By Kristi
Pandemic-induced epiphanies. We all had them, to an extent. Right? Mine boiled down to this: Life is really important. And I suddenly have this weird feeling that I’m not doing it the right way…
For years and years, I’ve been working my ASS off. I’ve been trying to grow my internet-based business, climb that ladder of success. That weird combination of scrimping and saving and working myself to death to achieve the American Dream – to be able to afford my personal version of the stereotypical big house behind the white picket fence.
I’ve missed so much. Magical moments with my growing kids. The ability to truly relax and enjoy time spent with my wonderful, loving husband. Most of our family fun time has consisted of eating crap and vegging out in front of the TV, because what else would we have energy for, after the work is done?
I want to find a better way to live. Does it really have to be this way? I don’t think so.
The things we need for a happy, fulfilling life can be boiled down to a simple list of three. Food. Shelter. Friends. It’s really that simple. But – the first two are really difficult to provide on a family scale with your average job, and it’s getting worse every day. The third you might think is free – but it really isn’t. Friendship costs money in our society – because it’s fostered with activities that cost money. Even inviting friends over to your house costs money – particularly having a big enough house to be able to have multiple friends over at once. But what if this isn’t a fact of life? What if instead, we’re doing it the wrong way?
I’m a bit of a computer geek. If it exists, I can probably find it on the internet, and I love collecting random fascinating bits of information from all over. My mid-pandemic-crisis filled me with a burning desire to find the answer to the question, “Is there a better way to live?” So I focused all my frustration, all my passion, all my geeky online skills towards finding that answer.
I didn’t find the answer. Instead I found thousands of answers, to thousands of related questions. It made me think of new questions to ask, new answers to find. I kept searching, and I kept finding. Eventually the things I found started to come together – like pieces of a ten-thousand-part puzzle – to make a picture of a better life. And now, I’m stepping outside the paradigm of societal expectations, along with close friends, and together, we plan to pioneer a better way to live.
We don’t want this to be a just-us thing. We’re hoping to find a template that others can follow to escape this world that leaves us no time to truly enjoy life. None of us have money – we’re starting from very little to nothing to negative capital. We don’t plan to be forest-dwelling hippies either – we like the comforts of the modern world and have zero desire to leave them behind.
I love to write, and I love creating pictures (through photography and drawing and painting), which they say are worth a thousand written words! In over a decade of running an internet-based business, I’ve learned a lot about how to grow an online following. The things I’m finding as I delve into the worlds of permaculture, solarpunk, and natural building are seriously magical, and I want more people to know they exist.
I plan to curate an online catalog of ideas, and put some of my own creativity into each of them, and try to simplify some of the more complicated ones (looking at you, permaculture!) to help them be more accessible to busy people with hectic lives. I will catalog each step we take to escape this life of all-work and little play, use them to create a template, and share it on this website. My life experience makes me uniquely suited to this task.
So here I go!