(A Long) Intro in Journal

Hello.
This is my first entry so, I guess I can start with a little intro.

I’m 31, a mom, a wife. I’m a deep thinker and a free spirit. I’m curious and always learning. I’m a woman of many skills. I strive for zero waste and sustainability. And I pick up feathers 🪶 and wear them in my hair.

I started my adult life as a cosmetologist. I did hair and worked in a salon for a year before I went back to college. During college, I was chosen by my employer to go through their paid pharmacy technician program. I was a pharm tech for 10 years and worked in retail pharmacies, LTC mental health specialty, and I also worked in inpatient hospital pharmacy in a well-known Seattle hospital.

But I quit my job in May~ish of this year and now I call myself an artist. I’ve been creating digital art that I’ve been selling online and while it doesn’t make a ton of money (yet), my income has grown month over month.

We are selling our house. It was supposed to close last Thursday but it got extended. Probably will close on Tuesday. Our new chapter of our new lives will begin soon. We’re going “off grid”. Scary. Because we’ve always been connected. We’ve always had jobs and a house and the whole keeping up with the Jones’ thing going on.

But it felt wrong. Ever since I was a teenager, I felt that I was not put on this Earth to work a job to pay the bills for things I wasn’t even home for because I was busy at the job trying to make the money. I have no problem with hard work. Before I met my husband, I hustled and worked and had my own apartment without a roommate and paid my way through college at the same time. I only made $13.75/hour then.

But my problem comes when I’m making a company millions of dollars and my compensation is pennies on the dollar. Why should I work to earn the money to purchase a washing machine and pay for the water and electricity when I could just not work for that money and wash the laundry by hand..? I can wash laundry with my son or go to work and be away from my family to earn the money to automate it because I’m too busy working to earn the money.

It’s a vicious cycle. And I’ve learned that my son loves to help with hand washing the laundry.

So.. We are breaking away from the system. I want to teach my son how to actually live and survive in our world. For real. How to make a fire to heat our home. How to fish and hunt and prepare the meat. How to garden and forage. I’m not new to any of this and I want it to be his normal.

CHICKEN DOES NOT COME FROM A GROCERY STORE WRAPPED IN PLASTIC AND SERVED ON A STYROFOAM TRAY.

It comes from an animal. An animal that we are grateful for and that we don’t waste. We put in our greatest effort in providing the best life for it and feed it kitchen scraps and I even toss in some berries that I’ve foraged.

And I can tell you that slaughtering and preparing the animal is not easy. I’ve done it every year for the last 5 years and I still have trouble. But I thank it for its sacrifice. And I show my son that it gave its life so we can eat.

Last winter, we had a snow storm and we couldn’t leave our house for 8 days. That’s when we slaughtered a chicken and our son watched the whole thing. We let him pick which hen. And as my husband humanely and quickly put it out, I explained to our then 3 year old. Then we both walked up to it and he repeated after me, “thank you for dying so we can eat.”

I want to get closer to our roots. Live more naturally. What is all this processed and commercially produced crap that we put in our mouths and lather on our bodies?? We are making ourselves sick. We are covering our Earth with plastic. Our ecosystem is dying. Animals are dying, all in the name of profits.