Money

54 – My Birthday and My Goals for Healthy Next Year

/ Ed Raby Sr / 1 Comment

Happy Sif’s Day and Happy Birthday to Me!

I am Detroit Lions Fan so I in general have a respectful hatred for all things Chicago Bears. That said, when I was picking the number 54 to represent one of the best for the number of my age 54, Brian Urlacher went to the front of the class. Got to give the Devil his due. The man could Ball. Linebacker sized, fast as safety, and skilled. I was happy to see him retire so the Lions wouldn’t have to face him twice a year anymore.

So today I turn 54. I can’t lean into my early fifties anymore with that number, we are definitely middle fifties now. I have tried to turn my birthday back in but no one wants to take it. So I guess I will own it for as long as it gets mileage. My birthday has one redeeming feature, it works far better than New Year for changing my life’s course. This year My goal is to get healthy in a lot of areas.

  1. Physically I want to get back to pre-COVID. Muscled. leaned out with good strength, endurance, and flexibility. I was in the best shape of my life in March 2020 and then we all know what happened to take us all away from the gym which in retrospect was a bad thing overall. I want to look the part of the sexy over-50 man, so this is the year.
  2. Emotionally and Mentally I need to be in a better place. To that end, I want to work on getting back to being a creative educator. This may take some time. I also renewed my relationship with my therapist. I am hoping to be more disciplined and focused going forward in my life.
  3. Financial Health needs to be a focus this year. I need more income than working for the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer can provide. This involves creating some income streams outside the norm. As well as looking for better career choices.
  4. Family/Friends: I feel like communication needs to be a focus this year and given that I seem at times to be the source of my family’s anxiety. I want to change that if at all possible. I just tend to be reserved and quiet most of the time.
  5. Love: I would like if at all possible, to be in love by this time next year with a woman who makes me better. I am good being a bachelor, but I mess with having a confident, lover and partner in crime. Not going to force it, but I am looking harder for it.

Well, I have soem work to do. Hopefully tomorrow I will be starting my D&D series and then the rotation for this and a few other projects will be rolling. This year is about learning and implementing things for good personal health in a lot of areas.

I remain.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher.  The Grey Wayfarer.

Skal!!!

Routines and Systems – Planning: First and Last Routines

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Sif’s Day!

Yesterday I determined my various foci for my life and this week is going to be all about figuring out which routines are needed and what systems need to be put in place. The real challenge is as a third shifter morning and evening are very relative for me. So the real issue is more of ‘what is the best time or most productive time for this. Coming up with names to describe it is a little more difficult. It’s not a morning /evening situation. It’s not a wake-up/go-to-sleep situation Eventually I went First and Last.

The First Routine is done right after I get up. So the focus is the best part of my day being used for things that are probably creative in nature I can see my writing/reading and YouTube Stuff falling in this slot. This also would involve anything that is about the philosophical application to life. It is also about Love, Family, and Lifestyle. So it involves relationships and cleaning for the most part. This is where I reset my apartment from a cleaning point of view and then get ready for work on a workday or move into the last routine if it is a day off. This is the big routine but once I get it going it will be pretty much automatic once I get out of bed.

The Last Routine is more about health and perhaps a few other things. But mostly health and doing it for the most part right after work or when off that day right after the First. I get off work and go to the gym, and talk a walk if the weather permits. Get something to eat and head to bed.

I change the focus name of Money to Lifestyle because then it is a little broader. That’s applying philosophy to various aspects of life, not just money although money is included.

I am going to try my best to put everything I can into these two routines. But what doe not fit usually becomes a system and systems are used for the routines. The issue is if I can get it into a routine I am more likely to do it and have it become a habit. Stacking habits together is important for this process.

What remains is that for the next six days, I will be taking the six areas of focus and figuring out what goes in each routine and where. I need to get this as close to right as possible but I know adjustments need to be made and I am starting this with a lot of knowledge of the past.

I remain.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher.  The Grey Wayfarer.

Skal!!!

Learning to Focus

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Freya’s Day!

Right now I have the time to step back and regain my focus. I have certain areas of my life that I am trying to improve on and I need to refocus on them. So this post will be listing them and saying a few words to clarify for both you the gentle reader and myself.

  1. Writing – There are basically two habits I need to put in place and that is the writing itself, and no good writer is worth anything without also being a reader. But in reading I don’t want to read as much as I want to study the book I am reading. Quality of quantity.
  2. Media Presence – In this case Youtube Channel and all that goes with it. I figure at two videos a week I should be good. But that requires a regular system of recording, editing, and presenting.
  3. Health – Lifting, hiking, and dieting.
  4. Money – Multiple income streams. I need my job currently to make ends meet but I need more streams of income to pay off debt and get my cabin in the woods eventually. Minimalism and being a Stoic NNV following Viking are my means to this end and the subject of my Youtube channel.
  5. Love – I am not very good on my own. I need to fall in love again and have that woman in my life that makes me better. That said my system here is to simply be who I am and put that out there.
  6. Family – need to come up with a system that improves my communication with my kids and keeps it more regular.

So there are a lot of habits and systems to create here. I need to overlap and build them into morning and evening routines and other systems. Things need to overlap and support each other.

I remain.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher.  The Grey Wayfarer.

Skal!!!

Why I am Leaving Teaching for Good

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Thor’s Day!

I spent a lot of time during the Christmas Break pondering what I needed to do for the future. I had concluded that I needed to return to Michigan after year one in Texas but what about teaching itself. “Do I even like to teach anymore?” was the burning question this holiday season. The answer became ‘No.’ Slowly what has developed is a list of things of why, not only I need to go back home to Michigan, but also why I need to leave the profession of teaching far behind. In the end, I have a lot of personal, professional, and philosophical reasons to leave it behind and go do something else.

Personally, the list is pretty long. 1) This job triggers my high-functioning depression a lot. I do not enjoy life as a whole right now, and I am fighting through it and trying to get back to coping mechanisms that keep it from being overwhelming. 2) I don’t like Texas or Houston very much. It’s not the people, it’s the environment. 3) I am very alone here in this situation. My family support is very distant and that is my fault. 4) I don’t enjoy the job anymore. I don’t know how this happened, but right before the break I simply thought to myself ‘I don’t like this anymore, not any bit of it.” 5) I feel like I am back in the ministry emotionally and in my last year before I left that profession – and it has only been a year and a half. I am already struggling to keep going emotionally, and that is not a good sign. I don’t seem to have the ability to leave work at work with this one and that is not good for me personally. 6) The money is good, but if I am looking at the possibility of even retiring, I need to do better. Or do I need to simply go into business for myself? Lot questions here, the one positive I will be taking home from this raid into Texas is a lot of my debt will be paid off.

Professionally, There have been so many changes this year that have robbed me of what I enjoyed about the job. I liked the process of writing lessons and figuring out what to do each day, adjusting as I went. No, our team pretty much wrote everything out ahead of time and I feel like we are being forced into a style that does not fit me. I also was told by some that I wasn’t really teaching. What they meant was I was not teaching the way they were taught in school that teaching is. I find this narrow conception of what teaching is to be my largest issue with my colleagues who graduated with education degrees. I also feel the profession of education has too much about it like this.

Philosophically, I am way too libertarian for this job. Public education is all the things we libertarians say it is. Operant conditioning is bothersome at best to me. I now know why the media uses certain terms so much. It’s about conformity, not freedom. I actually find myself applauding my students who are rebels. I am also becoming more supportive of parents who decided on alternative forms of educating their children. This system is built by politicians and bureaucrats and it shows. The fact that one cannot be a teacher and be vocal about issues without the risk of losing one’s job is also bothersome. Time to leave as soon as practical.

So, the plan is to finish the year, pack my bags, and return to Michigan. I don’t as of yet what the future will hold. What do know is I need to get out of this place and profession. I need to return to my people and a place I love and enjoy and go from there.

I remain.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher.  The Grey Wayfarer.

Skal!!!

The Missing Interim

/ Ed Raby Sr / 1 Comment

Happy Mani’s Day!

A recent comment got me thinking that I should provide a post with more details about the gap time between February 28, 2021, and May 2, 2022. A lot of things happened but If I were to highlight a few things they would concern my marriage, career, and living situation.

My marriage at the time of Feb 2021 was on the rocks. I was deeply dissatisfied that I wasn’t being supported in a good career move for myself but it involved moving from Michigan to Texas and my wife didn’t want to do that. It actually pointed to a greater problem that had been growing for years which basically was about priorities and emotional support.

Probably more basically, it was about the fact once the kids were gone my priority shifted to my marriage and my wife continued to remain with her kids and later grandkids. I felt I was slipping down her priority list to the point I was getting her leftover time. We had two different priorities and two different objectives. It was a problem compounded by trying on my part to get counseling but on the other hand, my wife did not want to go to counseling. I finally asked for a divorce in April 2021.

I actually waited a month to file and there was a clerical error so the hearing was delayed to September 21, 2021, a judge granted my petition and I became single again after 32 years. I won’t say I liked it, but at the same time, if I am going to be married to someone I expect the same level of priority I give them. Someone who will deal with our relationship issues and emotionally support me when I am having a rough time.

A result was a freedom to pursue something I had been working on since before COVID. Teaching certification in the state of Texas. I finished the basics and found a job at a large High school near Houston. I loaded up my Jeep Patriot with everything that I had and moved. It’s now one school year later and I love teaching. Hopefully, I will find a better subject than the one I now teach, but you have to pay your dues.

My living situation is often lonely right now as I come home to an empty apartment. I miss Michigan, but they didn’t have alternative teaching certification when I started. My best bet is to finish the certification process, finish my second year of teaching so my mentorship is finished, and then transfer back to Michigan.

The one thing that has improved for me is income and that has led to a lot of thinking as to how to use it. Mostly though I have more time to myself and that is a double-edged sword. But that is a post for a different day.

I remain.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher.  The Grey Wayfarer.

Skal!!!

“Using the Gods” – Sif’s Independence (Self-Reliance)

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Thor’s Day!

Self-Reliance:

“Self-Reliance is the spirit of independence, which is achieved when each person is their own master and no one else’s’ .”

Vision Point: Be Debt Free by December 31, 2022.

Journal Entry:

In this reworking of my blog, I needed new subtitles for my entries; Foundational, Business and Self being used before. With the need for twelve of these things – one for each virtue – I decided to use the gods and goddesses of Norse mythology to set my posts off. You have already seen Tyr assocaited with Honor and now Self-Reliance is set off by Sif.

I chose Sif because nothing says self-reliance or independence quite like a person who has their own land and works it for themselves. Times may change, but the notion of owning that which brings independence remains the same.

As I redo these you will see which god or goddess gets assocaited with which virtue. Some you may guess easily, others might be more dififuclt.

Until next time.

I remain,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

“Atheist Activism, Writing and Financial Peace” – The Rabyd Skald

/ Ed Raby Sr / 1 Comment
See the source image

Happy Mani’s Day!

Most of the rest of my vision points have a lot to do with maintaining Youtube Channel, Writing for Publication and Financial Peace.

YouTube:

My YouTube channel – The Rabyd Atheist – has becoem my new pulpit. I am commited to Atheist activism and this is one avenue. Part of my vision points is to be a regular contributer to FFRF and The Clergy Project as well becasue they have done so much for me.

Writing:

My basical goal is to write boook for publicaiton and thus the 1000 words per day. This blog is more of a personal tool to keep me focused but it is a part practicing my craft as a wordsmith.

Financial:

20 years in a career that provided nothing for retirement would e a scary prospect for many and it is for me as well. The plan is simple to say. 1) Get out of debt, 2) Buy a small house with garage and 3 ) Invest as much as possible. I need a new career mostly for this reason.

I remain,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

“Viking Philosophy – Part 4 – Be a Good Merchant” – The Pagan Pulpit

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Sol’s Day!

Announcements:

We don’t pray here – we figure God, the gods, goddesses, or whatever powers that be (if any) either know already, don’t give a fuck, or are busy with more important matters than our petty stuff. We also kind of assume that they expect us to do stuff that we can do for ourselves and that we will do them ourselves and not be lazy. We also believe in being good friends, so we don’t presume on our friendship with the powers that be by asking them all the time for stuff while giving them nothing in return.

We also don’t take an offering here.  We figure the powers that be probably don’t need it.  Let’s be honest, offerings are not given to the divine powers, they are given to an organization to support it.  Just being honest. God, the gods or whatever never sees a dime, farthing or peso of that money; it all goes to the church, mosque or shrine.

Theme Song: Trobar de Morte – ‘Summoning The Gods’

Meditation:

Image may contain: 1 person, meme and beard, possible text that says 'NEVER INTERRUPT WITCH/VOLVA YOUR ENEMY NORSE OHATHE WHILE THEY ARE MAKING A MISTAKE'

 

Text:

Sermon: ‘Viking Philosophy – Part 3 – Be a Good Merchant’

One of the unknown historical things about the Vikings is that they were good traders. Most see the Vikings as raiders but their main long term objective was trade routes. Now the Vikings if they seemed to have shortcoming militarily it was siege\ing cities so the better strategy was to threaten economic warfare but then offer trade as an alternative to war.  Sometimes it was simple once the Vikings colonized they traded with the new colony. In any case, being a good merchant was part fo the game of being a Viking.

  1. Finding Out What the Market Needs – selling means filling a need.  You can try to sell ice and snow to Eskimos all you want but they don’t need them.
  2. Do Not Promise What You Cannot Keep – No one will do business with a person who can not deliver on their promises.  The great correcting force of the market is if you sell shit people will stop buying it and if you don’t deliver – same.
  3. Do Not Demand Overpayment – Make sure your prices are affordable and you will get long term business.
  4. Arrange Things So You Can Return – The long term is the focus in the end.  Being able to do business and keep doing it repeatedly. This is why being honorable and truthful leads to self-reliance.

Parting Thought:

Image may contain: 1 person, possible text that says 'Nordic Bloo Love all. Trust few. Everything's real but not everyone's true.'

 

I remain,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

“Spring Cleaning” – Of Wolves and Ravens – Minimalism

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Mani’s Day

Discussion:

This spring I plan on doing some genuine spring cleaning as in – if I haven’t used it since I have been in the new apartment then I probably don’t need it. There are going to probably be some of those nostalgic exceptions but one of my side B philosophies is minimalism.  It really boils down to two things: 1) Do I need it, and does it give me joy.  These things mean I get rid of a lot of things.

The philosophy extends to a review of things like my routine as well.  Keeping those simple an streamlined is all part of minimalism as well.  Life gets complicated enough on its own without my own decisions adding to it. It is the two questions of whether I have need of something and whether it makes me happy are applied to everything.

To the Wolves and Ravens:

“Feed the Wolves, but Listen to the Ravens first.”

Needs (Geri):

This is probably the one part of my philosophical outlook that directly looks at needs and wants.  Need being a true need for something.  This is true of routine, stuff or relationships. Do I genuinely need this?  If the answer is ‘yes’, it stays.

Wants (Freki):

The other question is: Does this give me joy or happiness? Is this something that I genuinely want and not some outside imposed want?  This keeps my wants in line and allows me to focus on what truly matters.

Reason (Huginn):

This is the reasonableness of minimalism.  It is probably the best thing I even embraced as far as keeping my time and money under control.  Probably though another layer is added with efficiency as far as economics but that is the subject of the next weeks ‘Of Wolves and Ravens’.

Wisdom (Muninn):

I have found great wisdom in the peace of mind that happens when the abundance on tuff is not central but rather having one’s money and time under complete control. It simply true wisdom that leads to more focus on what matters to me.

Conclusion:

This spring I will probably dedicate a couple days to going through everything. I have a couple day weekend with my wife gone for both says so that seems like a great time to go through everything again. Time to find peace in minimalistic simplicity

I remain,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

“My YouTube Channel – The Rabyd Atheist” – The Rabyd Skald

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Sif’s Day!

This last week I started a YouTube Channel as sort of a pulpit for my atheist activism.  The Rabyd Atheist will be my platform for talking about my personal journey from faith to reason, my theological problems with faith and my critiques as a skeptic of the Bible.  For you the readers of The Grey Wayfarer, I will be adding a post on Sif’s Day at 10 am with all the videos I posted that week. That way if you jsut want to wait until Sif’s day and watch them all, you can do so.

My main objectives for this Channel are talked about in my first three videos which I will provide the links below.  I am currently still looking for my first subscribers so if you have a YouTube account and want to subscribe to my channel please do so.  The first goal is to get monetized and I need 1000 subscribers to do that and people to watch about 4000 hours of content.  Then I can apply to make some money.

Posting this to my personal accounts also helps keep people in my family and freinds list from being so alarmed as it is more neutral, but I haven’t been secretive about my atheistic paganism for some time.  If you have been reading this blog you know.

The Rabyd Atheist – Introduction (first video) 

Welcome to the Rabyd Atheist

My Deconversion Story

Hope you enjoy it.

I remain,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard, and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!