Hi everybody, welcome back to the cabin, and welcome to the first season of the MySelfReliance podcast. This has been a long time coming, but I'm finally getting around to doing it, after four or five years of planning because I have some time. I have this cabin to the point where it's livable, and there's endless projects still that need to be done, infrastructure projects as well as just daily cabin life, but I do have a little bit more time.
So, I'm going to... I speak to you a lot more at least weekly on the podcast as well as on my Shawn James YouTube channel where I'll be sharing these podcasts as well as some other videos just giving tips and tutorials and just updates on what I'm doing with my life. But I think my focus here would be to demonstrate What I'm doing, explain what I'm doing, but also try to cover topics that I think would have value to you in your pursuit of self reliance.
It's one of the key elements and one of the limitations people have is financial. It does take getting off the system, off the modern system, financial system, monetary system. It takes kind of separating from that as much as possible. To live independently, that allows you to do something like what I'm doing here, if this is what your goal is.
Or to live self sufficiently at all, or more independently at all. You have to get to the point where you're living as debt free as possible. Now, I'm at that point in my life, but I'm 53, and I haven't always been debt free. I didn't always live my life that way. I wish I had. But, there's just some things that are limiting if you're not taking on debt.
I'm talking big ticket items, typically, like a house and vehicles, a car for getting to work and earning an income, for example. But beyond that avoiding debt as much as possible and living within your means. And if that means that you need to increase your means, then that is what you should focus on.
In other words, make more money with the time that you have in order to pay off your debt and try to get off that financial system so that you're not beholden to a workplace and an employer or or to government to take care of your, take care of your basic needs. So creating income. Or becoming as frugal as possible, living as debt free as possible would be one of my primary focuses on this podcast, because I know that's a limitation that most people have.
Beyond that we're going to get into life skills homesteading skills. To me, living self reliant... Means being able to do as many things yourself and for yourself and for your family. And the basic needs are right at the top of the priorities. So shelter, food, water, clean air, fresh air, things like that.
Those are the priorities. And to me, a meaningful life means tackling those yourself instead of offloading that to society, to somebody else in your life. So to rather than to go to work in order to pay for somebody else to build your house and to maintain your house. Do that yourself, build a house and do it cheaply so that you don't have to go to work as often or you don't have to work as many hours for somebody else because you've because you've built a lifestyle, built in that case a shelter that's debt free, mortgage free.
So under the broader category of self reliance, I have a number of subcategories that I would consider essential for self reliance. That includes physical health, mental health, spiritual health, alternative medicine, financial freedom, community building. Forestry and Land Management, Shelter Building, Natural Home Building, Sustainable or Renewable Energy, Water Collection, Water Treatment, Water Storage, Food Preservation, Food, which includes Hunting, Fishing, Raising, Growing, Foraging, Collecting, Storing, Preserving.
It's one of the primary reasons I'm starting this podcast now is I'm seeing a, a real divergence in society. It's been driven by the, especially by the events over the last several years, since 2020. And I, I just see there are... Divergence into sort of a mo modern culture and a primitive culture or more traditional lifestyle culture.
And I think that our happiness and the meaning in our lives is rooted more in our past than it is in the future. And I think and it's my belief that living a more natural life is much more healthy and, and satisfying to us. So what I aim to do here is to share my divergence and then journey in...
To the past basically back to more hands on responsible personal independent living and not only showing you how I'm doing it, but What are the steps and maybe you could take that would be a little bit more efficient Get to your goals a little bit quicker than it's taken me. I'm 53 right now. I basically started Self reliance journey back in my teens building cabins back then and living in my early 20s in a log cabin, but getting, kind of going off that path for a number of years and getting finally back to it at this stage of my life.
So my journey is going to be different than yours. I'm at the point now where money, for example, isn't a problem for me. I'm not extremely wealthy, but I'm also financially secure and independent and I have zero debt. And plan on keeping it that way. Everything that I purchase, everything that I build and own, I'm doing with money out of my pocket.
And to me, that's one of the critical first steps in independence is to try to maintain as debt free a lifestyle as possible. Now, one thing I want to make clear on my podcast is that I'm not trying to romanticize the past. It was not easy to live any time before now, and progressively worse as you go back in history.
Especially I would say for women, but what I think is that we kind of overshot the level of security and comfort that we were seeking. And the minimization of suffering, I think we've just gone too far in that we've lost meaning as a result. So things are too easy for most of us, even relatively, even most of the people, almost everybody listening to this podcast, whether your life is difficult or not.
is likely much less difficult than it has been any time in the past for our predecessors. So, let's not you know, pretend that going back and living like this is the, the best way to do it, without access to modern amenities. But again, I don't let's not romanticize the past. Let's go fully back to that.
I mean, hand tools is a good example. I can use hand tools because a lot of other things in my life are less hands on. So, I can take... more time doing something because I'm not going to starve to death if my garden fails, for example. So I don't have to put all my time into raising food. I can spend more time building the shelter, doing the part that I like, because we can still go to the grocery store to fill in the gaps in our food production.
We're not even close, well, we're getting closer, but we're not there yet as far as producing all of our own calories. Now, last year we got very close, and this year might... Achieve that completely, but there's still going to be things that we choose to buy from the grocery store or from other producers.
Coffee, for example, or sugar. Oh no, not sugar, because we use maple syrup. But anyway, you know, you get the point. So my point is that I think a more natural life, a more responsible life, and a more hands on, self sufficient life is superior to the modern life where we have everything done for us and we you know, are Risk of failure is less and our suffering is generally less.
I say accept suffering, accept that suffering is a condition of life. So as they say don't ask for a life that's less difficult, but you know, seek out a life that you have the strength to overcome those challenges and that suffering.