Achieving Balance: Prepping obsessions can be dangerous.

Balance: How’s your Crane kick coming along?

This might sound crazy coming from a guy who blogs about prepping, but it truly is not the only thing going on in my life.  I would even go so far as to say it isn’t in the top 3 of most important things going on in my life.  As an example let me share some of the things I did this past weekend.

• Took my dog to the park
• Went to an outdoor festival with my wife
• Took my family out for breakfast
• Went to a baseball game with my family
• Picked up excessive amounts of dog doo-doo in the yard
• Completed lots of yard work
• Washed one of the cars
• Played some video games with my daughter
• Played some guitar

Any mention of cleaning my weapons, conducting inventories, setting up my tactical gear, rehearsing bugout plans, shopping for food stocks, scavenging my neighborhood for wild edibles…?  Nope, not a second thought to any of those items this weekend.  Does that mean I’m not a prepper, because I don’t immerse myself in the lifestyle every single day?  Absolutely not and as a matter of fact, I would advocate that I have achieved a certain level of balance in my life which is healthy.  Becoming overly consumed with prepping can easily become dangerous and have negative repercussions.

I have stated before that much like working out, prepping is part of my lifestyle.  This means that I am always conscious of the fact that life we currently enjoy is never really guaranteed, that things can happen in an instant which would forever change life as we know it.  Natural disasters, economy going bust and even considerations like an EMP strike or solar flare all enjoy their spot on my mental radar.  But I don’t dwell on these items, nor do I live every single moment of my life attempting to prepare for them.  If the lights go out tomorrow and the world is plunged into the stone age, it is what it is.

Getting back to the working out/fitness metaphor, I mentioned it was a lifestyle for me.  I go to the gym a few times a week and throw in some sort of cardio training as well: 52 weeks a year.  I might take a day or two off but I work out because it’s part of who I am.  Yet it would be counter productive to go to the gym and bench press every day as I would quickly reach a point of diminishing returns, and the same could be said for obsessing too much about prepping.  If I spent every night in my basement pouring over supplies, ordering more stuff each paycheck, constantly subjecting my family to TEOTWAWKI discussion things would go south pretty quickly around my household.

Balance is necessary, prepping can be a lifestyle choice but it doesn’t have to be the so in the obsessive, Fatal Attraction sort of way.  Preppers go places with get-home bags in their cars, have more situational awareness than the average sheep, understand that the facade painted by the mainstream media probably isn’t accurate and are ready for just about anything if the time were to come.  Yet preppers can (and should) also enjoy living life to the fullest, whether that means pursuing other hobbies or spending time with family.  It really can lead to a much more fulfilling experience overall and help to keep things in perspective.