The word Communities. What do you think of?
And yes, I'm talking about those kind of Communities..

Many think the word synonymous with other words such as:
Hippies.. Drugs.. Disorganisation.. Dirt.. Anti-progress.. Cult.

While for others, it has been a dream that meant the average man could sculpt their own world. Live in harmony and balance with nature. Work alongside our fellow man, not against, but with, to achieve a higher quality life.

My lot in life has been to be so attracted by the idea and potential of Communities that I dedicated much of my young life to be on the road in search of them, only to find that while there were many attempts at Utopias, no one place truly achieved what we dream of, a huge reason for this also being because Communities each continue to try to save the world themselves, one plot of land at a time, they won't join up.

I have also discovered that the main thread connecting those who don't believe Community living can work, is that they actually don't believe in mankind, whereas many who create Communities do.



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BLOG ENTRY #1. HUMBLE BEGINNINGS: THE ORIGIN OF A DREAM

'I believe that when it comes to big ideas, the best policy is complete transparency. Transparency regarding the vision. Transparency regarding the motives behind the vision. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to trace and record the well-intentioned beginnings of what I am proposing to you now, if only to communicate it's pure wish for the lives led by every man and to safeguard my fear that this vision ever fall into the wrong hands. I would also like to clarify that the writing of this blog/record is a desperate attempt to communicate an idea shrouded in stigma and a huge leap for someone who has always struggled with self confidence regarding it. I have carried idealistic intentions and criticism regarding them for most of my life. Indeed, being outspoken as a young woman with certain types of people have actually left me paralysed with fear.


But let's start at the beginning..
The origin of what I have worked to envision and plan to create with my life began during a conversation around theMbreakfast table when I was around 11 years old and my father decided to divulge certain 'truths' about life to me upon realising I wanted to be an artist. The truths were as follows: 
Truth #1: Possessions, despite being able to bring fleeting contentment, can not ensure lasting happiness in life.
Truth #2: Realistically, despite having talents and passion for Art and Music,
I wouldn't be able to do what I loved in life as they weren't reliable sources of income. It doesn't matter how talented anyone is in this life. Bonnie, you will more likely than not fail to do anything you truly love for a living.
That was the conversation that changed my thinking.  

I couldn't do what made me happy in life as my work and what I was told to work for couldn't truly make me happy.. 
My very young, idealistic mind went a-wall with confusion and I looked at my parents and the other adults in my life to see they had made similar sacrifices when it came to what they had wanted to be and what they felt forced to do...
though really, what affected me most was my own fathers failed dreams to be an artist, a dream i desired for my own future. I thought on how hard and regretfully he had worked a thankless job for decades to provide for his young family. The truth also is, tracing back to my influences as a child, that I was raised on a lot of fantasy films.. and this wasn't done intentionally by my parents, they just entered my life like they did many other children and I simply gelled to them.. though now I'd probably say I lived IN them more than anything. Hook, Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal.. these were other worlds I grew up in and thought beautiful and I realised later in my teens, subsequently never left me. I remember feeling sadness when I saw the world just wasn't as magical, fantastical..beautiful, in my mind and I wanted to change that, I didn't choose this, it just WAS my upbringing and I wanted to live somewhere brimming with magic, nature and life.


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BLOG POST #2. A HATRED OF MONEY
As I grew into my teens, I began to harbour an immense hatred towards the concept of money, more specifically the disservices, despite the order that the existence of money had done to man, animal and earth. I began to fill out entire books with lists and questions regarding whether money was even compatible with unchanging elements of human nature and a secret dream began to form in my mind of offering free land and lives of sustainable peace to any who wanted it. Don't pay for your shelter, it's a human right. Don't work a job you hate for food to survive, it's a human right. This was where my head remained for many years and along with these ideas, though well-intentioned, came their friends emotional isolation, constant misunderstanding by those even in my own family and screaming matches with my father regarding whether mankind even can live in peace and harmony, like you wouldn't believe.

Between the age of 16 and 22 my head was a ticking time bomb, hell bent on hating what I saw was a system that wasted lives and their potential and hating money; a tool that I saw brought out the very worst in some and kept the rest of the world struggling to subsist.
To this day, the material being immaterial remains one of my biggest truths, one that has set my life trajectory and is certainly where my first intentions to live in pursuit of experiences rather than possessions was first born.

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I purchased my 1982 Toyota Coaster when I was 22 years old with an initial goal: Attain the essential, subsequently live unburdened and make life an adventure. Like many before me and certainly many to come,, The goal of monetary independence, achievable by attaining what I needed once and simply where possible, became my life plan as I sought to extract myself from a life of working to afford what I believed should be a simple stepping stones before gaining independence and freedom in life. I desired an inexpensive, simple shelter, the ability to grow my own food and supply my own clean energy and an essential wardrobe. As I grew, a thought process consumed me regarding the injustices of a system taking so much in regards to Time and Experiences from it's people and giving back so little of worth. It was then my plans to travel between and study alternative nature-balanced lifestyles and intentional communities for independent research began. It was a combination of needing to travel for my research and my intention to lay simple foundations in permanent Shelter early, that led me to the beginning of bus life. To what end was I expected to work a job that didn't fulfil me for survival? For a house too big, too expensive and far more than I required? Was I wrong to believe Shelter, Water, Food and Clothing were human rights because man's survival was dependent on them and therefore a workforce held hostage to attain base necessities was a waste of human life?  soon after which I would grow my own food, simultaneously disabling monetary reliances on both Food and Petrol.Though there's no doubt that this is one of the most frustrating catch-22's of our current time. To live unburdened by money, we first have to lay foundations with it.
BLOG ENTRY #2. Finding what I only hoped existed: The Origin of a Vision.