Switching Gears. My Personal 365 Day Challenge.

Writing is therapeutic, it allows for accountability, it puts dreamy thoughts into a form that is tangible and recorded.
   As you may or may not know; the past seven months have been challenging for me in a variety of ways.  The over-riding challenge has been the fact that I'm in the dying embers of the divorce process with a women I am parenting three daughters with.  This idea is accompanied by every possible emotion, mostly of the blues hue.  There are moments of clarity and joy, but somehow grief always returns.  Though its power is diminishing, the song of sorrow is always playing in a small room somewhere in my mind.  It represents a lost dream, a lost vision, a failure, and/or the inability to foresee personal short-comings, preventing compassion and joy from being the main theme of the failed relationship.

   This dissolving of a partnership is compounded by the relenting of ownership of my house the the bank, and the loss of my job.  All of these things are happening right now.  My primary bank-account is negative five hundred something dollars last I checked a week ago.  My secondary account is negative two hundred last I checked.  I receive three hundred seventy or so from unemployment every week.  This is enough to buy food for my girls and I and support the ex.

I watch the girls every weekend.  Now I'm sitting here typing.  The older girls are at a friends house and the little one fell asleep for a nap.  It's not as if I'm always lazy, though particularly so today.  Spring is right around the corner, but it's too cold to fully relax with the breeze.
   This house is an anchor to a lost battle, it's a ghost town of lingering family unity.  Sounds depressing, I promise, I'm not always this glum.  In fact;
   The reason I'm writing this particular post is to flip the script.  I have approximatly a year before the bank actually takes the keys to my house.  There is a lot I want to accomplish before them.  The only task that really relates to the building that is currently my home, is to get all my stuff out in a strategic fashion.
  The remaining items are all about lifestyle design.  Yeah it's a buzz-word, but it's exactly what I need to do.  I need to figure out exactly what will provide me with some joy and money and get to it.
That's why I'm calling it My 365 Day Personal Challenge.

development of an intentional community

What are the first things you think of when you hear the words; intentional community?  Likely you think of the early seventeens and communes where the people all live in teepees and sing songs all day.

Well certainly we have those images and the lessons of our parents as guidance.  In some instances those communities worked and in many they did not.

I want to take a look at the reasons why those communities did, or did not work.  This may be a running theme as I have new reason to be interested in this subject.

Living communally in and intentional community is an idea that I've had burning softly in me for a long time.  The coal is occasionally blown on by visits to friends houses in similar surroundings or catching wind of successful communities.  A friend of mine recently alluded to me that there may be some land available to us for such developments.  >>more on that later.

What does communal living mean?  Does it mean teepees and drum-circles?   It's important to look much more practically than that.  
The major benefits are the shared resources.
1. The most important ones might be the power-supply.  Fortunately, the area we may choose to develop is a mecca of people who have the expertise in alternative energy solutions.  In this area, I can offer anything except a vast technical knowledge of such technologies.
2.  The second one is a food supply that is generated by our own hands on our own land.  For the amount of time and energy my wife and I afford to our garden, we still come frighteningly far from being able to sustain ourselves.     If though, that same garden had double the people working it, say four adults.  The garden knowledge, and the time given would be exponentiated.   If I felt our garden was not only for my family, but for two other families that I am close with, I would bust ass at it.
So it could be proposed that food supply would be increased.
3.  We then have child-care.  More kids, family, and friends,  is better for the kids.  I don't need to go into details here.  Perhaps another time.
so those are the benefits that we are primarily interested in at this time.  It is far early in the developing stages. Thus far the three families that would opt to live communally; are all young family focused individuals.  
My friend really put into words what many of us feel in our hearts, but may not have realized it.  It is one thing to build a log cabin in the middle of nowhere.  Then, the possibility of isolation and disconnection from any sort of community environment is all the more likely.
The proposition is then that a select group of close friends who share many of the same ideals, become neighbors.     And I need to clear that up as well.  We would all have our own houses.  Privacy and family identity is important to all of us as well as being good stuart of the earth.  What is also important is having friends who live closer that a 15,20, or 30 minute drive away.
So we will see.  I kind of spilled the beans as to potential plans.  But if it is all possible,  then it needs to be well thought out.  Peace love and unity are great, but well functioning, comfortable survival, and healthy mental and physical stimulation for our children and ourselves is the main goal.

New beginning

I am coming back to this space: dreamtime dancer.  I spent my blogging energy on my bike blog mbicyclefanatics.  It had a good run and I enjoyed it very much.  The problem is, there is SO much more to life than bicycles.  However much I love them, they could not possibly be the sole of my focus.  So typically I would add beautiful or interesting things that I found in my explorations etc.

 For The Dreamtime Dancer page I want to use it as a web journal and keep track of the interesting things I come across and live through.  I would like to incorporate more actual photos from things I am involved in. And I plan to be involved in some interesting things. ;)