were (on her dad’s side), and much much much more. I found a crap-ton of info about her dad’s side of the family. I have to verify it all to be sure, but it’s looking pretty darn solid and pretty cool.

Her son didn’t really think it was possible to figure out, but here we are!!!

🥳🎉🥳

Next up is her mom’s side of the family. And then even more after that. We’ll see what we can do!!!

Cross your fingers. 😊

Loves to all y’all. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen