Hearthside 06 The Cabin I Never Built | Introduction

A childhood dream can be more than nostalgia. Sometimes it is a compass that keeps pointing to the life you were meant to build.

We kick off a new series by sharing a first draft reading from Shawn James’s upcoming book, “The Cabin I Never Built.” It starts with a boy wandering pines and creek beds, picturing a handmade cabin on a hill, then follows the hard turn into adulthood: chasing the kind of success that looks good on paper, living under fluorescent lights and constant notifications, and feeling “exhausted but wired” as stress and cortisol quietly take over. When the whole house of cards falls, one question remains: keep going, or finally build something real?

From there, the story becomes a grounded look at self-reliance as a way of living. Not a survival manual, not a fantasy of disappearing into the woods, but an invitation to unplug, unwind, and reconnect through practical homesteading skills and everyday choices: building with your hands, planting a garden, learning to preserve and repair, and restoring the deep satisfaction that comes from meeting more of your own needs. We also dig into why modern life can leave you feeling empty even when your basics are covered, using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to explain the missing pieces: competence, esteem, and self-actualization.

If you’ve been thinking about leaving the city, off-grid living, simple living with more meaning, or just lowering stress and taking your time back, this is your starting line. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the one “honest step” you want to take next.

Transcript

A New Book And A New Format

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The cabin that I never built. Hey everybody, Sean James here. Welcome back to the cabin. Welcome to the My Self-Reliance podcast. Unplug, unwind, reconnect. I wanted to talk on this. Actually, I wanted to tell you that I've been writing a book. I wrote a book, 52 Weeks of Self-Reliance. And I think it's a great little guidebook for somebody who wants to get control of their lives. It's um really aimed at people getting taking small steps over the course of a year to take back or regain their time and their money and their freedom. But I noticed during that writing process, I was trying to get, I've been reflecting back on my life a lot, and I started expanding what I was writing down to include a lot more anecdotes, a lot more about my life, but I didn't feel like it fit that that book that was more of a uh uh what what do you call that kind of book? Just a uh yeah, a guide, I guess. It's a small booklet, uh, but it's a guide for chasing after the life that I think I've been chasing. But what I like I said, what I noticed is that it had a lot more to say. So I've taken uh on writing of another book, which I'm rediscovering my passion for writing. I did a bunch of uh wrote a bunch of articles 10 years ago and started writing for Ontario of Tourism and uh I've always written journals, so I have a lot of notes to look back on, even going right back to uh teenagehood. So this is the book. This is my first uh attempt, at least, at this kind of book, so it's more reflective, but still helpful. It's still sort of in the same vein that it's setting out uh actions that um I feel like would help people, especially to leave the city, like to leave a life that's stressful and be and live a less stressful life. I'm not gonna call it simple, just less stressful and less and more meaningful life. And this is the result of so far of that writing. I've um I've done a rough draft all the way through almost. It's a full-size book this time. But um, I'm just going back through every chapter and and rewriting, and I'll keep doing that over the course of several weeks or months just to make sure that it's reflective of what I actually want to say, what I want to share, and also what I think is helpful for people. So I'm gonna, I think for over the next, I'm not sure how many weeks, it won't be the full 52 weeks. I'll I'll uh do it a little faster than that, but I'm going to record podcasts of each section of the book, each chapter, probably, or maybe a couple of chapters, depending on the length, and uh just get your feedback, but also just uh re-listen to that myself and then see what I think of it before I write my final draft. So anyway, this is it. I'm gonna start off by just reading from it. So I'll be not at not my typical ramblings. I will uh just read right through it right off the script and then see what you think about it. And I'll uh I guess I'll get this uploaded and then I'll record another one and try to make it a series so as I go through the writing of the book I can listen to it myself and then take your feedback as well. So

Reading The Cabin I Never Built

SPEAKER_00 3:27

here we go. This is the introduction to the cabin I never built. There was a small section of land on the outskirts of town that I used to explore with my dog when I was a kid. The air always smelled of pine needles and damp earth after a rain. It sat on a gentle slope with old pines and a little creek that sang in the spring. In my mind, I had already cleared a spot, raised the walls with my own hands, and built a fireplace that would keep a family warm through Ontario winters. I could see the garden out front, the smoke curling from the chimney at dusk, the quiet evenings with nothing but the sound of wind in the trees after wandering the countryside in search of and in search of fish and game all day. In my mind I was Henry David Thoreau or Jeremiah Johnson, or at least Yen from Two Little Savages, one of my favorite books growing up. See there's a line that I need to expand on, I can see. I yearned so badly to build that cabin that I began disassembling the farmer's wooden fence, hoisting the cedar rails onto my shoulders and carrying them over to that clearing. I made a big pile of building materials and then made plans to return when school let out that summer. I never did build that cabin. Life had other plans. I grew up. For years I chased the version of success I thought I was supposed to want. Long hours, bigger responsibilities, a house in town, the kind of life that looked good on paper. The daily commute, the fluorescent lights, the constant pressure of deadlines and notifications, all of it slowly raising my cortisol levels, keeping my nervous system in a low grade state of alarm. Like so many men today, I was exhausted but wired, successful on paper, but quietly unraveling inside. I focused on the success and made bigger plans for the future. I continued on, building that house of cards higher and higher, till it collapsed. The business, the savings, the illusion of security. In the aftermath, I stood in the ruins with nothing left but a choice. Keep going the way I had been, or finally build something real. So I did. I left the city behind, moved to the land and started over with hand tools, a golden retriever named Callie, and a willingness to learn the hard way. I built a log cabin not because I had to, but because I needed to remember what it felt like to make something with my own hands again. I planted a garden that now feeds my family. I learned to forage, preserve, repair, and sit still. Most importantly, I learned that freedom isn't a place, it's a way of living. I only had to unplug, unwind, and reconnect with what really mattered to find that freedom. Modern life has taken care of our foundational needs in Maslow's hierarchy. Food, shelter, and safety are largely provided by the system, but in handing those responsibilities over, it has stripped away the deep satisfaction of meeting them ourselves. We no longer hunt, grow, build, or create much of what sustains us. The lower needs are met, yet the higher ones, esteem, self actualization, and a genuine sense of a competence remains chronically unsatisfied. The result is a strange kind of emptiness. We feel unfulfilled because we are no longer active participants in our own survival and flourishing. Our bodies and minds are paying the price. This book is not a survival manual or a rigid fifty-two week course. It is an invitation. An invitation to step off the treadmill, even just a little, to unplug, to trade noise for bird song, constant urgency for quiet mornings, and the weight of a life you drifted into for one you deliberately choose. Unwind. To lower the cortisol that modern living keeps pumping through your system and begin rebuilding confidence, competence, and a deep sense of fulfillment by meeting more of your own needs with your own hands and attention. Reconnect. Over the next year I'll walk you through that same path I took, not as an expert, but as someone who has made every mistake and found something better on the other side. Some weeks will ask you to look honestly at your money, your time and your fears. Others will invite you to bake your first loaf of bread, plant a tree, or to simply sit outside and listen. You don't need to sell everything and move to the woods tomorrow, though you might want to by the end. You only need to begin where you are, with what you have, and take one honest step at a time. This is the book I wish I had when I was still dreaming of that cabin on the hill, the one I never built, but finally learned to live inside anyway. Welcome to the journey. I'm glad you're

What Comes Next And Your Feedback

SPEAKER_00 8:03

here. So that's it. That's the introduction. It gives you a little sense of what's coming. I know from reading this again that this is a little short, this introduction. I'm going to have to expand on this to um explain a little bit more about what's coming up in the coming chapters, but I think I'll uh do that. I'll talk about that. Well, I'll re-record that in a future podcast. But in the meantime, I will um back to the podcast with chapter one. And uh I'll see, it might be too short, so I'll probably end up reading maybe chapters one and two in the next podcast. So please let me know what you think of this. Go to the website or social media somewhere that I posted this other than here on a podcast where you can't really uh can't really comment. But if you go to one of those platforms or reach out to me at um at the email address that you'll find on any of those platforms as well. Just let me know what you think. And uh that's it. Thank you. Thank you for following along. I appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you back here at the cabin next time. Take care.