Happy to be Prepping

[Little Lou]

This is in part inspired by Northern Raider's comment on our general miserableness, but also just because we all need lifting some time. I've needed it badly, and this site has helped me, and welcomed me home.

So here goes. This is why I'm 'Happy to be Prepping', and I do hope other members will post their own thoughts on why they feel the same.

Before Prepping
Someone once defined stress as being the torment we endure when we're impotent in an intolerable situation. When there's NOTHING we can do but let it happen. For young people that might be the horror of waiting for exam results, for others the frustration of spending hour after hour in a traffic jam, and for many of us the feeling that the world is going to hell in a handcart and there's not a single damn thing we can do to stop it.

That was me. Governments do what governments do, and all I could do was get angry in the pub and crawl along day to day waiting for the axe to fall. Everything I did had an oppressive cloud hanging over it, a feeling of 'What's the point when we've all had it anyway?'

Prepping

Now there is something I can do. Everything I do has a point. Even if I'm one of those who dies in the first minute of SHTF, then I've fought to the end and been happy doing it. And if I've made friends in the process and maybe passed over one piece of advice, one thought that helps, then thank you, I'll settle for that.

Meanwhile my whole life has changed.

I no longer procrastinate. My depression was turning me into a right slob, but now I always ask 'what if the SHTF tomorrow? Do I want the house to be filthy before I even start? Do I want to begin a new life with a pile of dirty laundry?' My house is spotless, the laundry is turned round instantly, my phone is always charged, the garden is always tidy and up-to-date with necessary jobs. I go to bed happy.

I can end every single day with a sense of achievement. Money is tight, but if I take a little time to print out useful articles for my binder, experiment with my first herbal infusion, go for a local walk to add to my notes on possible BOLs and useful forage, then I've spent nothing, but taken another meaningful step forward to my goal.

I no longer waste materials. I shudder to think of the things I used to chuck away, when now I realize their value. Even cardboard and newspaper no longer go in the recycling boxes, but are shredded, soaked, and reformed into fuel bricks that will one day give me hours of heat. Every scrap of vegetable waste goes in the compost to begin the life cycle all over again. I wash foil trays, plastic takeaway containers, polythene bags, and consider every one of them a gift gained for free.

I take pleasure in what I buy and eat. In order to 'see' how food will look post SHTF, I picture a victim of a concentration camp, and how they would have looked at that stale heel of loaf I'm chucking in the bin. My sister lived in France for many years, and was once bawled out massively by her elderly neighbour for throwing away the last slices of bread. Those people lived on nettles under the occupation, and Francine was crying when she wiped the old fag ash off the bread crust and said 'Jamais, jamais, jettez le pain.' Never, never, throw away bread. Well - yes.
I don't mean by that that we should eat mouldy food and be grateful - only that a single mouthful of cheddar cheese can give the most intense pleasure when you eat it in that awareness. We may live in a throwaway society that's afraid of its peck of dirt, but I don't have to be part of it, and I can still value food for what it is.
It tastes bloody marvellous when you do.

Everything does. I can buy a can of processed peas for 50p and feel excited to know that the contents will keep a man alive for another day. One more day.

And that's it for me. I'm so far behind most preppers here I could easily be overwhelmed and give in, but the way I see it 'every little is a gain'. Every single little tin in the cupboard, every seed in the ground, every gas canister in my power box, every candle, every match, every pack of loo roll, every battery, every little, every inch, and every day.

I'm doing something. I'm not living at the whim of the government, I'm setting my own course and taking responsibility for myself. And in the end that matters more to me even than the can of peas, because it gives me self respect.

And the right to live without fear. Bad things will happen, but I no longer fear them. If I die I die, but I'm giving myself and the people I care about ther very best shot at it that I possibly can. Is there anything - ANYTHING - in this life that's worth more than that?

So says the newbie.

What say you?