The Project – Project Ready or Not

I can turn on the news at any given moment and see a world in chaos. I can see calamity and tragedy in any variety in as much volume as I could stand. If I let it, it would make me feel overwhelmed, sad, unprepared and give me a healthy dose of fear. What has come to me, is the antidote to all of this. The antidote is knowing that I have a plan. That I have a way. That I have prepared. The antidote is peace of mind.

I’m not totally prepared today. I don’t have every item I would need…frankly, I haven’t probably thought of everything I would need should an emergent situation arise. However, Project Ready or Not is my journey to get there. To get to the finish line of being ready for whatever may come. If I can prepare for it, I will. The stuff I can’t, well I can’t…so I’ll take that journey as it comes. That’s an entirely different journey and project.

I believe in baby steps. I think a journey is taken one step at a time. The funny thing is, I’m preparing for peace of mind, for a situation I hope never happens, but…therein lies the secret. When you’ve prepared you find the calm. I don’t believe in aliens, Armageddon or that the world is ending. What I do believe in is optimism. I believe in living life to the fullest and finding moments of goodness. That as you go about your life, a little here and a little there you can be ready…or not. It’s your choice. Mine is to be ready.

The Project started in my basement a few years ago. I began my “little here and a little there” accumulation of this and that. I didn’t have much, but I was moving forward. My Dad came down to check out my project one Saturday morning and the subject went from what I was doing to collect food and shelter to what I would do to prepare for water. See all of the food I had was good, but what I hadn’t realized was that if I didn’t have water, well, I wouldn’t make it long to use much of the food or use any of the shelter paraphernalia I was stocking up on. So began a conversation and our chat about the options that I knew were on the market. The chat became a search and the search began a hunting of sorts. In all that searching and in all that hunting, frankly, I didn’t find much that fit what I was looking for. I had made a list of all the things I needed from my water storage and I couldn’t find anything that would give it to me. So, I did what any level headed person would do, I just kept collecting food. Several weeks later, my Dad, who’s an engineer, came to me with an idea. He had heard all that I had said and like an good engineer, figured out the solution. He’s the guy that downloads those app’s that will ding your phone to alert you when and where any earthquake in the world happens and how strong it is. He’s not a “the sky is falling” kind of guy either, we just lived in California for all of my growing up years. California earthquakes will do that to a person.

My problem had been solved. I was satisfied and made the preparations necessary. And then we realized that if the solution he designed would help me, it could help others. Broader still, I realized that my project to ready myself would help me, but it could help others too.

Though our solution for water will be forth coming, this site isn’t about that. This site is the broader project, the project to be ready…or not. In all aspects, for all situations that may require it.

And that my new friends is my story. Follow this project here, because you see, it’s not just my project, it can be yours too.