“When ‘learning a skill’ turns into ‘becoming a frontier cryptid”
At first, it’s cute.
You move off-grid and think, “Maybe I’ll pick up a little hobby! Something wholesome, like candle-making!”
Three months later, you’ve got:
- Three partially tanned rabbit hides
- A loom made from salvaged chair legs
- A spreadsheet tracking squirrel movements
- And a deep, haunted look in your eyes
Let’s examine the evolution of your hobbies from “fun” to “feral.”
🧶 Phase 1: The Cozy Skills
These start normal. Pinterest-y. Even charming.
You try:
- Knitting a scarf (that becomes a lumpy rectangle)
- Canning jam (with 8 identical labels that say “??? probably blueberry”)
- Making beeswax candles (and accidentally coating the kitchen in wax)
- Carving spoons (aggressively, with no one asking for spoons)
You tell yourself, “It’s just for winter.”
Next thing you know, you’re reading 19th-century homesteading manuals like they’re romance novels.
🪴 Phase 2: The “Self-Sufficiency” Projects
Still reasonable… mostly.
You:
- Start fermenting 12 things at once
- Attempt to make your own toothpaste (it’s chalky and tastes like shame)
- Try soap-making and accidentally create a lye-based weapon
- Attempt to sew a linen tunic while swearing like a sailor monk
Now you have skills. And maybe a backlog of failed experiments you keep “just in case.”
🪖 Phase 3: The Tanning Phase (Where Things Get… Wild)
It begins with one dead animal. Just one.
You say:
“Wouldn’t it be wasteful not to tan the hide?”
Then:
- You’re scraping raw flesh off a hide on a stump while muttering to yourself
- Your yard smells like sadness and aged sinew
- You consider making a hooded cloak and joining a feral nomadic trade guild that doesn’t exist
Congratulations. You’re now a “leatherworker.”
Or a forest ghoul with a Pinterest board.
🧙♀️ Phase 4: Witchcore Madness
Once you’ve tanned one hide and rendered one jar of bone broth, you begin to change.
Suddenly, you:
- Have a shelf of labeled herbs you “foraged by moonlight”
- Own five handmade cloaks
- Brew tea from mysterious twigs
- Wear a belt with pouches. You say it’s for utility. You know it’s for vibes.
You’re now one crystal away from becoming an off-grid wizard with an Etsy side hustle.
⚠️ Warning Signs You’ve Slid Too Far Down the Hobby Spiral
- You say “I’ll just try it once” while holding a flint knapping kit
- You make your own ink from berries and journal like a Victorian exile
- You tell people you’re “experimenting with natural dyes” while wearing a shirt that looks like it lost a fight with a turmeric ghost
- You own a spinning wheel. You do not own sheep.
Final Thought: Embrace the Spiral
Look. It starts as “learning a new skill.”
It ends with you sitting by candlelight, wrapped in a hide you tanned, eating soup from a wooden bowl you carved, while reading an obscure book on medieval fermentation techniques.
And weirdly?
That’s kind of the dream.
So spiral on, you beautiful feral overachiever. Knit your destiny. Tan your apocalypse gear. Brew your root teas. And never look back.
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