Chaos gardening is harder than it sounds—building a mattress is not. People on the internet love watching birds—we’ve reluctantly taken to talking politics in public. It’s a struggle, this year has been a struggle, this 5, 8, better part of two decades—maybe it’s just life has been a struggle, but one that has always come with plenty of grace. Don’t ask me how I know, but I know we’ve a lot left yet.
Let’s pick it apart—Chaos gardening, by which I mean, you throw seeds in the ground and see what comes up, is easy. It’s the other part that’s difficult—the pruning, the preening, the pest control, and weeding. Trying to protect the fruit of your labor against an onslaught of critters and conditions—I struggle with it. It doesn’t make it any easier that I took up this hobby when my son was turning 2.
I’ve planted 3 years of gardens, and we only got a good fruitful bounty out of one. Oh, stuff has grown, but it’s never quite been as well as I’d like—I need advice on planning and pruning and protecting. Maybe I’ll do better next year, when I’m 44.
I’ve frequently derided DIY culture. People have been building things for most of history—being told to have the gumption to “do it yourself” feels like an insult to me. After three arduous months of mattress shopping and testing some of the biggest brands in sleep we were left with one conclusion: None of them worked for us.
Here’s where those three letters showed up—I was reading mattress reviews on Reddit when I came across a comment that stuck in my brain: “I built my DIY mattress and never looked back.” As I lay in bed feeling immensely let down by our second “high quality” mattress, I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind. I mentioned it to Becca and I started reading.
After a lot more reading and a lot of thumbing through websites I scratched out a plan and asked the dear people at r/mattress for help—it took several days of discussion and tuning, during which we threw out everything about my plan but the theory. But the folks on Reddit guided me to a build that should check all of our boxes and would have some returnable components in case it didn’t. After another long pause for consideration, we ordered the coils, foams, and encasements and waited with bated breath to see just how complicated assembling our own mattress would be.
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It wasn’t complicated at all! Precut foam and latex pieces fell right into place over manufactured pocketed coils and the encasement wasn’t a bear to zip up. It feels like a dream—firm on my side, soft on hers, and a gentle comfort layer that we share. I’d have been lost without those folks on Reddit!
I joined TikTok in June. Something put the vertical video bug on me and I started posting videos to YouTube. Considering how easily it came, I decided to weigh myself across platforms—so I posted the same content to YouTube and TikTok. Reaching 50 followers was the first goal, to open up live-streaming from the mobile app. It didn’t take long and oddly, I reached the goal on both platforms in the same week.
If you are enjoying this post—your friends might too! It would be so helpful if you took a moment to share this post with your networks!
I’ve wanted to run a bird feeder stream since Becca and I set up feeders at the house on Jasmine Ct. As soon as I was able I set up my camera and went live on YouTube. Several hours later there had only been 3 visitors—it was discouraging.
The next day I tried TikTok. 1100 people peeked in on our bird feeders over the course of an afternoon—I haven’t setup another live stream on YouTube. My account on TikTok has grown rapidly, earning around 100 new followers a week. Our feeders are constantly flush with birds and squirrels and we even have a family of deer that visit in the early afternoon. I’m pretty happy with how it’s going.
Politics, I’m sad to say, is going to become a recurring theme—we are involved. I’m incredibly disenchanted with The State in our country. I have been for years, but this year has brought about a breaking point. I’ve already chronicled the reasons—no doubt there’ll have been more between my writing and your reading of this.
It started at our July Gathering—a quick presentation followed by a round table discussion. The presentation sparked a memory of the times The Kattalistt Group hosted PKN events downtown. Afterwards, I mused about running 20x20 presentations during another one of our Gatherings. Generally, everyone was receptive to the discussion and that proved to be a seed event for what would follow.
We are, by this point, all in—we’re joining Zoom meetings, making connections over conversations, and organizing collective actions. Always non-violent. Always helpful. Always hoping for a future that’s brighter than the past we’ve come through. We are building a community, and more—a coalition. A network of people who share our hope and our will to work for the future we choose.
What does all that mean? It means we’re busy and we’re building and we’d love for you to join us.
You made it to the end—Thanks for reading! If you found this post enjoyable, insightful, or infuriating, please let us know in the comments below. We will do our best to answer.\
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