greenstorm | Another weekend, another meeting

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Another weekend, another meeting

So, a budget turns out to be a way of communicating about what-ifs and whens.

I think that was a really good talk. The budget with numbers in it was the structure I needed to be able to communicate, "what happens when this is this number? What can we do to change this other number?" and they were able to meet me there. We also got to an emotionally honest place for I think all of us, at least E and I, which is where we need to begin I think.

I had done a very rough budget using their expense numbers, put it through a year, and then added some scenarios. We were then able to talk through some scenarios and see where different ones got us.

They went away to input a couple different sets of numbers overnight (what happens if we don't build in buffers, what are some reasonable income assumptions, things like that). Then we'll talk again today.

I definitely have this cycle of feeling reassured when we talk, then finding something else that needs work within a couple days. I guess it's the difference between short-term goals (get our expenses on paper, discuss X) and the longer-term goal (have a general plan for finances for the next two years, decide on dates and fencing locations)

Incidentally, E came up with a really great fencing plan based somewhat on my sketches that I sent over and my input. It bounced back and forth a little and now is probably settled, and then she clearly asked me to give her an ordered list of priorities around perimiter fencing, clearing, internal fencing, etc. I am very reassured and feeling comfortable on that front. <3

We don't fight, we do get where we're going, we seem to be willing to open up about stuff, it's just going to take time to develop a communal shorthand I think.

Also I feel like the community needs a name. Apocalypse Insurance is the farm, Cor Viriditas (sigh, I was hoping it would be Cor Viridis, figures) is the land (I think for E it's Refuge), but the group of us is as yet unnamed. A has us on a fb chat as "The Sayward three" which I believe needs more vision.

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the farm, the land & the group all have different names! we are Sunflower River in all of those senses (though we do talk about the land in legal terms as 6909 and 6911, the street numbers of the two houses, to sort out things like electricity and insurance and taxes).

the effort level declines as the group establishes norms and systems. the part you are in right now is the hardest work. after that, when there is more hard work, your systems & structures support the work. (or they get changed - that's hard, too, and it'll happen some as y'all grow into each other.)

I am so sensitive to any tremor of power imbalance and threat to autonomy, and so pedantic and categorical, that there is a lot of meaning for me in being clear about which of these things is referenced at any time. The Heart is definitely part of the land but it and the farm don't overlap, though they relate to each other. The group of us relates to both, but we are not either of them, though over time we will assimilate into the land and the farm will always be an extension of us.

this all makes sense!

I now want a shirt that reads "pedantic and categorical".

i think you can upload anything you like on Redbubble and they'll make it into shirts for you. or zazzle (redbubble's quality is better, IME).

I should make a list for 2-4 years from now, when I do my next round. (laughs)

And yes, establishing systems is the hardest part. And I cannot stand bad systems! So I'm paying attention to my effort now, deciding what I'll do and what we'll build later, more collaboratively, so that I don;t rush in and build all the systems out of sheer discomfort with not having anything in place.

To a large extent every piece of how to do human things is being mustered for this project, and being used to its fullest extent. I was thinking about this last night in the meeting, when I said "when you describe how my living space will be set up, I understand you're expressing excitement and care at doing a hydroponics project together and I want to receive it that way, but I also need you to understand it can feel invasive to me and when you suggest a thing it can prevent my mind from ever allowing me to do it, depending on wording, so I'm going to work on hearing it as a statement of care and not as a thing I should do in my home".

by doing this, you're also not letting your systems happen by accident and then get calcified, which i think is probably the most common way people make systems! and those "we do it that way because we do it that way" can be the hardest to unwind when they break or are demonstrated to be inefficient or whatever.

Yeah, I definitely feel like I'm scrambling to get ahead of anything happening, so we consider the thing before we're faced with it. Accountability mechanisms are probably next and I'm scared of that one, but I'm much less scared of it before I'm committed than after.

accountability mechanisms are very hard to want to talk about because there's the underlying fear of "what if i fuck up and get kicked out and lose my home and my dream and my people" - so you build an accountability mechanism that is not "people get kicked out when they fuck up" - but then you all have to do the super hard work together of hashing it out when something does go wrong. it's always harder to think about than to do it once you're inside it.

"it's always harder to think about than to do it once you're inside it" is a good summary of how I feel about interaction with humans. It's why I try to walk straight into my fears: it's the only way to diminish them (I'm still thinking about your other response and easing my way into an answer)

I suspect E will have some level of emotional "don't you trust me?" response, and I have some level of "you can make requests of my behaviour but you can't govern my *self*."

yes. "good fences make good neighbors." without a structure, trust can erode. once you have the structure, you can set it aside and rely on trust, and then if something breaks that in the future, the structure is there to support and guide you through the break. and you can change it then if you need to - but at least you'll have it.

Are SR accountability mechanisms something you're willing to talk about?

sure. we operate by modified consensus process. one of the things that this means, is that if someone is regularly having to abstain or even block (none of the 4 of us have ever exercised a block) it means that person is out of alignment and the group as a whole needs to come together to hash it out. what, exactly, has come out of alignment and why? have your desires, goals, vision for this place or yourself changed? how? what does the group want to do about that?

i'll pick a concrete thing, though. it's summer of 2019. jenny had this dog, zippy. it was a murder machine, a carolina yellow dog. a hunting breed, literally bred to kill, very smart, very fast. she loved it to pieces. it got banished from our sister property for eating a chicken. then it attacked the chickens here. then it attacked Elliot and hurt his rear end in the process of trying to get his tail. he recovered, after a while, but he was injured. by consensus, the dog was banished from freely roaming the land so that there would be no more poultry assaults. jenny built a dog-yard in an agreed-upon spot, a big fenced in field for zippy. okay. the field was set up so that it would in fact keep the dog in, so that worked okay. a few months later, J and T are just coming home from something and zippy pours out of the car with them. i'm standing by the hot tub talking to J, when suddenly my cat Arisilde comes flying past, followed within seconds by zippy the murder dog. i fly after them, my bum knee notwithstanding. i caught the dog by the collar as her teeth were millimeters away from closing around the body of my cat. my cat was too dumb to dive through the cat-door, behind which he would have been safe. (that cat is dumb. it's not usually a real problem.) J came around the corner and took zippy from me and i got Arisilde inside, unhurt. but unhurt by a matter of SECONDS.

the group called a special meeting to decide what to do about it. i said, i can't live with an animal that will harm or kill my cats. i can't do it. if that means i have to leave SR because this place is for murder dogs now, then fine. (context: i was still married and very well knew i needed to not be and leaving SR was the primary way i was envisioning getting out of that, too, and that informed my willingness to make this level of issue over the dog. AND, i can still feel my breath come short and my heart racing when i think about that animal.) and, Jenny LOVED this dog. absolutely loved her. Tristan said, i wish i'd gone with you to the pound that day because we agreed on a small dog and instead you came back with this big problem dog. tristan didn't really like that dog either. the poultry killing was a big important issue for him; we're a poultry farm. he needed us to not have to constantly police our animals. rev likes dogs in general as little as i do, for all the same reasons, but in this conversation, he mostly mediated (he is great at that).

tristan said, are we willing to break SR apart over this. none of us were, includign me and J. but it couldn't stay as it was. so dialing back from that he asked, what are we willing to do, then. and J agreed to a) work on training the dog not to chase cats and hens and keep her rigorously under control while in this process. and then b) if that wasn't successful in a time frame we agreed on, to rehome zippy. we all agreed to that, and wrote up a contract with the timeline. so that we wouldn't all remember different things. she enrolled zippy in dog school and they did that. zippy really really really wanted to chase everything in the world and could not be taught to only chase a ball. jenny learned that she doesn't have the attention or focus to really do a great job training a dog right now while also homeschooling an elementary-age kid and co-running a farm. Jenny gathered herself together and found another home for zippy. with a family that had another carolina dog and no other pets at all. in Washington. they drove halfway here and J met them halfway, in Utah or someplace, to ensure the dog went to a beloved home. they all still text and are in contact with dog updates with each other. Jenny went to the dog rescue with Tristan a month later and adopted a mutually agreed on dog, who had mutually agreed on characteristics including a history of not chasing other animals. that's Arrow, who is actually a good dog, who we still have. (he's part pit bull and part basset hound - a pitbull looking dog on short stumpy legs with long floppy ears and woeful eyes. he is lazy and quiet and very sweet; he's scared of the cats and peacocks, he ignores the chickens, and he doesn't chase anything, even balls.)

it boils down to: situation by situation, we hash it out. that i think is a good example because it was very emotionally challenging for all of us and we were all very upset and angry. and yet we worked it out succesfully.

Thank you. I appreciate your stories and input so much; without our interaction over the past couple years I wouldn't be able to consider this step today, let alone know how to go about it.

i was just thinking, you asked for a process and i gave you a story. i hope the story illustrates the process! i think in anecdotes. relationally.

you are so very welcome. and thank you - that feedback means so much to me.

It was the story of the process - and it sounds like the process is somewhat fluid?

We both seem to think in stories, it's one of the lovely parts of this communication.

yes, that is lovely. :)

the process is "we talk this out, no matter what it is," and the structure of that reverts to consensus process as needed when tensions run high.

we as a whole did not talk it out with alan, because i as an individual was unable to do so. i had reached the point that i did not even want to try, i just wanted to leave. and i said, i will leave, or he can leave, and it will break my heart if i leave but i will do it because i cannot live like this anymore. and tristan said, "well, there's no contest in my mind. if it's him or you, i choose you. he hasn't even been here really for the last 7 years and you've been here every day. and that's just one part of it." he has said over and over, "i cannot imagine SR without you." and that means the world. and then, y'know, he did the real-world work to back that up - he co-signed the home loan with me that made the whole thing possible.

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Another weekend, another meeting

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