Whittling and Chopping

We're close.

Really close.

And getting closer every week.

There's still a good bit left to finish up. 

Nothing nearly like when we first started.

It's a really good feeling.

12' by 28' isn't a lot of room. It is even less room when you consider that 4' of that 28' is the front porch. That whittles the inside cabin dimensions down to 12' X 24'. 288 square feet unless you subtract the space taken up by the walls. You may, for all practical purposes, consider the inside dimensions to be more on the lines of 11' X 23'. That whittles it down even more to about 253 square feet of living space.

Daunting?

Not really.

Challenging?

For sure. Especially for the modern mindset accustomed to cultural norms.

I'm not sure how many times I've done it over the past decade plus a few years … made trailer loads to the landfill … of stuff that I'd stick in the sheds thinking that one day I would use it for something. How many piles of trash have I burned? I hate to even venture a guess. My old friend, Willy, has also been here a couple of times with his trailer loading up scrap iron, and an aluminum boat and trailer, that I hung onto for who knows what good reason.

We started getting proactive about downsizing a couple of years ago and had our first huge yard sale in 2014. We've had several of them since the first one. Whatever was left after a yard sale, and there was a lot of leftovers, was loaded, hauled into town, and donated to the local Goodwill. We've given furniture, and a lot of other good usable stuff, away in an attempt to whittle and chop things down to bare but comfortable necessities.

Our motivation for the whittling and chopping, back when we first sharpened our blades and started working on it, was, except for a very few people, kept under the radar. There's a lot about this adventurous endeavor that most people can't and will never be able to wrap their minds around. It's too scary for most people, especially most people our age. And we'll admit, after years of studying on it … years of planning … years of taking steps, some small and some BIG, in the direction we're traveling … it's still a little scary for us.

Change is good, they say. Whoever it is that they are. What they don't emphasise well is that change is hard. It can be really hard. The older the dog, the harder it is for the dog to learn new tricks. Why? The old dog has some deeply embedded habits. The weather changes constantly. The times are constantly undergoing change. People? People can change but it's a pretty rare thing for people to change drastically. We're kinda like dogs in that regard … accustomed to our acquired habits.

The past few years do not take into account the prior decades of tuning and fine-tuning our own inner realities … the realization and understanding of who we are as individuals. Not only as individuals but also as a married couple. An adventure like this would be a terribly bumpy ride if one or the other of us was dragging our feet while kicking and screaming, or, if one or the other of us, was going along passively for the ride. Neither of those scenarios, where the two of us are concerned, is the case. Both of our necks are in the yoke equally encouraging the load toward our goal … one that is on the very near horizon!

This downsizing to a small cabin in the woods is not just a physical adjustment. It is every bit as much a psychological adjustment. It is every bit as much an emotional adjustment. These three dimensions cover a lot of ground. The whole human psyche is involved. Ancient Old Amos, back there sometime between 786 and 746 BC, asked the question, “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” They had best be to attempt something like this.

What we are doing in our life-adventure is more about preserving and cultivating the selves that have emerged in our interior processes than it is about striking out against the world and all that we see wrong with it. The latter is a good way to get bogged down. It's also a good way to spend valuable time, energy, and rubber off your tires furthering someone else's agenda. We've done that, did it until there wasn't much left of us. Our own necessity … our own agenda … our own cause … is what motivates us at this point in our oldering lives.

Whittling and chopping in order to go from a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, screened porch on the front, small porch on the back to a little cabin hardly any bigger than our living room?

It was hard at the outset.

Has it gotten easier at this stage of the game?

Some easier. It's still hard.

But not as hard as at first.