Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.

Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!

Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Don’t despair—prepare.

Before we get started on this week’s pioneer update, my urgent plea is for you to find some way to get involved. There is no more time left to save this country—it gets worse by the day, they make progress by the day in tearing it down, stealing our assets, aligning us with evil. Someday, your kids, grandkids, great grandkids will watch the “old” movies about the USA standard, the USA way of life, and ask you what you did to save it for them, to prevent the Russian dystopia they may well be living in at that time. You can do a lot from home, but every able-bodied American needs to get out there and be seen. Give money, whatever you can. Pick one or more of these sites and get to work. 5calls.org, indivisible.org, citizen.org, moveon.org, aclu.org, fiftyfifty.one, resist.bot, nosmallact.com

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world—the good and bad places—the real places, not the dressed up tourist zones. I saw society in every state from good to bad, from strife to utopian. The forces that have overtaken the United States did so with a vision of white picket fence, Mayberry RFD, 1950s White America. The “Golden Age.” What they’re driving us toward is the soup lines, disease, and struggle of peak Great Depression. They are aligning with and driving us toward the stark, bleak, desolate life I’ve seen when traveling to Soviet satellite autocracies in eastern Europe and other places around the globe. It’s always the same.

Pioneer Update

Just when we thought we were almost moved into our new (to us) little apartment, we got word we need to clean out the rest of our stuff in storage. Another round of brutal lifting and moving of boxes ensued, and of course cold and high winds were there (out of nowhere) to make it a hundred times harder. It was pretty brutal this weekend, just when we thought we could catch our breath. We’re minimalist by US standards, but we’re realizing we still have too much crap. It’s enabling another round of cleansing ourselves from old and broken things. Memories are in the mind. This phase of our spiritual existence is a very brief flash. None of this is important.

Buddhism teaches that suffering is part of life—and we should learn to deal with it through acceptance of that fact, mindfulness, and spirituality. Do the right things, and experience joy in eternity. I say often that I believe this place we’re in is a kiln, a miasma of trials and tribulations, temptations, to get us to see the light, to forge to shape our spirits into what would be acceptable in a perfect eternity. Jesus came here as an example of that, the perfect human, to show us the way, a living exemplar. Our bodies are a form of embryo, an egg to house our spirit during this physical journey.

Stress and suffering make that hard. That’s the point. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We had to go into overdrive this weekend. Back out to the White House RV, back to storage, loading Henrik the pickup, unloading her, all in high wind. I hurt myself, rather bad. Tons of extreme pain. I failed the test—I lost my temper and yelled at my precious, beautiful Giavana. I let her down, I let myself down. It’s further proof I still have work to do, spiritually. This is all a test, and I failed it. I need to be stronger, because it’s only going to get harder from here. I fail when the pain is too much, and I need to think more about what it must have felt like up on that cross, bleeding to death in the sun.

As I was down for the count the rest of the evening, I returned to watching episodes of The Chosen. It’s such an incredible series, entertaining, and it grounds me. I went back to reading my Buddhist books. I had gotten away from all that in these recent whirlwind times, and it goes to show you need to practice, you need to practice faith, to stay sharp. I have made my apologies, begged forgiveness, and feel refreshed and invigorated today, mind and body (somewhat!).

Where It’s Going

Don’t fall for the psyops. You’re seeing our national anthem booed in other countries. We love our country, so this is hard. Use your mind, not your emotions. This is what Trump, Vance, Musk want. They want you to hate our allies. It’s a psyop to get you to embrace the enemy, Mother Russia. They’re not booing the real USA—me, you, most of us. They’re booing our “leadership,” and with good reason, as we’ve betrayed the free world to align with Russia, China, North Korea, and the other miserable dictatorships around the world.

What we’re seeing is an extreme form of societal chemotherapy. Trump and his minions are going to subject “the rest of us” to extreme pain—financially, health-wise, emotionally. They’re taking away Medicaid and other resources with the full knowledge people will die. They want that. They want the bottom crust of society to die off because they despise those beautiful people. To the elite, those are the great unwashed, the “dirty” people in steerage, and they want them gone. At the same time, moving the middle class down to the lower tier of society, broken but at least somewhat cleaner. At that point the goal is reached—a two-tier caste system of peasants and royalty. Autocrat/oligarchs and people with no power. This is what you should be out protesting and defending against, for those you love, now and to come. Go through my posts over a year and a half as your guide. Prepper Jim Cobb has a new magazine out, a few bucks well spent.

I promised some Biblical context. Listen, I’ve been all over the map in terms of spiritualism and religion. I’ve written about my journey plenty of times, particularly in my road novel Farawayer. I’m practical, I’m analytical, my nature is to be skeptical. I just feel there’s too much evidence to ignore, not to mention the cost too great.

As well, faith can help you prepare for the times to come, right? Isn’t this all about preparing? We can buy all the things, train and practice, but we have to train our mind, our spirit, in order to endure, or it’s likely all for naught. It’s a secret weapon to get through the worst of things, mentally and emotionally. You don’t have to join a cult-like organization or practice inane rituals. Just—be good. Believe, have faith, it will carry you through, give you hope, improve your self-esteem, set a good example for others. That’s all. Start with those Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. They’re incredibly inspiring—the greatest speech ever given. Otherwise, the below might at least prove interesting from ...