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Get Focused

In the last post, I went over some thoughts on the principle of Don’t Freak Out. In this post I’ll dig into the second principle – Get Focused.

Focus is where I’ve seen so many people fail, myself included. In my early days of prepping, I would get a thought in my head and there would be an almost incontinent response. This could be anything; spending a bunch of money (at least in comparison to my income) on stuff I had no idea how to use, reading a blurb on the perfect survival tool and ordering one only to realize it was some cheap knock-off, or binge-watching zombie movies to determine the most effective way of dispatching a zombie, you know, because that WILL be the most likely survival scenario you’ll find yourself in. Without some sort of focus, you’ll waste lots of time chasing down random ideas that often times end in more confusion. To get focused, you have to start small.

Think of a pebble thrown into a pond. When the pebble hits the water, it creates ripples that continually spread out bigger and further away. This is your preparedness meter. The ripple way out at the edges of the pond is that big EMP you are worried about. You are the pebble. There are a LOT of stages in between. Start with the pebble. Some people may say “That’s just selfish. You’re only thinking about yourself.” It’s not selfish at all. You cannot take care of someone else if you cannot take care of yourself. You are either going to be an asset or a liability. Choosing to be a liability to someone else is selfish. Make yourself an asset. Start by taking care of the things that immediately affect your own survival and preparedness. Then, go to that next ripple, your immediate family. Then the next ripple, and the next, and the next. You decide what those different stages include. Who you want to include and what you want to accomplish at each stage is entirely up to you.

Don’t start preparing for the looming zombie apocalypse. Start with the life-events that effect your life regularly. For example, In 2020 a couple of big things occurred that made me realize the my own prepping had gotten a little out of focus from where it had been the year or two before. For starters, the Great COVID Toilet-Paper Shortage started early in the year. I had several rolls (probably around 12) at the house when I stated hearing about toilet paper becoming rarer than a unicorn. I thought it was ridiculous, there’s no way toilet paper would disappear before other essentials. Oh how wrong I was. My supply got scarily low before I could start finding small, rationed packs of the cheapest toilet paper made. Lesson learned, as soon as my chosen brand became available I built up a backstock to keep in reserve. Then, later in the summer came the hurricanes in the gulf coast. Despite living well off the coast, these storms had major impacts to my area. I was without power for nine days just from the damage to power lines in my area. Although there was no direct storm damage to my house, there were plenty of other effects that had to be dealt with; frozen foods had to be relocated and refrigerated foods were lost. Pets had to be taken care of daily despite having to travel 25-30 miles from where I was staying until power returned. Stores ran out of fuel for days at a time and lines were LONG when a store actually had fuel to sell.

2021 continued the lessons to be learned in big ways. The ice storm that pounded the south in February confined me to my house for an entire week. Road conditions prevented anyone without a 4-wheel drive vehicle with knobby tires, or those with an atv from getting out on the roads. The only reason grocery store had any food on the shelves was because very few people could get to them. Stores were closed because employees couldn’t travel to work. I made a nearly 20 mile round-trip to the store to pick up a few small items and just to see what the “world” was like. Fuel storage became a standing practice.

These are just a few examples of the things that can directly impact a person’s life. Start with the issues you deal with daily (weather, food, transportation, etc.), then weekly, and so on and so on. Start looking into your own personal protection, your own fitness, your own financial preparedness and get them in order. There are simple things you can address RIGHT NOW that will have you better prepared for tomorrow than you were yesterday. Other things will be ongoing processes. Once you have dealt with the things that directly impact you, step out to the next “ripple” and work toward doing the same for those in your immediate family. Don’t get caught up on the possible, work on the probable. In the next post we will build on the third principle of developing a plan. I hope you’ll continue reading. Please feel free to leave comments.

Don’t Freak Out

In the last post I listed out four principles for beginning preppers. In this post, I’ll dive a little further into the first one, Don’t Freak Out.

It is easy to get spun up into a fearful, panicky state-of-mind. We are surrounded by doom and gloom. News media tells us how vulnerable we are to everything. Social media (along with news media) spread misinformation, and disinformation, like wildfire. Information travels so quickly nowadays that there is very little “fact” being put out to the masses. When the facts do come to light, it is either too late to reverse the flow, or it’s old news and no-one really cares to deal with getting the story straight. But I digress.

So many people see or hear how the world is going to end tomorrow from some threat that they don’t understand and they run out and impulse-buy a bunch of stuff that makes them feel like they have gotten themselves prepared. They haven’t. Operating out of emotion can be dangerous. Fear is an emotion. Fear can be good or bad. It is perfectly good to be fearful of a grizzly bear charging at you while alone in the wilderness. This fear lets you know that you are in danger. This fear tells you that you need to do something to get out of danger and to protect yourself immediately. However, if you live in the desert and you’re deathly afraid of being attacked by penguins, this would be an irrational fear.

A couple of things to consider: 1.) if it is out of your control, there is no point worrying about it because there is nothing you can do about it; 2.) If it is in your control, you can do something about it, so do something about it and you won’t have to worry about it.

I know this is much more easily said than done. A big benefit of prepping has to do with mitigating fear. The more effort and progress we put toward preparedness for a certain event, the less fearful we are if and when said event should occur. If you’re afraid of freezing to death, learn how to make a fire.

In the next post I’ll get into the Getting Focused principle. This is where you’ll be really making so inroads into what you’re preparing for and how to start off with a realistic focus.

Getting Started

In my mid-20s I began slowly easing into prepping. With no clear direction, I made no real progress. Now, I am in my mid-30s and quite a bit has changed. So, over the past 10 years or so, what did I learn that I wished I had done differently in the beginning? What could have helped me to get off to a better start and save myself the grief of so many mistakes? (As an aside, I firmly believe that many of life’s best lessons are made through mistakes. But, try to learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourself.) As I break down some of my basic principles, please keep in mind that I can only share my opinions and experiences. I’m not a life-coach or survival guru. You may see something that could have been done better. If so, please comment and share. The prepper community is all about helping one-another out. The next few personal principles will not be exhaustive and I’ll go into each one in more detail in following posts. That being said, I’ll get started.

Lesson #1 – Don’t freak out. Don’t get caught up in the fearmongering that is so prevalent in our society. Don’t get caught up in impulse-buying the mystical save-all survival items. Relax, take a breath, and take care of the things that you can take care of. Outside of that, it’s out of your control anyway.

Lesson #2 – Get Focused. Now that you’ve calmed down, it’s time to sit down and really figure out what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. At this point, a lot of people jump way ahead and say “I’m preparing for an EMP” or some other major event. Well, you can’t really prepare for the “major” if you haven’t prepared for the “minor”. That missile silo in Kansas that you bought and stocked is going to do you absolutely no good if you don’t have a way to get there from your house in upper New York in the dead of winter. Start small.

Lesson #3 – Develop a plan. It doesn’t matter what you want to accomplish if you don’t have a plan. Without a plan, you won’t know what to do to get from point A to point B, to C, to D, and on and on. This plan can be very simple and concise, or it can be very detailed. I suggest you start with a simple overall plan from start to finish and then go back and fine-tune said plan. That way you at least have a general idea of what you want to do before you get hung up on the intricacies of one step and can’t move to the next.

Lesson #4 – Start making progress. Thinking things through will only get you so far. Reading will only get you so far. Don’t get hung up on the academic side of getting prepared. Start taking practical steps toward your preparedness. Once you have developed your plan, put it into action. In the next post I’ll expound on some of these lessons in more detail. I’ll let you know where I went wrong and what I have learned that has better served my own preparedness

Welcome to the site

The preparedness/self-reliance/survivalist community is vast. There are countless blogs, channels, sites, etc. geared toward preparedness. The are books on off-grid living, situational awareness, and everything in between. Members of the preparedness community are not all crazy people people living in the woods preparing for armageddon (there are a few of those out there, I’m sure). It is my opinion that the prepper community is very down-to-earth and it’s focus is fairly simple; 1.) taking control of as much of their lives as possible, 2.) working toward a level of preparedness that will not only allow them to survive the various disasters that occur in life, but to thrive, and 3.) sharing their experiences and knowledge with others in the hopes that they will do the same.

In my experience, prepper’s love to help others by sharing what they know. That is why there are so many resources on preparedness. They are all trying to share that knowledge. Some of that knowledge is free on blogs, sites, etc and some of it is not; including, books, dvd series, training courses, etc. And, much of the time that information is very similar. So, why do we need ANOTHER one? Each prepper’s journey is unique. Prepping is very much an individual endeavor. After reading 100s of blogs, watching 1000s of videos and talking to different people to learn and get advice, each and every prepper will somehow fine-tune their focus, goals, and gear to what fits them the best. There are different philosophies on why to prep, where to start, and for what you should be prepping. No matter how much of one person’s prepping will resemble another’s, there will be differences; maybe not in gear or tactics, but in mindset or purpose.

I have been a prepper on one level or another since my mid-20s. I have made mistakes and had big “wins”. I will share experiences and the lessons learned. I will give reviews on the gear I have used. It is my hope that by sharing my prepping journey that I can be a helpful part of your’s. In the next post I will go over where to start and the steps I think are necessary to develop a plan. Please feel free to leave comments and ask questions.