no cats in bolivia for now

I told mi amor to stop shitting on my dreams.  Found out she was just being prudent.

She has worked with non-profits for a while now and saw some red flags when she was hearing about my upcoming trip to bolivia to volunteer running with cats.  "why do you have to pay in cash" she asked.

I defended my darnedest and then i had to dig a little myself.  so i dug and found out that there are quite a few places where you can pay to volunteer with large cats.  And another person online reminded me that i'm not that different.  People LOVE to volunteer with large cats, and concurrently will pay to do it.  I had forgotten the fundamental part of volunteering; it generally doesn't involve money.  You typically don't pay to go volunteer at an old folks home or a soup kitchen, so why is it ok now?  Oh yeah, the truth.  I saw a cheap opportunity to play with large cats and i could call it "volunteering" and then feel good about it.  The truth is that i would be paying about $600 a month to volunteer.  And that's cheap to have the experience of running with large cats!

I don't know if it's right though.  To pay money to essentially play with large cats.  It's a funny area in this human existence though.  It's ok to play with large dogs, large horses, large cows, hell even dolphins and whales!  Aaaand it's ok to keep some large cats, amongst lots of other animals in cages in zoos.  And then there's breeding in zoos, and people typically must pay money to go look at animals in the zoos.   Where's the consistency?


So now that volunteering with large cats for money is off the plate for now, i'm figuring out what's next.
I found out this morning that a position i applied for with Growing Power in Wisconsin has been filled.  They have a large aquaponics and urban farming program that i was super excited to get to be a part of. 

Otherwise there seems to be lots of aquaponics startups with propietary technology and they all have visions for theirs to go worldwide.  I'm not sure if i have a space in their startups or not.  Mi amor suggested a send my resume to every single aquaponics company in the world and see what happens.  And i've now started the nasty task of rewriting my resume.  Ewww.

A friend i spoke with asked a question of what am i looking for, and the answer keeps on being, "I want people to have access to free food and free shelter.  I can do this by taking over abandoned buildings that are havens for things that don't make communities very friendly.  I can transform these buildings into food production oasis in food deserts and use the additional space for housing and workshop space.

I keep on writing this again and again.  Hmm.
If any of you got any ideas or input, lemme know.  I'm all ears!