A Day in the Life- Really?
Fall at Moose Lodge 2023
From my Substack Page-
I asked GPT-4, based on what I’ve written so far, if it could offer me some suggested topics to cover here on Substack? I had to laugh when it said I should write about a day in the life at Moose Lodge. I immediately think of the brain-numbing TikTok videos people make about their day in the life at X, Google, or Meta. My life is nothing like that at all. I don’t even drink coffee, and there is no snack bar or fuzzy nap tents here, and I’ll probably die before I make a smoothie after a spin class.
I’m almost embarrassed to put down what my life is really like here at Moose Lodge, and there is absolutely nothing glamorous about a day in the life here, yet it’s wonderful all at the same time. I wouldn’t trade my time here for a day at any tech giant’s fu-fu bar, as my day still feels much better than any day-in-the-life TikTok video.
Tom’s Nault's Thoughts on Business and Other Fun Stuff is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I can write about Moose Lodge with me as the secondary player in this whole thing. It seems somewhat fitting as I’m just 24 days from my first two years of living here at Moose Lodge. I am here on purpose, after all. This is where I wanted to be, and this is where I’m happiest and most productive. Hopefully, I can do a good job of explaining why.
Artists for years have painted ideal situated log cabins or houses as their subject, and they are usually depicted in some idealistic setting with a stream, or a water wheel, or lakeside and people always remark that they would love to live in a place like that. Few would ever make the effort to find or even create such places, or there would be more of them. The world we see is a mix of what people want and what fills their needs. There is a tiny cabin somewhere to fit any budget if you’re willing to look for it.
In my search for Moose Lodge, I was surprised by how few homeowners, even on large properties, paid much attention to the setting. I dreamt about country life someday, yet I’d pick the city as my life mostly because I worried about the isolation and the solitude. I worried the isolation would depress me. Before I bought my last house, over half the homes I toured were in a rural setting, yet I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t think I’d love rural life, yet it kept nagging at me. I think some of it was fear of missing out. Missing out on what? Traffic?
When I moved to the core of Kirkland and not far from downtown, I was excited about the location at first, but it didn’t take long before I rarely went downtown, and all of my drives were to get away from town. Parking in town was problematic, and I ran out of reasons to go. All of my weekend getaways were to places that were remote. All of my drives were out in the country, and I’d pass home after home that looked interesting and inviting on my way to the coast. I’d think about them and what life would be like there.
When I sold my last house and started this adventure in the Sprinter van, I had no idea where I’d end up. None at all, and it was a bit terrifying at first. It’s hard to just pick up and move. I always thought people who did it were running from something, rather than towards something. I just didn’t know.
I looked at everything from condos to farms, and even some offbeat converted churches and interesting lofts online, but what nagged me the most was to be out on property somewhere, and as I looked, I slowly became aware of just how much setting mattered to me.
I was surprised by the large number of homes that look nice on the outside but were cold, lacked personality, and were “builder grade” on the inside. It was as if the only objective was to make it as big and cheap as possible. I’d rather have small and charming than big and sterile, but I must be in the minority on that because it was impossible to find.
One farmhouse looked especially charming on the outside and was the worst construction—do-it-yourself-in-a-weekend—I could have possibly imagined. The quality of workmanship was appalling. It reminded me of tree houses we built as kids. Then I found this place, and I knew it was the right house the second I walked in. It had character, setting, tranquility, and charm.
I already write a daily blog for close friends that’s more of an update about the things going on here at Moose Lodge. That actually is the day in the left at Moose Lodge, and I still edit it in GPT-4, yet it still suggested I write a day in the life here, so I had to give it more thought. In fact, when I first started writing this post, I couldn’t stop and had to delete over half of what I wrote just to keep it readable. Ask me about Moose Lodge, and I can write you a novel.
Most of that writing in my daily blog has to do with my wildlife interactions here at the house. I usually write and post in the middle of the night because I enjoy that peaceful time, and I can gather my thoughts about the previous day and quickly get it done. Much of the rhythm of my writing is about productivity and if I reached my work goals for the day, or if my productivity slipped that day for some reason. I have days when I’m useless and other days, like the last 24 hours, where I’ve done nothing but work with few hours of sleep to meet a sudden last-minute client request.
I’m currently dealing with rambunctious wild birds here at Moose Lodge. Some of which are heading south for the winter and like to get into territorial fights along the way. If I’m not chasing off relentless woodpeckers, it’s the constant banging on the windows from the wild turkeys who see their reflection in the large floor-to-ceiling windows around the house and want to pick a fight with their own shadows. They don’t even notice how close I am to their beaks. That’s now a daily occurrence, so I walk the perimeter to shoo them off now and then. One startled my dog so badly that he used a lot of bad dog words as he ran in the opposite direction. Poor guy was really startled. What he didn’t notice was the dumb turkey running in a parallel path to him, like they were racing.
Birds fly into the windows here on a daily basis, and we don’t know how to stop that from happening. We even tried putting small colorful gels on the windows, but that didn’t do anything. I walked up on a large hawk who rang his own bell on the bedroom window and was standing in the lawn looking like he was trying to remember how to count. He flew off but probably doesn’t recall his own name or where he’s from anymore. Since he’s a regular, we’ve named him “Squeegee.”
For those who don’t know about Moose Lodge, you can read about this house here on my website. I could also write endlessly about what life is like here in rural Missouri because of the culture and history, and that’s been far more interesting than I anticipated.
I never expected this much daily critter interaction as I work, and it’s not a bad disruption except for the banging on the windows. After a while, you just become a part of it. I’m just another critter.
I live with constant change as new animals come and go while I live through the seasons here. Some animals are transient, while others show up like this is their vacation home. I’ve posted various wildlife photos on my website that show the wide variety. This was not the year of the snake, and we saw very few all year.
I've discovered that if I don’t look directly at the wildlife and go about my day while it’s nearby, it doesn’t run off as quickly. If I’m cool with it, it tends to stick around and watch me instead. So that’s the game. I pretend I see nothing, and it watches me.
Because of technology, and the recent addition of fiber here to the house, I’m completely plugged into my usual network, and work here is no different than if I was in the middle of Kirkland or working from a downtown office. Most people don’t know where I live, and many assume I’m still in the Seattle area somewhere. People are surprised I’m here and somehow imagine this place to be far less wonderful than it is. They think this is the B plan, not the A.
My early morning calls on Zoom run two hours later here on Central Time. Other than that, there is no change in how I interact with clients. There are fewer disruptions, so I can accomplish a lot more than I could in Kirkland.
The big difference is that when compared to big city life, it’s quiet here. Abnormally quiet. My Apple Watch is telling me the sound level is 34 dB, which is as low as my watch will go. The loudest thing in this house is me typing on this laptop or my dog occasionally moving on the floor ten feet away. A pin drop from another floor gets your attention in this silence.
This house was built using what’s called "ICF" construction, which stands for "insulated concrete form." There is very little wood in the core structure. The walls throughout are very thick, and there is no movement in the wind like in a typical wood-frame house, where you hear creaks and noises that transfer through the whole house, especially in wind or when the house is heating or cooling. Here, it's like a vault, and so I often don’t know if it’s raining unless I look outside or hear it hitting the windows. I now get alerts from the weather station just to let me know it's raining. According to the weather station, overnight winds were 19 MPH (30.58 KPH), and I never heard it. Small dead branches fell around the exterior, so I’ll walk around and toss them into the woods when I’m out to stretch my legs.
When I’m wide awake in the middle of the night working, I can hear the distant sound of the Memphis to Springfield Burlington Northern’s train blowing its horn from about three miles away as it crosses a series of uncontrolled intersections out in the country. Trains are required to blow the horn at any uncontrolled intersection, which is how I know exactly where it is.
That train signal has been blowing continuously at those same crossings since the late 1800s, back when it was the Memphis and Southeastern Railroad and later the Frisco Line, which connected all the little towns and passes through Rogersville along Highway 60. I hear it especially at night when there is no air movement outside. I can even hear the slow rumble of the locomotives. It always reminds me of my brother, who’s likely sitting in a railroad cab at that same hour in some other part of the Midwest. There is something about that sound that means something to me. It’s like a distant hello. It’s a reminder that people are going about their day and that there are other lives underway.
The sky at night is spectacular here, and during the cold still nights, you hear nothing outside unless the winds are up. I often go stand outside and just look up. Sometimes, I’ll hear a dog bark from a long distance away. Occasionally, you hear a coyote. Shortly after sunset, if you look up and to the east, you see the faint light of satellites flying over as they reflect the sun on the other side of the horizon. Just at dark, the stars in the eastern sky are amplified in size, like a rising moon. They don’t seem so far away.
In the warm summer nights, all you can hear is loud insect chatter, with bats eating as many as they can consume as they dart around. The spooky sound I occasionally hear while sitting outside always turns out to be a deer walking through the crunchy leaves. They sound like humans slowly stepping through the woods, so it’s good to keep a powerful flashlight handy. If the bucks are unsure what you are, they snort like a slow-moving steam locomotive.
Deer make a lot more vocal sounds than you’d ever expect, and that alone can terrify you if you don’t know what it is. I had one young buck yell at me at the far end of the yard, all while stamping his feet to try and scare me off. It didn’t work. I stamped right back, and he ran off instead. I win.
In the summer months, we have four box turtles that hang out: "Shelly," "Sheldon," "Sheleen," and "Mishell," and all are shy, except for Shelly, who loves to bug me for apple slices, and only apple slices. She waits at the door in the morning. The others will turn and run. Sheldon doesn’t like anyone. He’s perpetually grumpy.
We also have our favorite, "Plywood," the woodchuck who will stroll right by you if you’re holding still and paying attention to something else. We have one highly territorial armadillo named "Emma Dillo" who cruises through the backyard almost nightly. She’s funny when she’s chasing off another armadillo. They can run! Every critter gets a name if they are a regular. Two armadillos chasing each other look like nerds in a fight.
The real benefit of living this remotely is the freedom to concentrate and think without interruption about complex ideas. A train of thought can get long. I sometimes stand and whiteboard something in the project room, just to work through a problem. It’s typically just a list and some boxes. That makes a "day in the life" a little boring. If you need to concentrate and study anything, this is the place. I now fully understand why so many writers look for solitude. It changes your writing.
The day I first saw this house, I immediately thought this was a writer's house, and I wanted to do my best work here. I didn’t need motivation to get it done. If you need to sort out your thoughts, this place makes even the best monastery seem pedestrian. A monk would feel right at home.
Overall, consulting and board engagement work is about the same out here as it was in Kirkland; however, rebuilding new clients has been a slow process since COVID. Our clients were already scattered around the US, but now I’m more central, so schedules are a little easier to manage. I’m not joining a Zoom call at 5 AM as often. Travel to anywhere won’t take all day as it often did in the far corner of the US.
As an interesting point of trivia, I’m just 43 miles from the very center of the entire average distance of all people in the US. It’s hard to believe, given this rural environment, that I’m closer to everyone than ever before. In spite of the rural setting, I’m, on average, closer to all humans in the US than anyone, except for those people who live within the 43-mile circle.
This is the Ozarks, where for some, life hasn’t changed much over the last hundred years. The term "Hillbilly" refers to someone here. I guess I’m now one.
The Civil War was fought hard around here, and the scars remain. You feel it. There were so many battles here that nobody knows for sure where every fight occurred. 40% of all Civil War battles were fought here in Missouri, where the state was deeply divided from neighbor to neighbor. I think about that when I’m out in the woods on the property. We found metal artifacts here and there, and I have no idea how old they are or what they were originally.
You can’t drive in any direction without passing a small cemetery, and just about every one has an interesting story behind it. They are a reminder of how easy we have it, especially when you see how many died young of what we consider trivial today. There is a family cemetery less than a mile from here, but I understand it’s so overgrown that you can’t easily get to it. It’s kind of a shame.
Family roots run very deep, and locals are proud of their heritage. Everyone will tell you a story about their family. It’s no wonder Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were based on events in Missouri. This place is all about stories. You can’t be here and not feel the history. It adds to the charm of Moose Lodge. This is the land of the front porch conversation, and I’m sometimes a subject because I’m not from here.
My day isn’t boring, but it’s not a constant either. No two days are ever alike, but they are all closely related. GPT-4 just answered a question: How many words on average does it edit for me in a day, every day? The answer was 3,750.
Tom’s Nault's Thoughts on Business and Other Fun Stuff is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.