If you want to do something you love but can't get yourself to:

I've finally started hanging out with one of the members of my primitive skills apprenticeship. It is great fun and I am finally doing all the stuff I was picturing myself doing out here, but haven't actually been doing, the last few months.

This is the absolute diamond key: friends.

or community. whatever you want to call it. Someone else, who also likes doing what you like doing, and getting together. Some of the time we are doing cools stuff, some of the time we are talking and laughing, usually both. But that is a huge, huge lesson I have just learned.

What I was trying to do was: I was trying to find a way to get myself to do it, alone. But the doesn't fucking work. Not at all.

But this different approach, this works like magic, this works in a very familiar way. And yes, it means I'm dependent on someone, not necessarily in specific, but with some specifications, that is, they like the same things I do.

I think this is/was a case of trying to run before you learn to crawl. I was trying to be independently motivated before even learning how to be dependently motivated. Doing what you love at school is the easiest step, but then, once your not paying someone for it, the next step is doing something you love, with a friend.

LISTEN TO ME HERE PEOPLE. YOU WHO HAVE TROUBLE MOTIVATING YOURSELF TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO, THIS INFORMATION IS FOR YOU.

It certainly is for me. I suppose I'll have to test it, to see if it continues to work, but as far as I can tell, it will continue to work as long as we continue to meet. Fuck all the self-help books trying to teach you how to be proactive. I tried them and they gave mediocre results at best. Find a friend to share your passion, and meet and do it. That actually works. Also, I suppose, having a good teacher is really nice and useful for moving forward with whatever your doing. But for the times when you don't have a teacher, have a friend.

We've done more stuff in the last two weekends than I've probably done in the whole of the rest of my time here, in terms of working on primitive skills outside of class. This weekend, we went out and harvested coltsfoot and baked it with asparagus and squash and made pasta with nettle tomato sauce. I finished making my own hand forged --and painstakingly sharpened from dime thickness. believe me, this takes a loooooooong time-- knife.

I fletched an arrow, I learned a new form of reverse wrap, I learned new plants and tracking (because my friend is quite a bit more experienced than me) and I'm going to be starting a garden out back. I finished my bow string, I finished my probably twenty meters of cordage, I learned how to carve a notch for hand-drill with a rock, rather than a knife.

And I joked and laughed and forgot for a short time how damn much I miss home.

There's more, but it's hard to talk about. Little and big wonders of nature we saw in our hikes and expeditions.