Last week I mentioned multiple times in The Final Pivot my strongly-felt need to not depend on other services, plugins, add-ons, subscriptions, etc. as I move forward with what I’m doing here. I said:

I have been getting rid of every website plugin, extension, paid service, etc. that I possibly can. I’m so sick of dealing with them and cannot imagine the hours David and I have spent managing all that stuff over the years. I’m going simple in this area with only those things that have a true benefit. I’m not building my website around other people’s products and services any more than I have to. Any products I have to use (such as WooCommerce and MailerLite) must be considered truly necessary. I don’t want to be reliant on other platforms and services any more than necessary. I feel very strongly about this in ways I can’t fully express.

Last night this came through my Gab feed.

I wasn’t even upset when I read it. I laughed out loud. Why? Because it perfectly proved the point that I had just made a few days before.

I have 109 videos uploaded to Gab. I have over 50 uploaded to Rumble. I stopped uploading to Rumble a few months ago because I decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort. Those video uploads to the two platforms represent literally days and days and days of work. Probably a few weeks if I were to calculate it out.

This is why all of the Sallie’s Rebuilding America episodes are audio files I self-host on our own server we pay for with a company committed to non-censorship. I’ve created video versions to upload to other platforms, but I didn’t embed the videos on my own website. I kept the podcasts self-hosted. I am SO THANKFUL I made that decision. It was a decision I made, in part, because I’ve been burned so many times by platforms and services who changed, disappeared, etc. I only have about a dozen videos about other topics I need to swap out which won’t be that much work.

Whatever it is you do in life on a daily basis, make sure you are providing yourself with redundancies. And make sure you are keeping the core things in your business and life under your own control as much as possible.

For example, when we quit PayPal last October over their new plan to penalize free speech with $2,500 fines we switched to Cornerstone Payments Systems. We use Cornerstone for client payments and the Donate page. However, if you purchase something in my shop you will use Stripe to pay. We have opted to keep two payment processors up and running. Why? Because if one of them failed or kicked us out, we have a second option readily available. We could switch things over to the other one in hours rather than taking many days to set something up new with a new company.

How might this apply to your situation? Do you have more than one bank? Do you have a bank and a credit union? Have you reduced your risk in other important areas of your life as much as possible?

I wrote in Choosing to Create a Better Life, Not a New Normal that it was important to be scrappy. This is part of what I”m talking about. Part of being prudent, part of being a prudent homemaker is also trying to be resilient, scrappy, and ready to deal with the inevitable changes that will come your way as things continue to shift in our culture. Can we control them all? Of course not. But picking out the top five or ten things that would seriously disrupt your life is a good starting point.