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e and tsunami i learned that even though i had many skills that made me uniquely useful in that work my inability to process grief and generally care for myself emotionally led to extreme burnout fairly quickly and ultimately limited what i could contribute in starting my own kickstarter project i learned that while being a one man startup and being able to do almost everything in the product design and development process by myself was useful i couldn t do everything alone much less do it all as well as others could and that a company of one isn t very sustainable when i contemplated a simpler life in the ecovillage i realized that i wasn t ready to abandon the marketable skills and experiences in tech i had accumulated nor the financial stability and rewarding challenges that the field afforded me ultimately though after going on all these adventures i started getting the sense that what i was seeking wasn t out there at the same time i noticed how the same challenges cropped up everywhere i went and in everything i did that left only one remaining place to seek within this may sound corny but the honest truth is that i discovered at least as much through various workshops through self help type books through hours of meditation and through many many hours of psychotherapy as i did in all those adventures but then again i may still be out there looking or yearning to do so if i hadn t had the fortune and privilege to experience all that i did as cliché as it may sound i guess you could say i found myself i found myself in the woods in a cabin in the desert in a disaster zone in an ecovillage in an office on a therapist s couch in relationships and out and all the points in between and i learned and i healed and i grew at some point i realized i was done with walking this earth alone and not long after i found a co adventurer to walk with i also realized i had the capacity and desire to care for another small creature or two or three and to build a life as a family what once seemed like a ball and chain started feeling like an anchor restricting yes but in a way that felt purposeful and grounding and here we are so what s next well this is the epilogue to book 1 kthxbye wait does that mean there will be a book 2 most likely yes we may live in the suburbs with a mortgage but my partner and i are not the type to just settle down nor do we believe we ll have the luxury of doing so even if we wanted but more on that another time share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x more email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens in new window reddit print opens in new window print like loading posted in thoughts urban life 14 comments august 5 2015 by ryochiji water tower 2 0 you might ve heard about california s drought while the rest of the state is figuring out how to use less water the challenge i ve had on serenity valley this year is the opposite how to use all the water i have the 1000 gallon rain barrel i set up last year was full by early february and was then topped off again in early july thanks to some unseasonable summer showers add the 300 gallons in my other tank and i ve got 1300 gallons to play with this year granted it isn t much water at all but using it up has turned out to be a greater challenge than i expected i m not there much so most of the water is intended to be used to irrigate my garden which has turned out to be less than trivial i initially thought i could hook up my drip irrigation lines to the 1000 gallon tank via a timer but it turns out the timer all but kills the pressure so the drip heads don t work consistently or at all using the 50 gallon tank on the water tower solves this problem because i can set up the irrigation timer several feet off the ground which generates enough pressure through gravity however since i need to transfer water from the bigger tank to the water tower myself using an electric pump those 50 gallons need to last while i m gone which can be as long as a month one option was to build an automated system to transfer water from the bigger tanks to the water tower but automated things are prone to fail and if the system failed the 50 gallon reservoir wouldn t last very long plus the water tower was starting to show some age being made of untreated 2x4s and having been exposed to the elements since 2010 so clearly what i needed was a bigger better water tower i ll let the pictures tell the story my 1000 gallon tank was nearly full by early february some off season summer rain then topped it off again in early july need to use more water experimenting with 2 irrigation lines set on separate timers one was set to go every 7 days the other every 3 days also water tower 1 0 still on active duty garden 15 this year i have 2 grape plants 2 potato bushes 3 strawberry clusters one pepper one cucumber 2 mystery squashes 2 kabocha squashes 2 melons and 2 tomatoes water tower 2 0 under construction water tower 2 0 standing the posts are 8ft tall so the top is about 9ft off the ground this is also probably the sturdiest structure i ve ever built trash bins make relatively inexpensive exterior grade water containers all you need are some bulkhead unions and hose adapters trash bins never looked so good the irrigation timer is a full 8ft off the ground which drives plenty of pressure to the drip irrigation heads some day i might replace the bins and upgrade to a 200 gallon tank if i have confidence it ll support 1600lb of weight share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x more email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens in new window reddit print opens in new window print like loading posted in garden land off grid 6 comments august 4 2015 by ryochiji sustainability i can t believe how quickly time is flying by these days it seems like 2015 started just the other day and now it s almost august where have i been this whole time well let s see after my trip to dancing rabbit ecovillage last fall i returned to california feeling almost certain that i was going to pack up and move there in the near future yet as i contemplated my next steps the word that kept rattling around in my head was sustainability it was a concept i d spent weeks thinking about and talking to people about with at dancing rabbit after all as an ecovillage environmental sustainability is a fundamental aspect of the community and is perhaps what they are best known for but what i learned in my weeks there is that there are many other facets to sustainability that are critically important at the end of the day any endeavor environmental or otherwise is only impactful to the extent to which it can sustain itself this is true of businesses non profits social movements and of course individuals having gone through a couple of cycles of working then burning out then going off the literal or proverbial grid then going back to work it was clear that what i lacked in any of the things i did was sustainability living in the woods was emotionally and environmentally sustainable but not financially sustainable and to some degree also not existentially sustainable living alone in the woods i often felt a lack of a sense of purpose working in the city was financially sustainable but not emotionally or existentially sustainable so it seemed clear that what i needed was to build a life that was financially emotionally and existentially sustainable and to find a way to make that environmentally sustainable to the extent that i could once i was able to frame life as this multi variable sustainability equation solving it became easier though the last several years have been tumultuous in many ways by throwing myself into a myriad of situations too many to list here i was able to learn a lot about what i liked and didn t like what worked for me and what didn t i had learned that i need a sense of purpose i learned that i need to feel like what i m doing has a positive impact on peoples lives in a tangible way i learned that my work needs to align with my values i find fulfillment in making things and want to work with other people i need a good balance between time to myself and time with people i feel connected to long story short i feel very fortunate with and very happy about where i ended up these past several months in february i started working for an education startup in san francisco where i spend my days helping build a modern primary education system from the ground up i joined the team after i heard about what they were doing and thought to myself wow that s the school i wish i could ve gone to coming from someone who hated school that s saying something the one downside is that i don t get to spend as much time in serenity valley but i m feeling pretty ok about that at this point it feels like a long term project and i feel fortunate to have such an awesome hobby along with a job i love you can t ask for much more really but don t worry while the updates may be far and few between this project is far from over i still have hut 3 0 to build and i still have a dream of someday spending a year homesteading on the property someday when i have a family share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x more email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens in new window reddit print opens in new window print like loading posted in thoughts uncategorized urban life 3 comments november 12 2014 by ryochiji radically re thinking water in the west there was an article recently in the nytimes about the drought in california and how in tulare county more than 500 households cannot flush a toilet fill a drinking glass wash dishes or clothes or even rinse their hands without reaching for a bottle or bucket with wells going dry people are left with no running water and are living dependent entirely on bottled water or water hauled in from elsewhere the article describes one family as having spent hundreds of dollars on laundromats and disposable dishes on the other hand a county emergency services official is quoted as saying we can t offer anyone a long term solution right now there is a massive gap between need and resources to deal with it as the drought in california continues and may become worse with climate change a long term solution is obviously needed and it s not that there aren t any solutions i have neither municipal water nor a well on my property and even in this drought i have enough water in my tanks to live off of and even irrigate a small garden while there are no silver bullets here are a few radical water conservation techniques i use in my life that you won t find in the official suggestions rain catchment even during a drought there s precipitation porterville the town mentioned in the article receives an average of 11 inches of precipitation from october through may let s say that figure is more like 6 inches in a drought but if it were collected off of a 1000 sqft roof that s 500 cubic feet or 3740 gallons of water that may not seem like much but it s equivalent to 60 100 loads of laundry or over 2000 toilet flushes for modern 1 6gpf toilets or 150 ten minute showers with efficient 2 5 gpm heads water tanks are somewhat expensive at 0 60 1 per gallon but it s a relatively small price to pay to guarantee something you literally can not live without be a dirty hippie or just dirty i wash my pants about once a month i wear the same shirt 2 3 times i shower about once a week and i ve never gotten complaints from friends girlfriends or coworkers nor have i suffered any ill effects on my health there s even some evidence that exposure to some filth is good for you granted because domestic water use is such a small slice of the overall water pie this won t solve the west s water crisis but the less water you can live off of comfortably the more options you ll have if you want to spend 100 gallons per day like most americans do rain catchment won t viably cover your needs but if you re happy living off of 5 gallons a day rain catchment can fulfill your needs even in many of the driest parts of the country composting toilets according to the epa an average american family of four uses 400 gallons of water a day with almost 27 of it getting flushed down the toilet so water less composting toilets could reduce water consumption by a quarter reduce waste that needs to be processed in sewage plants while producing valuable compost composting toilets are probably impractical in dense dwellings but it should be an option in more sparse areas such as those chronicled in the article part of the reason it s not a popular option right now is partially due to the misplaced ick factor but also because its legal status is unclear to help make homes more drought tolerant building departments and health officials should not only embrace composting toilets but should be encouraging it from http www arb ca gov fuels lcfs workgroups lcfssustain hanson pdf eat less beef and meat in general about 80 of california s developed water supply goes to agricultural use and a sizable percentage of that goes towards forage and hay for livestock mostly cows a pound of beef takes 1799 gallons of water to produce and in 2012 we consumed 54 pounds of beef per person in case you re wondering at 1799 gallons pound that would ve required 97 146 gallons of water while vegetarians and vegans might try to tell you to cut out meat entirely that could be a hard pill to swallow for some of us but what if we replaced half of our beef consumption with chicken without even reducing overall meat consumption since chickens require significantly less water per pound 468 gallons lb than beef just replacing a half of our annual beef consumption with chicken would reduce our water usage by 35 937 gallons per person per year replace 90 of our beef consumption and that figure goes up to 64 686 gallons in comparison shortening showers by 5 minutes a day would only save 4500 gallons over the course of a year assuming you shower every day and have a 2 5 gpm head don t play golf in the desert golf courses account for a disproportionate amount of water consumption for the number of people it serves the palm springs area alone has 57 golf courses that each use a million gallons of water a day if you love to play golf more power to you but i kindly request that you move to a place where it rains enough that the grass doesn t need to be irrigated ultimately water is a unique environmental issue in that there is no substitute and there s no economically viable way to make more of it in the coming decades ensuring water security is probably going to require more than just shorter showers share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x more email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens 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