Recently, I've gotten married. This has made me starting thinking even more about my future goals. In the past, I could always just push off the idea of figuring out my life to another day. It was always refreshing to have unlimited options in front of me. The good thing about getting married, besides having a loving partner to experience life with, is that it forces me to start setting goals and working towards that future. Below in this blog I begin to list out and explain my desires for the future.
Soon, I will be moving to Atlanta where my wife will be attending graduate school at Emory University. I will be graduating in December with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics. Once I get down there, I will be looking for a job. All of these things are extremely exciting when I start thinking about it. Atlanta will hold interesting opportunities for both of us. Now that I have a setting for our immediate future, I can start to think about what I want to accomplish.
The number one thing I want to do is thatI want to own a house with enough land to accomplish my goals. This is sometimes what people call the American Dream, but I just feel it is a smart decision. For the first year we will have an apartment, but after that I would like to have a home for a few years. With the cost of living in Atlanta, in any place decent, I just feel spending a thousand dollars a month on an apartment with nothing to show for it at the end is a waste of money. If I can manage to find a place for the right price, I would love for it to have enough land that I could do a few projects I've always wanted to attempt.
It is my goal to one day utilize alternative energy sources at home. I know that living somewhere in or around Atlanta, that I won't be able to fully separate myself from "the grid". I would love to have complete autonomy, but I'm not sure this is possible for a few reasons.
- My current consummation of electricity is excessive.
- Most technology to fully switch me over would be too expensive to purchase.
- Some local areas restrict the amount of alternative energy hardware.
A few solar panels to feed a small electrical system for a workshop or shed. Each of these panels cost around $150 a piece. This is why I won't be starting with anything larger. It would save me from having to wire electrical connections from the house and save money by not using grid electricity. Naturally I will need additional equipment, but here is an idea of the things I would need for this smaller project. This image seems to be for a trailer setup, utilizing DC ports for 12v applications (not having to convert DC to AC conserves power).
A workshop wouldn't require electricity all of the time, since I would be still working full time at a regular job, so using solar to store up energy in a battery bank to be use later would be beneficial. Lighting could be probably taken care of using 12v LED lights instead of normal house lighting. Tools could be plugged into the 110v AC system. If the system works out, then it could be extended to other yard applications (such as garden irrigation or outdoor lights).
My next large goal is that I would like to grow my own food. This was once a new years resolution that actually came true. I once experimented by growing a small garden in a 40 gallon aquarium in the living room of an apartment. That required a lot of patience and grow lights. The single cucumber plant that survived to maturation yielded only a couple of cucumbers. I would like to take this experience further and have a small garden in the backyard in some raised beds. With the longer growing season in the south and the benefits of eating more vegetables, I think this would be a worthy attempt. Seeing so much reliance on grocery stores, which then puts more pressure on the local/global system of food production, I feel that producing some food for myself and my family would help.
Since being in a relationship with someone who came with a better appreciation of eating healthy, I've started enjoying a wider variety of vegetables. In my garden, I would like to grow some common plants such as cucumbers, squash, corn, tomatoes, peppers, etc. I would also like to try growing herbs. In the spirit of trying to conserve resources, I might even try composting and rain water collection for the garden (if that's not against the law in the area that we live).
All of these ideas are just that. It's pointless to make any concrete plans until I know where I will live or what space will be available. When the time comes I will expand on each of these topics.