Tag: Montana

Categories
Homesteading

Day 969 and Hot Chicks

I know it’s a little bit odd to be getting chickens in August, but as of today our homestead is now home to eight egg laying hens.

Our new hens (in their well fortified chicken run) settling in at our hone.

Some of our friends are moving and needed a local home for their laying hens. Another one of our friends was giving up their old chicken coop so we figured it was a sign from the universe that it was time for us to become chicken people.

Unboxing chickens

My husband has spent the last two weekends repainting the coop, installing predator fencing, and otherwise preparing for the arrival of the chickens. Having not done the work of raising them up ourselves the pressure is on to make sure they are well protected.

A little red henhouse

You can’t just take on a friend’s chickens without feeling just a bit more responsibility than you otherwise would had you raised them up from chicks ourselves. We can’t let a literal fox into the henhouse.

This is alas real possibility as a red fox roams our pastures. We’ve got a very tasty infestation of prairie dogs that are suitably stupid enough for an even moderately clever fox. Hopefully the 18 inch predator apron is suitably troublesome to keep our all but the most enterprising. We’d rather the prairie dogs remain the easy snack and our hens too much effort.

The funniest bit of all of this is that I am slightly intolerant to eggs. I can manage eggs in a baked good I find omelettes, quiches and even mayonnaise to a quick path to nausea. Even the smell of eggs being scrambled makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

But I’ve got a fantasy that industrial eggs are the problem and I could come to tolerate eggs from chickens living the good life roaming around our lovely Montana land. And if not we will give them to our neighbors. If we can find one that doesn’t have their own chickens.

Categories
Politics

Day 958 and Civic Engagement

We hosted a little get together at our house this evening. Montana has been in the midst of a renaissance of optimism. It was encouraging to have thirty or so of our neighbors over to discuss our priorities for Montana’s future.

The state has many challenges ahead of it as a result of increasing growth and desirability. You can choose to approach that as an opportunity with a growth mindset. Or you can shrink back and pass laws limiting trouble and keeping things safe. Here in Montana a diverse set of constituents struck back against government overreach.

We discussed the recently passed YIMBY policies in Montana’s 2023 Legislative Session and the Frontier Institute‘s future plans to ensure Montana is a place that all can thrive.

While we all disagreed about a lot, what cemented the coalition is that we all agree that we want more freedom and less government. And you’d be surprised at how much flows from that basic positive oriented.

It was a pleasant night to stay indoors as it was past 90 outside. We had pizza and salad from Sidewall Pizza. And we chatting about knocking down bureaucratic barriers and ensuring opportunity for all. I know it sounds hokey but I honestly fell hopeful.

Categories
Biohacking Politics

Day 952 and Do It Live

I found myself with a bit of anxiety this morning. I was afraid that I hadn’t done enough to promote some of my commitments this month.

This morning I co-hosted a session on nervous system work for founders and venture capitalists with Jonny Miller. Aside from a few Zoom hiccups, I think it well. But with my anxiety all I could think of is how I should have done more. I could have invited more more people, emailed more reminders, promoted it more on Twitter. Just more.

I don’t think my anxiety is about a Zoom seminar. It seems to be directed towards a bigger event next week. I am co-hosting a BBQ at my home for the Frontier Institute in Montana.

I am finding myself fearful that I’ve not not done enough to promote it. I’m afraid I’ll look like a fool and fail at my goal of raising awareness (and ultimately money) for our policy goals. It’s probably irrational but it’s sitting heavily on my emotions at the moment.

I care a great deal about the event being a success. And I have done quite a bit to promote it and invite the right mix of folks who will be interested.

I think even admitting to the anxiety helps me recognize that it’s irrational. I do think the BBQ will be a good time. We will have food, drinks, good company and if you’d like to come it’s on August 16th. Worth a drive into Gallatin I promise.

I wish I didn’t get anxiety about if I’m working hard enough to prepare for an event. The balance between preparing and promoting an event and having it go smoothly when it comes to performing live isn’t an easy one for me. I used to obsessively prepare for everything.

Which would then backfire on me as I’d use all my energy on the lead up and find myself exhausted and frazzled when it came time to be present in the moment for a big day.

So I’m trying to not get too much in my head about if I’ve done enough. What will be will be and I can trust myself to be present in the moment to succeed.

So if you are interested in joining the next Nervous System Mastery Bootcamp with Jonny Miller my code is JULIE and it will get you $250 off. I myself am an alumni of the course and plan to retake it again in the fall. So you’d be taking it with me.

And if you’d like to meet me in person August 16th and you happen to be in Montana I’d love to host you at my home. The topic of conversation will be the Montana Miracle and now we can continue to make the state a place for all to thrive.

Please join Alex Miller, Julie Fredrickson, and Padden Murphy as they host a meet and greet with Frontier Institute’s CEO, Kendall Cotton. We will discuss the recently passed YIMBY policies in Montana’s 2023 Legislative Session and the Frontier Institute’s future plans to ensure Montana is a place that all can thrive.

Come learn about the Frontier Institute’s impactful initiatives, enjoy some delicious food, and engage with a group of fellow Montanans dedicated to knocking down bureaucratic barriers and ensuring opportunity for all. 

Please RSVP to secure your place at this exclusive gathering. The address will be provided upon RSVP.

Categories
Biohacking Politics

Day 946 and Compounding Our Incentives

I don’t want to brag (that’s a lie for rhetorical flourish I am bragging), but I woke up with excellent biometrics today. My first instinct was that I should rush into a long “to do” list for the various priorities I have remaining in the month.

And I do have some priorities I’m very excited about this month. If you are in Montana I’m hosting a get together to celebrate the “Montana Miracle” of the housing reform we successfully passed. Would love to have anyone near enough to Gallatin to pop by and meet me, my husband and our friends in person.

If you aren’t based here, you might be interested in our successful campaign cut out California style regulations so we can build more housing.

We think we can be a model for other western states looking to reclaim rights for their citizens from the government. I believe in individuals pursuing their own freedom as a long term incentive for growth.

The focus on long term incentives is key to understanding both my stance on individual freedoms and how I spend my own time.

Because I’ve got to turn this blog post around to why I was tempted to run into my immediate to do list but held myself to my routine.

I was reminded that my biometrics are good because I’ve been focused on core activities and processes that make my own “system” of incentives tick for my physiology.

I have to sleep, eat, exercise and otherwise take care of my body. If I simply responded to every dopamine hit and desire I had I’d be sick as a dog. I can promise you this is true as I live with a chronic condition I manage with good habits and some better living through chemistry.

I’d prefer we manage as many problems through good compounding longer term incentives. From building for a future that’s arriving to quickly to keeping our bodies from imploding. So get enough fiber, lift heavy things and build more housing.

Categories
Chronicle Emotional Work

Day 941 and Unreasonable

Today marks our one year anniversary of moving to Montana. I noted yesterday just how much we achieved in just 365 days.

I’ve tended to think in terms of time in terms of days over the past three years because no other metric seemed sensible. Too much changes every day even as too little seems to be different.

I do believe that what gets measured gets managed. So it makes sense that someone like me who writes every single day thinks that days are the manageable metric. Not that being manageable means anything is under control. Merely that I have some metric to measure back into to make life seem more reasonable.

I am however all too human. We are feeling animals with the capacity to reason. It’s important that it’s not the other way around. Much as I like to reason my way through life I’ve learned to remember feelings matter. This has made me both much more open and also much more careful about how I treat myself.

I suppose this makes me unreasonable simply by definition. Humans are unreasonable because we do not operate through reason entirely I’d encourage even my most autistic friends to remember that this means you are unreasonable too.

Narratives are the comfort we seek as our apophenia runs rampant. Spotting the one thing that is not like the others is how we survive. We seek sense in the chaos. It’s an unreasonable thing to do when we know we’ve not yet managed to measure even a fraction of our reality. One day I hope I come to terms with that.

Categories
Homesteading

Day 940 and Dishes

Much to my surprise, tomorrow it will have been one year since my husband and I moved from Colorado to Montana. It feels like the time absolutely flew by. We achieved quite a bit on the homestead in just a year here.

We installed a solar grid so we can be off the power grid if we chose. We repaired our well pumps & installed a top of the line water filters. We installed air conditioning because sadly that’s a thing you need now even in the Northern Rockies now. We replaced the roof on the barn and the house. We furnished the living room, dining area, and a full guest floor (come visit seriously). We built out a gym in the barn. We set up a small hydroponic system for vegetables and herbs.

That feels like a lot to when I write it out, and yet oddly it was a purchase we made just yesterday that made me feel like we’d settled in. We bought dishes.

Yes, dishes as in in plates and bowls. We bought a proper nice set of matched china. It took us an entire year of living in our first home, but we finally have something to serve our guests on.

This may require some context for the significance. We got married at city hall without anyone present. We didn’t have a registry or any kind of celebration, so we didn’t get a single gift like a serving platter or soup bowl.

It turns out if you don’t do things the traditional way, neither friend nor family will bother with the rituals of gifting midrange china to celebrate what used to be a major life milestone. I don’t think we got so much as a congratulations card let alone a teacup. Not that we’d asked anyone to do so.

Our kitchen reflects this ten years later with a hodgepodge of Ikea ceramics so chipped and mismatched it’s become a running joke. And while we are clearly willing to invest in substantial equity building activities, spending $500 to acquire dishes felt insane.

Heirlooms don’t really get passed down anymore so it’s just a consumer good. To be fair, we also thought spending the equivalent of a year’s college tuition on a wedding was a waste so maybe it’s just how we prioritize. We invest in things that will be worth more over time like company stock.

I think there has been a persistent fantasy about how millennials rely on their Boomer parents that has just never really been true for my own experience. The grind to build enough stability and cash to own a home can be nearly impossible when starter homes in middle tier cities are over half a million dollars. Letting go of things like weddings was a small sacrifice in my mind given the challenges of earning enough.

But I’ll admit to feeling a little surprised that even getting a hand with your kitchen necessities wasn’t something the older generations wanted to help the younger ones with. No wonder my generation is a bunch of workaholics with no kids.

If you own parents forget to send celebratory tokens, what hope do have for maintaining any of the social fabric of past traditions? We may as well accelerate as fast as we can into the future if we can’t even rely on the past for dishes.

Categories
Community Politics Preparedness

Day 939 and Culture Wins Not Culture Wars

You could be forgiven for losing faith in the American Dream. We’ve had a rough couple of years with bad vibes and culture wars. The Great Weirdening era was not easy.

I’ve been encouraging people to consider preparedness in the face of unrelenting uncertainty for a decade now. It’s time for us to move on from the “what if” of our current geopolitical, economic & climate dislocations to the “what now?”

I’m pleased and saddened to say the future is here. My revealed preferences tell you most of what you need to know. I live in an off grid capable homestead with well water and solar in Montana. I own Bitcoin. I think we are in for a bumpy decade or two.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful. I am optimistic about what a very different future will look like. I invest in technologies as varied as open source vector database software, multi sig wallets for DAO governance & network states, and psychedelic clinics for mental health. I clearly believe we can do future in the future. Orders of magnitude better. If you believe in the same you future you can become an LP in my fund chaotic.capital

Change is the only inevitable thing in life. I’m proud to have been raised in the Rocky Mountains because our history has been so crucial in the formation of the American mythos of a better future. We are the frontier. The future is a frontier just as surely as Star Trek was about space cowboys.

And on the frontier you have the freedom to make choices of your own. How things used to be done doesn’t matter as much here because “how things used to be” is barely more than century or two for most of us.

We take what works from our heritage and we use it to inform a better future. Because a frontier represents a better future for your family. That the next generation will have it better. It’s a commitment to our heirs.

We’ve seen what happens when people don’t believe the future will be better. The pandemic years were bleak. I’ve seen the despair in people’s eyes when I discuss the problems we have in front of us. I’ve happily worn the doomer mantle as I do not wish to convey that success is assured nor that the problems all have solutions. As without clear eyes we will remain in denial forever. But after accepting that we have problems we cannot remain frozen, we must act.

I’d like us all to wake up to our reality and resolve on the good we can achieve by believing the future can be improved by what we do in the now.

We need culture wins not culture wars.

The desire for clean and livable environment, a functional state, and the dignity of our life’s pursuits remain common cause for all humans. Resilience and adaptability remain our tools.

If you are one of my neighbors in Montana, I am hosting a get together on August 16th. I believe that America has a “dissident” middle who are tired of culture wars. We want the freedom to pursue the American dream without government interference. A dynamic future with growth and choice for everyone is the best path forward. And I like to walk that path with you. If you’d like that please come on by my place.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 933 and Hot Hot Heat

It would seem that we’ve officially entered the high season of summer that even northern latitudes like Montana cannot escaped entirely.

I wish I had the capacity to work out a circadian rhythm that entirely accounted for how miserable long hot days can be even if you are inside in the shade. Siestas and late evenings could work but I’ve got the hang of it. I need my eight hours.

I never get cabin fever in the winter. Even the worst storm usually abates within a couple days. I can happily layer up and enjoy being in the cold and dark. I can be outside if it’s cooler, darker and clearer. If it’s not I’m basically a caged animal.

But there is nothing to be down about the sun being out till 10pm and with temperatures crossing over the 90F/32C degree mark, all that is left is escape indoors to a cold dark place and wait out the season.

Last year on July 21 I wrote about summer season affective disorder so it’s clearly a pattern I notice around this time. I’m simply grateful it’s starter later than it did when I lived in Colorado where hot streaks are beginning even earlier.

With Montana summers, I go to sleep when the sun is still out and I wake up and it’s already sunrise. If the heat weren’t so intense I think it would be bearable but the heat domes are becoming pretty common. I remain grateful it’s only six to eight weeks unlike most of continent where summer is longer and crueler.

Another factor in all of this is how challenging fire season can be for spending time outside comfortably even if it’s not combined with a heatwave. I went out this morning before temperatures climbed to get some sun and exercise. The air quality was still decent but multiple fires are popping off in Montana and I expect this to change shortly. I suspect I’ll need to find a way to manage more time indoors as the summer rages on.

Categories
Homesteading

Day 913 and Offline

The social internet is having a bit of a chaotic moment. I haven’t been able to send Tweets consistently for about a day. And I didn’t miss it that much. It felt a little weird at first as I could load tweets, like them and chat in DMs but it was clear none of my replies were sending.

It’s a holiday weekend so for Twitter’s sake I’m sad to report I had other things to keep me occupied. That’s probably bad news for the platform.

We did a big kitchen clean out. Organized the meals for the upcoming week. Like any weekend lots of chores from laundry to deep conditioning was on the to do list.

The real prize of being offline is being outdoors. The weather was absolutely gorgeous this weekend, practically begging us to spend time on the porch or in the Adirondack chairs we put out by our small pond. The air was so clear today you could see from one end of Gallatin to another.

Two Adirondack chairs on fresh cut grass with a blue sky behind it. Is this what they mean when they say touch grass?

Categories
Homesteading

Day 909 and Uninterrupted

I’ve got two uninterrupted months in Montana ahead of me. Maybe I mention this as significant because I spent so much time on the road this spring. I’ve also had multiple catastrophic level dislocations professionally and personally in the front half of the year.

Catastrophic dislocation seems to be the new normal for everyone. I hate to consider that I may have some bargaining & denial about my own thesis at chaotic.capital. But I find myself wishing to be wrong about where I see the future heading. Wouldn’t it be better if our modern lives were getting simpler instead of more complex?

I know that’s a childish fantasy. The complexity in our world has brought about so much good. The costs have been high but the benefits were tangible.

And yet here I am hoping to have some uninterrupted time in a quiet corner of the American empire so that I can cultivate my own strengths. I want to reconnect to myself and recovery from the effort, pain, and grief of living. I want to live and work and build without the chaos of history turning back on again. I dislike how much I now believe ignorance to be bliss.