Adapting
I was chatting with my therapist recently about the ongoing apocalypse, and what all I’ve done in response to it. This has not been much, strictly speaking, at least relative to many others. I bought some appliances & a hole before the end of the year, which is a thing I had already been planning on doing. I bought a casual suit. I built a go bag. No food stockpile, no ammo. He called all of this prepping. I did something I almost never do to my therapist and immediately snapped back. It is not prepping. It is adapting.
“Prepping” implies a reality that might come, even has come before in the past, but for which there is very little evidence that it will come. And come on, man. The reality is here. We are inside of it right now. Yes, things may look fine right now, but read the news for five minutes and you’ll rapidly figure out what’s happening, what’s about to happen.
The only thing I’ve done that could conceivably fit under the “prepping” umbrella is to buy durably. But I also think that nobody will look at a belt that’s meant to last the rest of my life and think it constitutes prepping. I haven’t had to think about buying a belt since 2011. That is sensible, not prepping. I truly need very little now, which is wonderful. I pray that as little breaks as possible, and that when things do go, buying replacements will not ruin me.
But that all happened before our current apocalypse, so let’s talk about adaptation. What is changing now?
The six-week rule, which has been blurred a few times in the past, will now be ironclad, bar total emergencies.
Habits will change. I’ve unsubscribed from every significant mailing list & RSS feed for a clothing or gear brand. I’ve unsubscribed from everything that talks about durable objects, lest I find out about the next cool drop. (All of them, even the self-styled anti-consumerist ones, are about finding the next cool drop.)
Behaviorally, I already don’t go out very much because my cooking is frankly better than what you can find at most restaurants. But now? I expect to eat exclusively home-cooked meals bar major anniversaries or other celebrations. I’ll shop at local farms only and pickle a lot for the winters. My major parties will focus on as few imported ingredients as possible. I’ve stopped buying alcohol for my place; I might even stop drinking entirely. Pause dispensaries, obviously, as they’re far too expensive in this state for what you get.
The goal is to pursue direct one-to-one transactions when possible, as this is right relationship made clear. Since we’re about to watch most of our economy become smuggling-based, I suspect most of my consumable home goods will be purchased from the small-but-mighty network of local bodegas. Other shops may pop up in the vacant storefronts along my street after rent craters. Who knows! Life is a whole tapestry.
Obviously, there will be a moratorium on non-essential durable objects for the foreseeable future. I recognize this is mildly hilarious, given how quite a lot of text has been about durable objects. But maybe you spent the past three years calmly gathering durable objects in response to all of the inspirational wisdom here, and so this is no longer relevant to you. If so, good job. Regardless, it is better to not buy at all than to buy thoughtlessly. Truly one needs very little to survive.
Buying as little as possible is an act of resistance against the fascist regime, of course. The faster we can make them pay for their objectively incorrect actions, the better. The end goal is, of course, not to get to a place where we can safely buy again. It is to end fascism, to bring about a new way of relating to one another that honors the earth and our collective future. Who cares? It’s just stuff.
Finally, after ten years of spaceholding a small industry’s collective psychic heat death, I became tired and scrubbed almost all mention of ecommerce from my business’s site. Now we are repositioning back towards independent software businesses, our original love. This came after almost a year of successful work with Buttondown (where you’re reading this!) and a few other software businesses. Current conditions make for a dim future in online stores. So does the incorrect, spiritually impoverished relational dynamics in that industry, rife as it is with dashboard bros and their acolytes. I missed software. It’s calmer here. They know how to move.
Anyway, remember the Primarying Eschaton? They say it’s coming in May, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I think if it happens right now, it will be extremely funny.