A change of pace

Each morning, the first thing I do is go look at the news.  This morning will be a little different.  It is becoming apparent to me what a big challenge I've taken on in going out to the desert and attempting to live out there.  Maybe the challenge will be too much.  Am I considering giving up?  No, absolutely not.  What I am considering is that I am going to have dedicate myself much, much more than what I have been.  Just not taking this enormous task seriously enough.

A brief accounting of the problems follows:

Water:  even though I have thought up ways to recycle water, this is still a problem.  It doesn't not rain out there at this time of the year.  Perhaps I got the wrong impression during the summer months when I began this project, because it rained more often then.  Whatever the case, getting enough water is going to be a big challenge.  Without water, the project is at risk.  Nothing grows without water, and nothing lives and that includes me.  LeMar Alexander says 4 gallons per day suffices for himself.  Even as little as that may be a big, big challenge.

Power:  In order to get some water, you may need power, but power is expensive.  Solar panels do not generate much power, and they require batteries to store the electricity that you do collect, and those batteries are not cheap.  Currently, I am looking at less than two kilowatt hours per day, and even that much may be hard to get without spending a lot of bucks for the necessary equipment.

Money:  The idea was to save money, but as noted above, that's not happening.  I'm spending far more than I thought I would, and I'm not even out there yet.  Everything that I think up takes money, but there are no jobs out there, and besides, the cash situation is not getting better.  The original plan was to wait until I'm retirement age and use the social security checks as a money source.  That's a long way off yet, and may be a viable plan, but things have to hold up here for that long.  Health problems flare up from time to time, and that has an impact upon income that I need.

Those are the big worries, but there are other things.  Being alone out there may be a non-starter as things go wrong and you may need help at some point.  If there's nobody around, you could get yourself into big trouble and be in a big, big fix.  However, getting somebody out there with me complicates things still further when things need to be as simple as possible.

Did I take on too much here?  I hope not.  Other options are not any good either.

What this means going forward is that I will have to spend more time on this project if it has any chance to succeed.  It could mean less posting.  In fact, it must mean less posting.  There's just not enough time for everything.


Update:

I've updated my sidebar with respect to weather and the Table of Contents for the off-the-grid series.  You can now access the most recent post on a sub series as well as the initial post.  Everything should be accessible now, but as usual, there may be something that gets overlooked.