My journal entries from last week about the No Complaint Challenge:

Day 1

I receive my new Ipod from Amazon as I’m on a break from being out in the field. I hook it up to my friend’s MacBook and sync up her music. I’m stoked. Then I move on to the PC laptops (having never owned an Ipod before and not realizing it had to be either PC or Mac formatted and wouldn’t work with both…), which asks me to reformat my Ipod. I proceed to curse out Mac, Apple, Steve Jobs, and his children if he has any.

I switch wrists and restart the complaint challenge.

Coincidentally, as I typed this, I noticed my good friend Josh wrote a post about why Macs suck (here). Also coincidentally, Macs are the reason Tim Ferris had to restart his No Complaint Challenge (here). I guess the universe is conspiring to keep Macs sucking…

Day 1 (Second Attempt)

After the Mac incident, I’ve managed a whole day without complaining. I feel more aware of my thoughts and am even able to quench most other (non-complaint) negative thoughts.

Day 2

I’m driving a 1978 Chevy pickup truck deep into the desert on roads that most modern trucks would take issue with. But I trust the old Chevy, because we have been here together before — and in worse spots. I will be spending the next six days camped far from any mark of civilization, working as a logistics and backup camp for a month long desert survival course.

As I drive down one particularly steep, precarious, washboard-like section in the dirt track, the Chevy engine stalls, taking with it the power brakes and power steering — and leaving me to wrestle the beast of a truck from driving over the side and into the great canyonland abyss. I call the Chevy a worthless piece of shit that isn’t fit to drive to the supermarket in.

I switch wrists and restart the complaint challenge for the second time.

Later, the Chevy and I reconcile our differences and spend a mostly peaceful 5 days together in the desert heat.

Day 1 (Third Attempt)

Without anyone around to complain to about the intense heat, the black flies, and the squirrels trying to steal my food, I am doing quite well. I play my guitar, read two Paolo Coelho novellas, and decompress.

Day 3

The past few days have been so relaxing and uneventful as to make me forget what day it was while writing this. Evening comes; I enjoy my campfire and grill some frozen ground turkey as burgers. I fall asleep under the stars, full and content.

At around midnight, I’m awakened by footsteps in the pinion pine needles coming towards me. I analyze them. Too light for a human, or even a deer. I see the outline of what looks like a housecat slowly strutting in the moonlight toward my camp. At about ten feet away, I recognize the black outline and the white stripe running lengthwise along its body as mephitis mephitis. A skunk.

I crawl out from under my wool blanket and away from the skunk, taking care not to make any sudden movements lest I be sprayed.

I watch as he slowly meanders around my campsite, tries to open my rubber food tote, sniffs at my bedspread (apparently dissatisfied) and then lays down in the middle of my camp.

I wait. I take pictures.

I wait some more. I come close to losing the complaint challenge.

Finally, the skunk decides he’s kept me from sleep long enough and slowly meanders off. I give him a wide berth as he leaves.

Two hours later the skunk is back and wakes me up. Now, I’m not a big fan of being woken up in the middle of the night while camping.

I think to myself, this is crazy — why should I be scared of a little animal about the size of my house cat that won’t bite me, won’t poison me, won’t really do anything but try to spray me with a foul smell? So I pick up a 20 pound rock, walk up to about 5 feet away from the skunk and stop. As I tense my muscles with the rock over my head, the skunk seems to sense what I’m about to do and quickly shuffles about a foot out of the way, narrowly dodging my missile. He looks at me, as if deciding whether to retaliate, and slowly meanders off into the night. Relatively uneventful.

Day 4

I sleep in.

Desert heat. I sit in the shade for most of the day.

Night comes and I read from my Astronomy charts with my red headlamp as the stars fill up the wide sky. Again, with no cloud cover or sign of changing weather, I sleep without my poncho as a rainfly.

I fall asleep and dream that my I’m talking to a deer about what to do with the skunk. He says that I should befriend it. Give it some food, he says. Yeah, I guess you’re right, I answer.
I awake to find the skunk at the foot of my blanket. I stand up, and grab my water bottle. I camly take a drink, then examine the bottle. It’s stainless steel, and weighs a good 8lbs at least. I ignore the deer’s advice and throw my water bottle as hard as I can at the skunk’s body. I miss by a few inches. I narrowly refrain from cursing the skunk and losing the complaint challenge, and I watch as he (she?) slowly moves behind my food tote and off into the bushes. My water bottle now holds only about 3/4 of what it did before because of the large dent.

Day 5

I don’t particularly like to be woken up when I’m camping. Just going to put that out there. Not a complaint, more an observation.

Today, I plan out an elaborate deadfall trap based on the Paiute deadfall to trap and kill the skunk. It involves a 40 lb sandstone peice that I found. I ignore my own rule about using a rock only 3-4 times the weight of the hunted animal. Luckily for the skunk (and likely me as well), I am notified that I will have to return to the field office tonight, ahead of schedule. I do not get to make my Davy Crockett skunk pelt hat after all. And I save myself a few bucks by not having to buy a bathtub full of tomato juice.

The 21 Day Complaint Challenge is to be continued…