Initiative Exercise 1: Personal Essay, lists of close persons, experts, and role models

 What motivates me to learn this is that I want to create a TV series for the mainstream that presents the idea of 10 parents raising one child as a normal, inviting, and pleasurable, and also to embody this idea in my life in some essential way. 

I resonate deeply with the idea of using listening, rather than trying to impress, as the basis for relating what's inspiring within me to what's inspiring within others. It was hearing about that that excited me to try this process myself. And to believe that I might actually be able to achieve the goal that I mentioned in the first paragraph. I've had this as a general desire for a while, but I was just waiting for the right people to come along--and if they didn't come along, I would just let the idea go. It didn't seem right to me to take initiative, or possible to take initiative without the unfortunate side effect of controlling people in some way.

I hope to get the right questions to ask people, to have more of a sense of nuances of forming questions that really make a space for people to speak from the heart, and to be more able to have people feel that they can share openly with me.

Taking responsibility, taking initiative, solving problems, and creating projects: mostly that just feels like dead weight. Coming up with an idea feels energizing, and I've often thought that my role in the world is simply to articulate ideas and then leave them to pollinate other people's thinking, so these other people can act on them. When doing that I felt at my most balanced and free. However, many times people have simply ignored my best ideas. And continued to pursue worse ones.  I've grown more willing to take responsibility over the years, as it has not felt as exhausting, but more of an act of service, but, on the other hand, when taking responsibility I can overdo and burn out. Sometimes I get excited about an idea at first, and then a few days of responsible action exhaust me and I really resent having taken on the responsibility.  Also, I can still be blind to how irritated I really am: I can tend to stick things out for longer than is really vital.  Taking initiative sounds really scary in some ways, I immediately think about how "no good deed goes on punished" and if I put myself out there, I'm putting a target on my head.  Or that I'm really gonna harm people.  Solving problems, that sounds a little bit more fun, and I can enjoy it, but it's also way to hide from really pursuing passion or just being with people, since sometimes they don't want their problem solved as much as they just want to be heard.  And creating projects reminds me of the time that I started a theater of the homeless, and how very, very, very painful that turned out to be .

Models for taking initiative, well, there's Josh Spodek, there's Paul Wheaton, there's Machaelle Small Wright; Victor Barranco; the main stream (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Donald Trump); Twin Oaks (Kat Kincade); then nice people who have good intentions and take a couple of seemingly initiative, actions, but haven't gotten very far with their initiative at all.  The first four really did their work with integrity, and have managed to thread the needle, the main stream mostly is just selling out our planet and future generations for vapid ends, Twin Oaks somewhat inspires me, but also really really bugs and depresses me, and then the many failures or well-intentioned people who are forever in second gear, well, I guess they model putting on some bit of a performance without much effect.  There's also John Malpede, the person that inspired me to try to make a theater of the homeless, and he told me some advice after I was ways into it, which was that I should really satisfy my own desires first, get a side job and do my art selfishly, and only once I was full, then only afterward try to be of service to the homeless. I sort of tried to follow his advice, but that wasn't really possible, because I wasn't successful enough at my own  art. I didn't have access to an audience, I didn't have access to interaction with audience. Or at least I didn't know how to get that access.  So I was stuck with trying to give from an empty cup.  I devoted the many years after that to trying to fill my cup, which was profound and useful in some ways, but limiting as far as the impact I could have on others around me.

Paul wheaton is one of my role models. He has so much energy, brilliance, willingness to be considered the asshole, integrity, and beauty, appreciation for the beauty and elegance of good solutions that are truly principled. I don't agree with 100% of the things that he advocates, but a good 95%.  If I lived in Montana, I would probably be at the lab right this minute.  Machaelle Small Wright is another role model, cocteating with nature's intelligence, doing things in balance with nature, really balancing with nature's authority.  The feeling of the wisdom of nature that comes through her writing and through the flower and solutions that she makes is so sweet, so profound, so nuanced and subtle.  She points toward the wisdom of nature which I feel to be absolutely infinite.  I am confident that I will never exhaust the infinite wisdom of nature, and that gives me a tremendous amount of serenity.

What has worked so far for me in projects is just doing my own thing, not depending on anyone else, having technology to mirror it back to me. (That is, to read my words back to me, or to play my music back to me.  Hearing my own words from the space of listening, or hearing my music from that space, gives me an audience-view perspective on it. It is a different consciousness from the one that I'm using when I'm making the art.)   In terms of sharing with an external audience, just showing up and putting it out there, not letting any concern about the unfinished state of things or with the audience might think stop me from expressing myself. That's been somewhat satisfying, though not as much as I want. Being of service, in certain areas, of my life, really gave me miracles for a period. More recently, though, I've tended to feel it's more like over-giving. Having opportunities come along when I get to give my best gifts, that's been feeling like it's really working: waiting for the prompt, and then responding to it.

What hasn't worked is depending on funders, grants, an audience, my partner, the communities I've lived with, literary agents, writing, workshops, writing teachers. Gatekeepers.

I want to take initiative on overpopulation. I prefer to call it population, balancing, or "deliberate, hedonistic descent." I want to share the vision that's been shared with me of a prosperous, healthy, beautiful future, so that people don't have to be stopped by fear from going down a route that really could just be beautiful. I want to build community, so that means having some real clarity about what is and isn't community. Community is more than just a bunch of people in one place. 

I also want to help my town become self-sufficient. We could be growing so much amazing food here! With so little effort! 

My relevant history – starting the theater of the homeless and falling on my butt. Losing some of my hair, making some amazing theater, but then not finding a way to sustain things long-term. Coming to a point where I didn't even want to do the project anymore.  I was rescuing rather than working with.  I was rescuing to meet my own inner emotional need, rather than really coming from a place of solid foundation.

The value I anticipate is that I'm going to get better at asking questions, and be able to connect with people more effectively. I am really willing to listen to people say whatever they need to say, but I don't think most people know that about me. I don't think most people know how much I care. I don't think people know that I'm actually really approachable, and if they told me their weirdest thoughts, I would probably think that they are just fine.  I don't know how to show that I care.  And some of the ways that I've tried have just left me exhausted and bitter.

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LISTS OF PEOPLE

weirdest thoughts, I would probably think that they are just fine.  I don't know how to show that I care.  And some of the ways that I've tried have just left me exhausted and bitter.

1. Field of interest and people in it I can talk to: the field of interest is “supporting children.”  I would not say “raising” even, since that connotes growing a crop to one’s own standards, by one’s agenda, but rather “supporting” because I consider children to be free people needing support for their inherent development.  The field includes professionals, of course, parenting experts, psychologists, etc., but also police, whoever it is that runs CORI checks, and of course anyone who is or has had parents/adoptive parents/foster parents…It also includes people living in income-sharing communities.  And it also includes, and especially needs to include, people who have chosen not to birth a child.  That is because their perspective is so essential to the question: what would stop you from doing a common act, rewarding and pleasurable, that is also necessary to the continuation of our species?  Those people have faced enough pain that their perspective needs to be heard and considered carefully.  The names I have so far are Sarah W., Raven J., Josie J.  Two have been co-parents and one has been a babysitter on many occasions; none have biological children; all have lived in income-sharing communities for extended periods of time; all can grow food if need be, I believe.  They’re people I feel close to and who have been willing to be forthcoming about this sensitive topic.
2. Experts in the field: This is a hard one, there's no higher-up person in an egalitarian system that is income-sharing community.  And there really are no expert parents, and even those who bill themselves as “parenting experts” I view with suspicion—where are their mature children who are modeling sustainability for hte next world, let alone taking initiative to lead others? I wouldn’t call Josh Spodek’s parents experts either; he seems to progress in spite of them as much as or more than  because of their parenting. But I suppose that Sky Blue would be one community “expert,” since he’s taken on service at the inter-community level; and of course, there are ancillary issues like legality, finance, food growing, so maybe I could find one of the legal experts from an intentional communities summit; and there's Penny, Kelly, the person who wrote the book that I got this idea from and is a seer of the future.  HOWEVER: since I want to act locally, the people who are higher stakes and who I have more nervousness about approaching are people who live locally. I have more nervousness about talking to them than experts who are far away, even if they have some kind of authority.  A part of me does like the idea of creating an exportable system that can be used by anyone anywhere, there's a selfless element to that since I won't even be involved at all, but there's also something really essential about doing the project right, and for me to be doing it right means for me to be acting locally.  To be doing, not just taking the talk.  The issue of getting 10 parents together, and then having somebody feel the need to move back to a faraway city to take care of their parents, is one of the biggest obstacles I have seen and foresee.  So I suppose the people that I really need to create this family of 10 people with is a group of people who have lived in my town for a few generations.  They are people I have barely been able to access so far in my time here, they are pretty reserved in general.  And on the other hand, creating a family with oldtimers scares me since I'm new in town, my mother is elderly and my father in memory care in Boston 2 hours’ drive from here; and a part of me feels that I should be trying to create this with people from my hometown.  (But everyone my age has gotten priced out of that town, and my mother has just sold my childhood house.). So for now I will call the most high-value people: Enfield Old-timers of Enfield, Mass.  So…Dave, Austina, Gregg, Fiona.
3. Relevant role models: Mary, mother of Jesus, Joseph: they both were coparents with a bunch of other adults whom history has not recored, and that's why their kid was able to grow up really, really strong and balanced and compassionate. I suppose Jesus would be a good one for the third person, to ask what it was like growing up that way on the receiving end of the parenting.  Receiving love and demonstrating makes someone a role model as far as I can tell.  I am aware that this view will be considered heresy by a lot of people, and I don’t mean to offend anyone, I’m only speaking from my perspective as someone who is outside this religion.  I am Jewish, and I will also add that it’s not easy for me to talk about these three characters as they have been described by the book of a religion that has done terrible things to my people in the name if its God.  Since I don't know of any other instances of this kind of thing ever being tried (extended co-parenting), in all of human history, I'm going to have to go with those ones.  If I knew anything about Laozi's  parents, that would be another great one, or even Rudolph Steiner's, but I don't think there's any information about the former, and hardly any about the ladder.  The other possibility is someone from Dagara land, his English is not wonderful and I don’t imagine he’d be very vociferous, but he had dozens of mamas, papas, uncles, and aunties growing up, as well as grandmothers and grandfathers.  I will ask him.