A whole lot of little things, including getting Dusty the Hospital Room cat to the vet and back for, it can be hoped, his last time before adopting out. But the big thing in the center was dropping the trailer off at a supercompetent place where they will check it from stem to stern, from wheel bearings to upper flasher signals.

Eventually.

Because the motto of the day was: “We’re down to two techs”. I heard it more than once.

And I thought hell–I could do that job. I went to the We’re Hiring! page. It was broken.

Blame the Great Migration away from the employed life on the Rona. Blame it on laziness. Blame it on Biden, or Trump, or stupid broken application by cell phone, or capitalism’s unwillingness to pay a living wage. Pick your poison, but the change is real.

The people have always known that life is too short to waste it underneath a boss, but it didn’t used to be quite this bad, and there didn’t used to seem like there might be some other choice.

We sat home for a year and we watched people like this guy.

He takes off from his cabin in Labrador, Canada on a snowmobile. His dog is riding in his lap. Behind the snowmobile is one trailer full of his camping gear, and another behind it just for firewood.

He rides across a frozen lake to some impossibly remote forest covered in snow. Feet of snow.

He snowshoes out a square, 8×8, just to be able to pitch his tent. The tent has no floor. He will sleep on a cot, and his very furry dog sleeps on the mashed down snow, using the guy’s extra jacket for a pillow.

He unfolds a stove, to heat the tent, because the temperature is expected to get down to -15 below, Fahrenheit.

What’s for dinner? Chunks of moose. He and the dog share it.

For fun, he chooses to go out and live for a while in conditions most of us would find unthinkable. (Relatively speaking, some of us in the high desert have it easy.)

And … scattered throughout the video are discreet references to his outdoor gear company. I wouldn’t even call them ads.

I don’t think I’ll even go that far honestly. But I might put out a nominal line of coffee mugs and t-shirts. So that anyone who cares to can spend on a token symbol of the Vairtere experience, and signal to the world that they have belletristic ambitions too, or … whatever it is they want to signal I reckon.

Branding oneself as an artist is a tricky moral business ennit.

I ain’t no David Foster Wallace, but I’ll never be a Salvador Dali either. I’m not purity motivated, nor cash motivated.

I’m just here to do God’s work and hope She approves of my style, just enough to keep my snowmobile properly oiled.