I’m simultaneously proud, disappointed, and disheartened that my food storage book has made it to Amazon’s top 100 on Kindle this week.
Why?
Well, I’m proud because people are beginning to wake up and really take notice of my writing and that, I hope, my books are helping people get better prepared in our time of crisis. Apparently it’s food storage that folks have decided is THE most important thing to do right. Maybe I should write a book about toilet paper next? Even if they didn’t like the book, they could at least use the pages for toilet paper, lol.
I’m disappointed because it’s taken a worldwide pandemic for the masses to wake up! This is a common frustration I believe most of us preppers have about the 99% who tend to do nothing as a matter of course. As you well know, one can’t truly prepare themselves properly AFTER crisis has hit and, in my opinion, that’s what the masses are currently trying to do with my book. Fortunately for the them, there are many people still putting their health at risk to deliver much-needed food and supplies we need day in and day out. We all need to be thankful to them.
I’m disheartened because I KNOW this current interest in preparedness won’t last. As soon as the lockdown is lifted everyone will go back to their lives as normal and act like this unprecedented event barely even happened. They’ll go back to eating out and buying useless crap they don’t need. In fact, I firmly believe that most of the people who purchase my book will let my advice go by the wayside as soon as they feel what I have to say is no long pertinent in the moment. But that’s just the thing: preparedness isn’t about the present, it’s about the future.
This brings up one of my biggest pet peeves about outsiders perception of preppers. They think we’re all “doom and gloom” but I couldn’t disagree more. I say we preppers are actually quite optimistic about the future. After all, if I were truly down on life in a crisis then I might as well say “screw it” and welcome death, but I don’t do that. Instead, I plan and prepare myself and my family to see us through hard times BECAUSE of my belief in a better future afterward. That’s the crucial difference and easily the biggest reason why I do any of the things I do with regards to preparedness.
Perhaps you see things differently. Maybe you really do prepare yourself because you’re scared. I don’t. I prepare because I’m optimistic about our future and I feel you should prepare that way too. In so doing, you’ll look at your own preparedness actions as a GIFT and a JOY and not as a burden. And you’ll look at the time you have now to prepare for the next crisis as a blessing as well. Just don’t let the opportunity go to waste and wait until it’s too late… you could find that the next BIG disaster won’t be so easy to prepare for in the moment.
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