Monday, August 30, 2010

One Year Reflection

Y'know it occurred to me that it has been over a year since I started keeping this journal, and I completely forgot that the 1 year date had passed.

I originally started this journal with the intention of just tracking my progress, my projects and any cool tricks I had learned. Ultimately I wanted to be able to look back on the early pages in about 5 years and laugh at some of the silly things I believed. Really though, what I didn't expect was how well this thing has kept me accountable...to myself.

At the beginning I was unsure if I should even create a blog, and actually kept it unsearchable and private for quite some time. It was only for me to read, and perhaps a few close others who knew what my interests were. What would I post about? I don't know much and I lack quite a bit of experience. That really hasn't changed, but what I CAN say is that I know more today than I did 1 year ago...and isn't that the point? Constantly growing, learning and absorbing new experiences so that you know a little more today than you did yesterday.

Two years ago I couldn't start a fire if you handed me a box of matches, let alone any other method. Now I can identify a number of natural tinders, and multiple ways to start fires. Some I have tried, some I'm adept at and others I still need to learn.

1 year ago to me an overgrown area would've been covered in weeds. Now I can recognize a multitude of plants and their medicinal or nutritional benefits.

I sometimes find myself reading my journal and looking at the date of the entry. If my last posting is anything more than a week I'm forced to ask myself why I haven't posted since then. Have I genuinely been busy, or have I just been lazy? Have I run out of things to say? If so, why? I should have been learning something, working on a project, making a kit...so why not post on that! In that way I need to continually have something lined up to post about, which means I continually need to be refining my skills.

All in all this has been a positive experience, and I'm interested to see how long it will run for before I feel the need to wrap it up. Based on how much I don't know...that won't be for a while.

1 comment:

  1. I want to thank you for deciding to make your blog public. I am very new to the idea of bushcraft (survival) and have always believed that, "fail to plan, plan to fail." The

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