Self Reliance Exchange has a short article about taking care of our health. As I said, it’s short, so I’ll reprint much of it here:
…are you:
Getting enough sleep?
Exercising regularly?
Eating right?
Protecting yourself?
Taking your medications?
Seeing your doctor and dentist?
While I don’t live up to my own standards, I do believe in this. Life is stressful enough without making it more difficult by not taking care of yourself. Inversely, I deal with stress much better when I’m getting enough sleep and getting some good, solid exercise.
It’s tempting when things get tough or tight to skimp on yourself. Don’t! You can only overload yourself for so long before you give out and are no good to anyone. Take care of yourself!
I finally got back to continuing my series on my sister’s blog about home document management. This edition helps you take the first step to getting all your documents under control by starting with the most critical ones. There’s also a little off-shoot discussion on safes and safe deposit boxes. Please go and read it, and then stay around and see what other useful stuff my family has put together.
There’s an interesting forum discussion going on over at City-data.com. Kristen85 asks:
I currently live in an apartment in CT and I am thinking about the initial steps I can take to become self sufficient before owning a home and land. I graduated from college 3 years ago and have very little money saved so I’m starting with the basics. I also have very little storage space. I’d love to receive advice on how to prepare for “small calamities” like extreme snowstorms and hurricanes then eventually work my way up to being prepared for extended unemployment or national disasters.
The steps I’ve taken so far:
1) Bought solar powered flashlights, constantly sitting by my windows
2) Amassed large amounts of candles and lighters/matches
3) Began growing plants from seeds on my deck so I’ll have an idea of how to grow vegetables/fruits in a yard without reliance on expensive nursery seedlings
I am considering buying a hand crank radio with emergency/weather stations and a small generator. I am also considering teaching myself how to can/bottle food then storing foodstuffs in my garage. However, I don’t know if I am jumping into the “big picture” too soon and should be focusing on lifestyle changes to make rather than things I should buy. As a beginner without land I am not quite sure about how I should continue.
Most of the posters have already told her everything I would tell her. It’s great that she’s already thinking about this now. As with most things in life, unfortunately, the younger you get started the easier it is, and the better the long-term results.
More from Self Reliance Exchange’s series on long term food storage. This installment explores the storage and use of the lowly bean. Only they’re not so lowly around our house. As vegans, we depend greatly on beans for protein.
Adventures in Self Reliance has a post about using super glue to close cuts. I’ve heard of it being done, and I’m sure it would work, but I would personally appreciate a little advice on the proper way to apply it before I try it. With my luck I’d do it the worst possible way and scar them for life or something!
What is the mentality of “free”? It’s the belief that “free” means there is NO cost! Take the lunches I mentioned: sure, they’re not asking the kids who come to hand over some cash to get lunch, but that food doesn’t just materialize out of nowhere and the people there cooking and serving aren’t just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. SOMEONE is paying for this program — in this case the federal government, which translates to the taxpayers!
Rhonda Hetzel at Down To Earth Forum has an interesting essay examining the idea that unwarranted concern over food safety has made us all dependent on pre-packaged foods. I think there is something to that.
For one thing, marketing has long focused on showing how a product fills your needs, and they’re not above creating a need where there is none, even if it means scaring you to death. I remember a friend of mine years ago trying to sell me on a vitamin program based on this apocalyptic presentation that did its best to convince us that we would all die terrible, awful deaths without their vitamins. I didn’t buy it, or the vitamins.
For another, though it may have gotten its start in marketing, the anti-germ crusade has taken on a life of its own. We are so concerned about germs that we are using stronger and stronger products whose only real effect is to force-evolve more potent germs while simultaneously weakening our own natural defenses.
Now, I’m not an un-hygenic person, but I often observed at work how many people would take their paper towel they had just dried their hands on and use it to open the door out of the restroom so they wouldn’t have to expose themselves to the germs on the door handle. I don’t know if this helped them any, but I suspect all it did was make the door handle moist, thus extending the life expectancy of any germs that were there. In any case, I didn’t do that, and I was, if not sick less often, not sick any more frequently than they were.
At the same company we had executives who would spend months at a time at our India office, living amid conditions that would make most of us shudder. Invariably they would all get terribly sick within a few weeks of arriving there. Yet they all observed that the Indians themselves were very seldom sick–and they (the executives) seldom got sick again.
Now I’m not recommending we all start living in squalor or abandon basic hygiene in order to start building up immunity to common germs, but I do think we could relax a bit and not insist on surgical-theater cleanliness for every room in our house.
Smithville Post has a good entry up for getting ideas on how to set up a garden. He doesn’t say much about it (I’ve invited him to do so in the comments–feel free to add some pressure of your own 😉 ), but the pictures alone are worth consideration. Take a look!
Tonight I was reminded again that self reliance, while a worthy goal, is sometimes at cross purposes with other values I hold to. As a Christian, I also believe in looking out for my fellow man. While I do not believe in just giving a man a fish, I sometimes may need to allow a man to fish in my pond. Allow me to explain.
There is a person in our church who supports his family by cleaning buildings, mowing lawns, painting houses, and any other odd jobs he can find. He works hard–a lot harder than I do, most likely. He knows how to fish, so to speak, but then so do I. Very little of what he does is something that I can’t do for myself.
Self reliance says I should hold on to my money by doing those tasks myself. My Christian values say I should reward this man’s industriousness by paying him to do some work for me, at least now and then. Which one wins when my values clash in such a manner? Which one should win?
Right now it’s not an issue. I don’t have the money to pay him, because I am still struggling to support my family. My business, while showing some signs of progress, is not yet putting our bank balance on a positive trajectory. But someday I will have enough money to meet my family’s needs and perhaps some to spare. At what point do I decide that while I can take care of my lawn myself, it is my Christian duty to give this man the opportunity to do it for me and thus allow him to take care of his family?
Technically, self reliance doesn’t mean you have to do everything for yourself, you just need to know how to do as much yourself as makes sense. Should I ever fall on hard times again I’m pretty sure I won’t have forgotten how to mow my own lawn. I doubt I’ll have thrown away my mower. But since my my desire to please my God is more important to me than my self reliance, I suspect I need to be taking a careful look at my finances as my business becomes more and more successful. At some point I will need to switch over from securing my own self reliance to helping others achieve it for themselves.
