MOMENTUM
How can I catch my energy when it is at it's highest, and channel it back into where it is needed? It would be good for me to look at those things that fill me with excitement and fire, those things I find it easy to find energy for and that make me happy. Here's a good space for a favourite quote of mine:
'Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people that are alive.'
I also feel that if I work with my own natural rhythms as much as possible, and keep working towards designing my everyday life so that I have freedom to allow myself space to choose from a variety of activities, then I will be constantly replenishing my energy in a hugely fulfilling and whole way. In other words, with this project in mind, designing a pathway that holds variety and diversity. For me that means being self employed, and creating several different income streams, so I can have that diversity of activities to suit my changing creative energy, but which all are bringing in a yield in different ways. This echoes the permaculture principle of each important function being supported by many elements.
'Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people that are alive.'
I also feel that if I work with my own natural rhythms as much as possible, and keep working towards designing my everyday life so that I have freedom to allow myself space to choose from a variety of activities, then I will be constantly replenishing my energy in a hugely fulfilling and whole way. In other words, with this project in mind, designing a pathway that holds variety and diversity. For me that means being self employed, and creating several different income streams, so I can have that diversity of activities to suit my changing creative energy, but which all are bringing in a yield in different ways. This echoes the permaculture principle of each important function being supported by many elements.
PRINCIPLES
Obtain a yield:
A fundamental necessity of the outcome of this project. Up until this point in my life I have identified a pattern that I hold of avoiding anything that has a primary purpose of making money. It's just never enough, and I lose motivation and enthusiasm for it. So I know that for me personally, whatever designs I put in place for this project have to fill more than one purpose, not just raising money, but also creative fulfilment, personal progression, and living fully within my own ethics of how I want to be living.
A fundamental necessity of the outcome of this project. Up until this point in my life I have identified a pattern that I hold of avoiding anything that has a primary purpose of making money. It's just never enough, and I lose motivation and enthusiasm for it. So I know that for me personally, whatever designs I put in place for this project have to fill more than one purpose, not just raising money, but also creative fulfilment, personal progression, and living fully within my own ethics of how I want to be living.
INTEGRATION
These are some design points that have become clear in this project so far.
- That being self employed suits me. Having that freedom to suit my rhythms and energy levels, and freedom to do things the way that I creatively wish to
- That I need a balance of income streams: nourishing my head, heart and hands..
- That I want to work in a collective as much as possible, finding my place within one, and creating the most benefit from my relationships with those around me, for me and for them
- That whatever I choose should work towards my life goals, mostly those which you can see on my action learning pathway at the beginning of this diploma
- That there are several different routes to financial security: ways to make money, ways to live without money, and ways to save money. They all need to combine to create a sustainable healthy relationship to finances.
After looking at the places where my passion flows, and where I have always been drawn to generate some money in the past, there are several options clearly central to my next steps for generating cash flow. I now have a new option included that's come up recently. In February 2014 I took the opportunity to do some voluntary work in the UK, to raise some money for a new Steiner school project a good friend of mine is working on. I was helping out a local man to harvest willow for building living willow structures in primary schools. I took this exchange as an opportunity to gain new skills. This quickly turned into working part time with this man, planting living willow and making large weaving looms for school playgrounds.
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Below I've put my four options into a positive, negative and interesting analysis.
Making craft (clothing, jewellery etc)
Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting:
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Bodhi clothing (creating my organic clothing company)
Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting:
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Teaching permaculture courses
Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting:
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Living willow work (working in school playgrounds)
Positive:
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Negative:
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Interesting:
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PRINCIPLES
Observe and interact:
As for my work planting willow in schools, I could see clearly that this work needed to change to fit with the needs of my family and I. The work so far had involved a lot of travel, so I have now shifted this to offering a much greater diversity of outdoor learning activities, based on what the teachers have been telling me over the past few months. Now Oriol and I can work together, and organise our projects closer to home. We've called our new business Organic Playgrounds.
(www.organicplaygrounds.com)
As for my work planting willow in schools, I could see clearly that this work needed to change to fit with the needs of my family and I. The work so far had involved a lot of travel, so I have now shifted this to offering a much greater diversity of outdoor learning activities, based on what the teachers have been telling me over the past few months. Now Oriol and I can work together, and organise our projects closer to home. We've called our new business Organic Playgrounds.
(www.organicplaygrounds.com)
With these four income streams I have a nice diversity of activities, which will hopefully nourish all of my needs. And as they are all based around me being self employed, then I can adapt my work to fit with the rhythm of my lifestyle as I need to. Hopefully this will be the key to balance and long term sustainability.. And if it's not, (as everything in nature is constantly changing) then I'll come back and tweak it again, and again and again. I've considered the ethics deeply for each of these paths, as that was a mistake I made before running a market stall and I feel that it's failure was in large part due to this. Below you can see my notes on how these fit within the permaculture ethics. Especially after my exploration into the exporting idea, it is very clear that considering Earth care, people care and fair shares have to be carefully considered for me to be able to put my heart into any other financial plans I come up with.
ACTION
I spent some time looking at the connections and yields from each of my potential ways to bring in money, and this has helped me to move forward with a couple of things. You can see these notes in the images below and to the right.
The Organic Playgrounds work will hopefully help me to raise the start up money for my long term goal of my clothing company project (along with hopefully securing some funding for this too). Raising money by teaching permaculture will hopefully become a bigger part of my life in the future, but I will keep it as a top-up income until I can be sure it will be reliable. For now, the non-financial benefits of teaching are great so I will be building up my skills soon as I can start. Based on this I've designed a website to advertise courses and to start raising awareness of who we are, you can find it at www.nomadicpermaculture.weebly.com We also now have a facebook page to get more attention on what we are doing and spread the word. We've both been looking into interesting links and resources and sharing them on here for others to see. There are also many more examples of positive finance alternatives on here now. You can find that at www.facebook.com/pages/Nomadic-Permaculture I've realised that crafting doesn't actually make me any money and so should be seen as a way to save money (on clothes/gifts etc) and developing ideas and my own happiness in creating, so I'm not going to continue including this in making money plans from now on. |
APPRECIATION
Now I have developed several ways to bring income into my life, and looked at how these can fit together to support each other. I think I shall leave this project at that, or I worry that it may just continue on for ever.
Life designs like this one can keep going round and round, just as life does. But I feel that concerning my relationship to money, this project has fulfilled it's needs. And for this I appreciate it hugely! You can read more about this process in the evaluation, on the next page.
Life designs like this one can keep going round and round, just as life does. But I feel that concerning my relationship to money, this project has fulfilled it's needs. And for this I appreciate it hugely! You can read more about this process in the evaluation, on the next page.