Building Barbelith | The American Dream: Part 3 (a.k.a. The In-Between)

We’ve been living for a year now in my parent’s house in a 10×12 blue bedroom that used to be my sisters’. As far as living with one’s parents goes, it hasn’t been awful. We’re just… ready spread out a bit. Ready to have our belongings at hand and not stored away in a shed in the backyard. Ready to sit naked in our own living room. To say we get a little stir crazy is an understatement.

BUILDING BARBELITH | THE AMERICAN DREAM: PART 2

I have said it before, I will say it again: a picture is worth a thousand words.  So here’s a picture for you. 

I Don’t Know.

Here’s a stark confession
I don’t know what I’m doing.

I honestly believe most adults don’t.
We do the best we can, try to make our lives better for ourselves and the people we love, but when it comes down to it, we’re all making this shit up as we go along.
It is the beginning of boxes. All our physical visual media is packed away, stacked up in the corner of our arts and crafts room. Next will be the wrestling memorabilia, followed by the books. By choice, things are out of place.

I retired from podcasting, made a public announcement and everything. It is something I have done for seven years, scheduled my life around recording and editing. As a friend of mine stated after the announcement, it’s like losing an arm. And yet, just a few more episodes on a few shows I love, and I’m out. By choice, things are out of place.
And there are schedules and deadlines and deep cleaning and painting to be done here in this place that has been our home for five years and it is all getting done a bit at a time, and that’s fine. The boxes mean progress. The cleared schedule means more time for other things. It’s a small glimpse into the future.
But, my gods, does it feel weird. No one is comfortable in upheaval, and as much as I have embraced Chaos in my life, I also feel unsettled in this mess and confusion. I don’t know where my stuff is. I can’t decide what to keep, sell, or throw away. Everything is weird and blurry right now.

But there is a point to all of this. There is a dream, and there is a strong desire to make that vision a reality. I mean, we’re not trying to get into outer space, but this is about our inner space, so again, by choice, things are out of place.
I’ll tell you what, though. Just between you, me, and the lightpost, I have no idea how we’re going to pull this off.

But we will.

 

Movement.

We’ve been talking about Barbelith for years now. We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, plans changing from day to day and, really, what the hell are we actually doing besides daydreaming?

Up until now, the answer to that has been, “Not much.”

Well, that’s not entirely true.

We’ve researched practically every form of housing, from standard brick and mortar homes to yurts to Quonset huts to cob homes to mobile homes to tents. This is not information I had ever planned on acquiring, but boy howdy, do I have it.
For example: did you know that it requires 5200 nuts and bolts to construct a standard Quonset hut? Can you imagine getting to the end of that building project and you’ve lost a bolt? YOU WOULD NEVER FINISH.

We’ve watched a lot of DIY and HGTV programming.

“If I could make pants out of shiplap, I would wear them to church.”

I’ve absorbed hours and hours of instructional YouTube videos. We’ve created spreadsheets and Pinterest boards. With everything else that we do, getting onto that piece of land has always been the undercurrent, the goal we’ve been working towards.

So many ducks, so few rows.

Well, to quote Bad Boys II, shit just got real.

“Barbelith, motherfuckers.”

This what they call a cliffhanger.

Because although I feel comfortable announcing that there is finally movement on the Barbelith front, there are people we need to talk to on a personal level before I start really flapping my gums.

Things are about to change and the evolution shall be blogged.
That’s the saying, right?

Give us a follow, if you’re of a mind to do so. The next couple of years are going to be interesting.

 

Building Barbelith | The American Dream: Part 1

When X & I talk about our Vision for growing old together, it always centers around a little house with a yard for the grandkids to run around in. A place for me to grow herbs and him to grow tomatoes. A deck for our grill and relaxing evenings singing together and looking at the stars. It’s a pretty modest dream comparatively, and we’ve always talked about with the “someday” mentality that young people often speak with. But recently, it seems, the realization has dawned that our “someday” is right around the fucking corner. How did we get to be middle aged? When the fuck did that happen? Don’t ask me. Linear time is not a friend of mine. Regardless, here we are staring down the barrel of it completely unprepared. So, like you do, we’ve been thinking. And we’ve been talking. And we’ve been researching. What would our Barbelith look like?