![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI'd like to state, for the record, that any time I'm certain of an event or make a sure declarative about the future that thing will not come to pass. Homes, relationships, jobs, leaving, staying: in my life, if I come to completely expect something, it will not come to pass.
A&E have had a bid accepted on a property in the mid-north Vancouver Island. Everything happens for many reasons each with its own lens:
I. just. Said. That. I. Was. Staying. Here. My heart just believed it and I had less than a day of rest alone in this space after mom left and before they viewed the property.
Also it's spring and people are selling, so this was a reasonable time for this to happen after braking for the winter.
Also A&E have been waiting all winter and are more able to compromise on location, especially since Tucker (without telling anyone, but they got the message at least) removed his requirements from the search. It's pretty remote.
There are a lot of subjects to remove on the offer including sale of A&E's place (they have ten viewings this week), inspection, water test, and ability to get insurance.
I have not been there to walk it. After A&E's place has an accepted bid (if?) I'll fly down for a day or two to look it over, mark trees for clearing, mark fencelines, and then come back up here and live with Threshold for awhile longer. There's no way to go down before it's ready for the animals, after all.
Not having walked it I can't tell you about it. I can tell you about North Vancouver Island, though. It's intensely pacific northwest, west coast. It freezes in the winter intermittently, and not for many days at a time. It's heavy overcast to drizzly well over half the time; almost no one would recognise the rain as rain because not a lot of water tends to come down at once but it is always damp. It's a little dryer and sunnier in summer but less than you might think. Everything is green and smells like leaf mould and conifer and water. Summers are also cool; I'm not sure exactly how cool yet but I may not get much warmer than here. Thing is, it would be the same temperature as here but frost free for maybe twice as long. That introduces possibilities like yuzu and very hardy kumquats.
I don't really want to talk about it though? I'm here with Threshold, and I want to be here, and enjoy here. I don't want to spend my thoughts on places far away, though I do love the planning exercise. I want to be in the present moment because I love it here.
There's lots before this is completely sure: interpersonal, financial, legal. It may never happen, who knows? But it's looking likely at this moment. A&E will look over offers Thursday and until then I am so far outside my mind and my body I'm finding myself just standing places, staring, and it's hard to move.
There's a lot more to say about this. I wanted to put it down here though. Ahead of me may be this place without (yet) a name. I once again don't know what happens next.
A&E have had a bid accepted on a property in the mid-north Vancouver Island. Everything happens for many reasons each with its own lens:
I. just. Said. That. I. Was. Staying. Here. My heart just believed it and I had less than a day of rest alone in this space after mom left and before they viewed the property.
Also it's spring and people are selling, so this was a reasonable time for this to happen after braking for the winter.
Also A&E have been waiting all winter and are more able to compromise on location, especially since Tucker (without telling anyone, but they got the message at least) removed his requirements from the search. It's pretty remote.
There are a lot of subjects to remove on the offer including sale of A&E's place (they have ten viewings this week), inspection, water test, and ability to get insurance.
I have not been there to walk it. After A&E's place has an accepted bid (if?) I'll fly down for a day or two to look it over, mark trees for clearing, mark fencelines, and then come back up here and live with Threshold for awhile longer. There's no way to go down before it's ready for the animals, after all.
Not having walked it I can't tell you about it. I can tell you about North Vancouver Island, though. It's intensely pacific northwest, west coast. It freezes in the winter intermittently, and not for many days at a time. It's heavy overcast to drizzly well over half the time; almost no one would recognise the rain as rain because not a lot of water tends to come down at once but it is always damp. It's a little dryer and sunnier in summer but less than you might think. Everything is green and smells like leaf mould and conifer and water. Summers are also cool; I'm not sure exactly how cool yet but I may not get much warmer than here. Thing is, it would be the same temperature as here but frost free for maybe twice as long. That introduces possibilities like yuzu and very hardy kumquats.
I don't really want to talk about it though? I'm here with Threshold, and I want to be here, and enjoy here. I don't want to spend my thoughts on places far away, though I do love the planning exercise. I want to be in the present moment because I love it here.
There's lots before this is completely sure: interpersonal, financial, legal. It may never happen, who knows? But it's looking likely at this moment. A&E will look over offers Thursday and until then I am so far outside my mind and my body I'm finding myself just standing places, staring, and it's hard to move.
There's a lot more to say about this. I wanted to put it down here though. Ahead of me may be this place without (yet) a name. I once again don't know what happens next.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 07:05 pm (UTC)Thank you, this is interesting to me. How did you come up with those solutions? Did they evolve through trial and error, did the folks involved ask explicitly? How does having this extra bit interact with other folks' own limits? In fact, how does the group manage group energy resources vs projects? Do you tend to (or have someone who tends to) be good at estimating energy and timelines before something is begun, do projects get jettisoned or changed partway through, how does that work? You mention some more personal projects, I imagine it's easier to accurately budget energy for a one-person project?
no subject
Date: 2022-03-09 06:05 pm (UTC)it's harder with tristan - his awareness around his things is less acute, and he snaps at people without provocation when he's frustrated, which is harder for me to deal with than J's simply not getting stuff done or leaving a mess behind. and even there, we figure out what helps little by small and are moving forward, easing the bumps in the road. we had a long heartfelt crying conversation at the Retreat (it is also for that, though those are never easy), and i think came to some really helpful realizations this time.
it's definitely easier to budget time/energy for a one-person project, and my personal superpower is leveraging our volunteers. so if i see that J is collapsing on something, and the thing doesn't require specialized knowledge, i'll get the volunteers focused on it. if it does require specialized knowledge, T & I will try to help J get out there and work on it. when i'm collapsing (usually by running out of interpersonal energy), i'll text J and T and ask them to pick up some intern teaching/management for a week or two while i recover. these solutions have evolved over time.
energy vs projects is less an issue than money vs want these days. but to answer the question, the wwoof program is absolutely integral to this farm. so right now, we have identified 6 priority projects - Elysium electric (specialized, stewards-only); garden (not specialized; volunteers with guidance); gnomedome (volunteers & stewards working together on work party days only - so it goes more slowly but also more carefully); new back pasture fence (currently in the "get fencing materials" stage; when we go to build it, Rev will set all the corner & gate posts with volunteer help digging, and then we'll have a work party where all of us get the fence done together, as that is totally a 10 person project); aquaponics (some prep tasks volunteers; final set up stewards); animal housing (jenny & terra are doing a work hour every tuesday & thursday plus all work parties until this is finished, but they're making a ton of progress).
that's too many priorities, except that we DO have the volunteers. we try hard not to jettison projects partway through, and personally half-finished things drive me crazy, so i'm motivated to not let htat happen and i will herd people into finishing them (not unlike a cattle dog nipping at their heels, ha. i have had to learn how to do this in a way that doesn't upset/hurt everyone). i need to send you a photo of our project management board. the Board will explain a number of things and gosh it's a fantastic tool. it's a modification of a kanban, straight out of corporate culture except modified for IC use and it works really well. the board keeps us from forgetting/abandoning things, helps us sort & reorder our priorities based on Retreat and on emergent things, ensures there are tasks attached to each project so things can keep moving forward, and helps sort who "owns" each task and if things aren't getting done, what the group can do to unblock that task/project. this process makes an enormous difference in our effectiveness.
oh! and tristan is going to teach his extremely helpful Tools for Communities class again this year, in August. we'll record the lecture parts of it (not the exercises, to protect the privacy of the attendees, but can include a write-up of do-it-at-home exercises), and i will make sure you get a youtube link to the recording. the first day is Consenus Process and Group Facilitation. the second day is Communication & Project Management Tools for Intentional Community.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 05:11 pm (UTC)Oh goodness, it hadn't occurred to me to discuss how to prioritize projects. I think of my time as so much my own. I know E has mentioned that I'd take point on planning the garden & animals, but that is neither a prioritizing process nor an energy distribution so I kind of handwaved it. Thank you, I will look into this more.
I know my work process can be pretty difficult for other folks to join in on; when I'm personally going to go do something I almost always have to get up and go out to do something else (thanks PDA) so I'll literally say "let's go bring wood in" and end up fixing the fence instead. Obviously not great to do work together in groups, though I can join work that other folks are doing, usually, as long as they get moving first. A&E do NOT have a handle on PDA yet and when I brought it up in conversation they mostly wanted to compare similar experiences about their mental health stuff. Repetition will hopefully help get it in there.
A friend who was in the military has what I think is probably a similar board. It's a fantastic tool; I've added it to my notes for "things we need on startup". Come to think of it, a weekly meeting to discuss priorities etc would be less onerous if I wasn't working full time.
I am super happy to get that link, thank you! That is exactly what I want.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 09:31 pm (UTC)how best to send photos of our board? here? instagram DMs?
in addition to getting at least a prototype process for project prioritization (ha!), i'd find out what E means by "you'd take point." do A & E want input, to engage creatively, to have their own garden/animal projects? or do they want to follow your lead entirely on that? will that become tiring to be the decision maker always (i realize you already are at Threshold), or will you want a way to share responsibility? right now you don't need to know for sure, because it will change once you're in it and emergent needs arise for everyone. just to have the conversation open.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-11 06:50 pm (UTC)I have a lot of workarounds for the PDA thing. Sometimes I'll say I'm going out to work on one of these three things, would someone like to join me? and that helps take the pressure off one thing, so I'm more able to be consistent. Asking someone else to start works well. The workarounds are why I like to either do my own projects and let other people drop in as they see me doing things and feel like helping, or let other people do their projects and wander by and ask if they need a hand when I see them working. It takes a lot less energy than navigating around the demand avoidance.
Yes, I basically parse statements like that as "I'll have some role in this, seek explanation". I'm very used to people using a couple phrases which they think clearly mean something, but that many different people would read differently, so I know to seek clarification (see also: "we're monogamous" or "I'm poly").
I'm definitely feeling the need for an online forum-type medium for these conversations. We all get excited and talk a lot, and that's not the way to pin down a set of things as a greed and remembered.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-11 07:12 pm (UTC)i can reccomend Slack as a forum tool for tracking and capturing the conversations. you can make multiple channels, send files and pictures, and it works on phones and laptops equally well. the free version does have a max limit on storage so you need to download files someone posts, but it's easy.