Rain Update

We finally have had enough rain to display above the bottom of the chart.

The amount of rain and its timing are fairly random, but....

Here comes the rain again

Falling on my head like a memory

Falling on my head like a new emotion

I want to walk in the open wind

—Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart

This probably isn’t interesting to anyone except Suna and me. After an inch of rain over the last two nights, our ponds are finally full again.

The top chart shows we have had enough actual rain this year to climb onto the chart. Based on a completely unreliable model, we should have a fairly wet year this year. Last year, we finished with an slightly better than average year. But we had enough rain to meet that milestone by the end of June when the taps turned off for a couple of months.

The bottom chart shows when we get rain each year since I’ve been living on the Hermit’s Rest Ranch. While monthly distributions are fairly chaotic, it’s starting to feel more like a tropical pattern. That is, we get heavier rains early in the year, almost nothing through the summer, and light rains in the fall. Unless a tropical storm or hurricane brings a flood.

The pattern of rains, their scarcity, and the melting of the permafrost have been causing me nightmares of late. The climate is always changing, but is this the beginning of the apocalypse climate scientists are warning of? As my dad used to say, “We’ll see.”

Avoiding the Shit Storms

Like an enema, ego can really start some shit. Photo source: Shutterstock

Ego is the enema. I wish this were my pun. I first heard it on an episode of the TV series M.A.S.H. Even though I can’t find the quote on the Internets, that’s where I remember it from. I believe Hawkeye Pierce said,

What brought it back to mind was listening to Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic podcast this morning. He mentioned his book Ego Is the Enemy in passing. As I was showering, getting ready for work, the pun hit me.

But it’s more than a pun. When ego gets involved, that’s when the shit starts to flow. Ego can lubricate everything into a slippery slope to discord and conflict. Well, the conflict has usually already started. That’s what causes ego to flare in the first place.

I’m working on avoiding egotistic shit storms, and Holiday’s podcast and books are helping me be more aware of when ego gets involved. Then, at least, I can try to step back from it.

Memento morti.

Do You Want To Be Rich?

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2020-02-04.

I think it is better to be wealthy than rich. Scales from Shutterstock

This T-shirt captures two popular memes. I can’t make up my mind if it’s brilliant or indecisive. Photo source: Teepublic

Oddly enough, people in the Self-employed and Business quadrants can have a harder time achieving financial independence than those in the Employee quadrant because of higher lifestlye expectations. Society doesn’t expect janitors to shell out for a new luxury car every couple of years. Electricians aren’t expected to have a collection of Lucchese boots. Doctors and small business owners often face those expectations.

I’m in the high-fidelity first class traveling set

I think I need a Lear jet

—Roger Waters

Only you can define your own success, and only once you have defined it can you establish the long-term and interim goals to get you there. So in that spirit, let me ask you a question.

Do you want to be rich?

Not me. I’d rather be wealthy.

When I make that argument, it’s not just semantics. I firmly believe being rich and being wealthy are synonymous only in the broadest sense of the terms. In fact, trying to become rich can be an obstacle to becoming wealthy. Here’s why, being rich is having the appearance of being wealthy. The price you pay for that appearance can prevent you from ever having actual wealth. In appearing to be rich, you spend money on things that make you appear rich. Since you can only spend that money once, it does not go to building your wealth.

In other words, appearing to be rich takes money out of your pocket. Being wealthy generates income, whether you work for it or not.

Spending money is a drug. It releases endorphins in the brain. Endorphins work like morphine or codeine, and they can be just as addictive. When you buy new clothes, the endorphins create a rush of good feelings. People can come to depend on that rush. But as with other drugs, that relief is fleeting and illusory. Soon, instead of making them feel better, people are shopping to get that rush just so they don’t feel bad.

Buying new clothes or accoutrements is not a problem. Buying them when you can’t afford them, or even when you don’t need them is. I know people who spend several hundred dollars a month on clothes. If their wealth generates that kind of income, more power to them. If their jobby job creates the income for this spending or worse, if they can’t afford it, it’s a real problem that can prevent them from ever accumulating the wealth that could make such spending sustainable. Looked at another way, a $500 a month clothes habit, amounts to $6,000 a year. Depending on your market, that’s a downpayment on a rental house every one to three years. The rental house could net you as much as $500 a month in ongoing income.

Cars have always been my weakness in this area. For most of my adult life, a Jaguar XJ has always been my dream car. I bought a used one in the 1980s, but I had to sell it when the cost of maintenance became unsustainable. When I finally bought a new one, I thought I’d finally made it. I felt great driving it around. But as Stephen West observes, “…what actually happens is you get the dream car…then it just becomes…your car at a certain point. Then inevitably…there’s something else that you’re desiring every day.” We are “constantly restlessly striving for things in a perpetual state of discontent.”

That is the real trap of things. They don’t make us happier. They just keep us from being independent. We get caught in the webs of excess consumerism and conspicuous consumption. That Jaguar is a perfect example. At the time, I could have bought a rent house for what I paid for it. In Austin, that rent house would be worth about 140% of its purchase price. If I were to sell the Jag, it would bring about 15% of its purchase price. And clothes are worse. Sometimes we can’t even give away old clothes.

Consumerism is the bonfire into which we throw our hard earned money…and our financial independence. Spending money on mere things may make us feel good at the time—it really does—but it makes someone else wealthy at our expense.

So when you go to the store and find yourself about to spend money, take a second to ask yourself, “What does this purchase help me accomplish?”

Do you need that Lear Jet, or just want one?

All My Rowdy Friends Have Fallen Down

Falls are the leading cause of injury, especially hip injuries, in American elders. Managing our environment can go a long way to reducing the likelihood we will fall and hurt ourselves. Photo source: Shutterstock

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-01-30 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-01-31.

And the hangovers hurt more then they used to

And corn bread and ice tea took the place

Of pills and ninety-proof,

And it seems like none of us do things quite like we used to do

— Hank Williams Jr.

My balance is not what it used to be. In fact, I’m a little envious of my friends in their seventies who still ride their motorcycles. I had to give mine up a few years ago after an ear infection left my balance just enough off that I had to think about every reaction. When you’re flying around at seventy miles an hour with nothing between you and eternity but your leathers, having to think about your actions means you are too damned slow. Well, I am anyway. I don’t want to lay down a bike. I don’t even want to fall out of bed!

As we get older, we tend to fall more. And as Hank Williams Jr. Says about hangovers, falls hurt more than they used to. The more falls hurt, the more wary I become of falling. I’m not just being overly cautious or paranoid. According to American Family Physician, “Falls are the leading cause of injury-related visits to emergency departments in the United States and the primary etiology of accidental deaths in persons over the age of 65 years.”

Some reasons we fall include balance issues (don’t I know it!), environmental hazards (like pets, kids, or clutter), illness, medications or alcohol, vertigo, and vision problems.

If falls are so painful and dangerous, what can we do to avoid them? Of the listed causes, about the only categories we have any real control over are medications, alcohol, and environmental hazards.

We often think we don’t have control over the medications we take, but we really do. Medications are supposed to make us healthier. If your medications make you more likely to fall, dizzy, drowsy, or just less alert, discuss that fact with your doctor. Doctors usually have options—various medication or combinations of medications—that get to the same result. Each person’s body is different and reacts to medications differently. It may take several attempts to figure out what works best for your body.

A glass of wine among friends is a good thing, but I’ve had to become more aware of how it affects my balance as I get older. Please enjoy safely.

Alcohol bridges the gap between medications and environmental factors. To paraphrase Hank again, “All my rowdy friends have fallen down.” I’m leaving alcohol in the environment and out of my body more often than I used to. I’ll still have a drink with dinner now and then, but that’s about the extent of it these days.

That leaves the environment. To help some elder tenants be safer, Hermits’ Rest Enterprises recently installed grab rails in a bathtub and around toilets. My nephew applied non-skid tape to a slick bathtub. I’m thinking about building sidewalks between my house and garage to avoid uneven spots in the yard. And though it hurts my pride, I’m even considering a stair chair. Those stairs are getting longer and steeper every day—especially when I first wake up and haven’t had my coffee yet.

Hearts Homes and Hands may not be able to do the handiwork needed to make your environment safer, but we can help you assess the risk of falling and recommend solutions. We can help with decluttering and keeping your environment cleaner, healthier, and safer.