I'm not unnecessary

This morning I received a notice from Facebook that my page has been deactivated, and realized I haven’t posted in a very long time.  So I fired up my old laptop, opened a Word file, and … nothing.  Two hours later, a reinstalled version, and I am back at it.  Seems there was a problem in Microsoft-land this week.  I just hadn’t been on line to find out.

On to the day’s musings!  Yesterday I had, again, a conversation about the wisdom of the choices I’ve made for my lifestyle.  My Gypsy Lilac is a very old trailer.  And she is lovely to me.  On the one hand – there is a LOT to fix.  On the other, she is 45 years old and is remarkably sturdy for simply being that long in the weather.  Given an aluminum skin and wood skeleton – water is a problem.  It seeps in to corners and along strange paths and selectively removes section of the frame.  And that is the good news!  She only has bad spots.  Of course, they aren’t always easy to get to.  And there is where I part ways with many people.  How to approach "getting to it".

I repeatedly run into the attitude - presented as wise and sage wisdom by those who know better than I - that the entire thing should be gutted and then rebuilt, while I am staying elsewhere.  For a number of reasons, that isn’t what I’m doing.  Many of them are financial I guess, but a good portion are the core of a philosophy.  And I guess a third thing is what I might call a financial philosophy. 

I am on what some (many) would call a limited income.  And I essentially live on a cash and barter basis.  The first is a fact, the second is a mixture of reality and philosophy.

I don’t consider everything that is old to automatically be of lesser or no value.  That means I take the time to evaluate what is (and how it came to be) rather than assume it is defective.  I am immediately reminded of the craftsmen who built so much, one at a time, lovingly fitting each piece together, rather than on a production line.  (Coincidentally, I am currently staying at a lovely campground built on an antique showgrounds, and am surrounded by the still functioning equipment of old, that many today would consider trash.)  I do not support the strongly held belief today of “built-in obsolescence”.  And that permeates everything we have and do – services, products, fast-food, environmental policy, and even farming policy.  We are always – in the name of progress – building a better mousetrap.  Some of the old ones worked just fine!  That term is so frequently a ruse for finding a way to “get rich quick” – at the expense of anyone who gets sucked into buying by all the money spent on marketing and advertising.  And almost never is the benefit to the inventor.

Parallel to that is a nostalgia craze – at huge costs – to “restore” it exactly like it was.  Even if there are better performing materials that could be fashioned into the same thing, that wouldn’t be “authentic”.

I fall somewhere between better mousetrap and authentic, focusing more on respect and functionality.  And of course, cost has to be included. My little trailer is my home. Mine and Keifer’s.  Not yours.  Your discomfort about my choices is your choice, and actually, no concern of mine. 

As a sage friend told me years ago – “If I agree 100% with you, and you agree 100% with me, one of us is unnecessary.”  And I have no interest in being unnecessary...

Enjoy your day!!