Manifestations Unfolding

The plan is moving along

Lots of great updates. This is all really going to happen. I put “The Plan” out there as a manifesting tool, and the right energies and experiences are rolling in.

The Plan

There’s a lot going on, and I don’t imagine each section will resonate with each subscriber. Feel free to skim to the sections you’re interested in.

Personal Updates

I’ve been using the last few weeks of the kids being in public school to crank out some contracting work so we can get our van repairs paid off. We’d really like to be able to go places as a family again. Our Leaf (tiny all-electric 5-seater) has been a steady provider for our basic need for transportation in a sprawling suburbia, and we are very grateful for that. But getting everyone (there are 6 of us) to family functions or community events requires tricky coordination, and we can’t even consider going anywhere outside of the 40-mile range. We can’t even get everyone out to the Domestead right now.

We’re making consistent progress on slimming down our material possessions. Enough so that the boys are now sharing a room, Iris has moved into what was a “craft room” — and we are now sharing our rental space with a lovely couple in our community that needed a place to get on their feet. They have moved into the space where Ewan and Iris were. It has been a refreshing taste of co-living, making me look forward to village life even more.

I finally got my driver’s license changed from WA to MO, so I can start a non-profit organization and start expanding this project outside of myself. If you’re interested in being a part of the board, or helping this vision come to life, let me know!

I don’t seem to have the focus to just do contract work though, so I’ve also been sneaking in research and networking on the Regenerative Community building front.

Regenerative Community Building

I finally joined the Living the OffGrid Dream network via their Spring Mega Bundle. The resources and network they’ve put together is undoubtedly worth what they’re asking for. A lot of their work is to help projects like what we’re doing work within the existing systems (investors, building codes, legal contracts, etc). And that’s something I’m awful at, since I’m imagining a completely different system. But we’re living in a transition period, so I’m sure we’ll end up needing that kind of guidance as we navigate the in-between. Their network is also awesome, full of like-minded people doing good work to build healing projects in the real world. I’ve already met with one such person who is also interested in the OpenSource model.

My wife and I are making it a goal to attend the Gathering of Tribes for our anniversary trip. More details on that awesomeness from Nicole at Terrenity:

Pop-Up Village Tech & Design Camp at Gathering of Tribes

I met with Samuel Delesque to learn more about Traditional Dream Factory and Closer.Earth. TDF sounds like an awesome place where they’re putting the Closer platform to work. I will be meeting up with them again to explore how I can contribute to the software behind Closer, and eventually try it out in our communities.

I stumbled upon the concept of Time Banking — and it is really growing on me. I have been exploring all sorts of alternative economies, and I like the idea that everyone’s time is valued the same. It always bothered me that I was able to make $180k/year as a software engineer while people are doing back-breaking and soul-crushing work for minimum wage. It doesn’t cover all aspects of an economy, as you still have to figure out how to translate time to material goods. But for a service economy, and a driver to get work done, it looks like a pretty cool option. Ideally, we’d just go to a “you today, me tomorrow” economy and not need the “bank” to regulate the transactions. But people keep telling me that’s too naive and requires too much trust. We’ll see.

OpenSource Projects

I have continued to research the platform for OpenEcoBuilder. I was introduced to Relm — which has a lot of interesting overlap with what I want to build. I don’t think I will end up forking that project though, as it uses three.js with a custom animation engine instead of the newer babylon.js. At the very least, it proves that what I am building towards is absolutely possible, and will be a good reference point when we want to add the real-time collaborative layer.

I’ve been learning more about BioRegionalism and what it means to be a BioRegion. The big thing I’ve come to realize is that BioRegions are not simply a group of EcoRegions. To truly be a BioRegion, it requires a significant group within that region to agree to live BioRegionally together (like Cascadia and the Ozarks). So while we should use EcoRegions to help us design our BioRegions, we should not let a centralized entity tell us what all of the BioRegions are. To that end, I have some updates to the BioRegionalAPIs that I want to make soon. In summary — OpenSourcing the definition of our BioRegions.

I am toying with the idea of a “Regenerative Software CoOperative.” A community to match the people like me, who have skills and experience building software but are done with the corporate world — with visionholders of regenerative software projects. It would have a big emphasis on OpenSource, cross-pollination, and radical collaboration. As usual, the part I’m struggling with is the energy compensation model. I want the engineers to be compensated for their work, but most of these Regenerative projects don’t have much funds. Grants, crowd-funding, yet-another “promise” token? Anyway, here’s the logo for “RegenSoft CoOperative.” Ideas and connections welcome.

CoOperative Game Mods

Our family really enjoys playing board games. I have recently been enjoying taking the competitive games and tweaking the rules to be co-operative. It dramatically shifts the energy of the experience to be more positive. Not just our interpersonal interactions, but the actual result/output/production of the game.

For example, we took Dastardly Dirigibles and created “Blissful Blimps.” In the original, you compete to take over a Dirigible factory. It results in patchwork and incomplete airships and animosity between the participants. With Blissful Blimps, we share the factory and are able to create perfect airships within a positive social environment.

It has been a fantastic teaching tool for our children, drawing parallels with our current greed/extortion/competition driven society and the co-operative society we are building towards.

I’m considering making an itch.io profile to share those mods for others to use.

Jessica Moore

has expressed interest, and if I can get enough interest/support, I’ll carve out the time to make it happen.

Gratitude

Many thanks for everyone who has decided to follow along with our journey. It has been incredibly affirming to have interest from total strangers all over the world.

Special thanks to our one-and-only paid Substack subscriber, Sky! Your willingness to support our project, even though everything is open source and I have no “product” to sell you — is very encouraging. Thank you!

If everyone who is currently subscribed was able to do the same $5/mo that Sky has so generously gifted, I would be able to cut out 17 hours of contract work per month, and channel that time into Regenerative projects.

That being said, I am incredibly grateful for the skills I have, and am blessed to be in a position where I can start to transmute the energy I get from doing consulting work out of the C@pItali$t Game, and into the Regenerative Game.

Someone I was on a video call with recently mentioned that the Revolution will be built as a hobby. And that makes sense, as those at the top of our current game really don’t want our new game to be built. The question then, is how much of the Revolution do we need to build before it starts supporting itself and that transmutation is no longer necessary? I’m hoping it will be soon, because I am itching to stop contract work and dive in on all of the awesome Regenerative software projects I’ve networked with.

It is so exciting to see things starting to come together. We’re still on track to be moving out to the Domestead this summer. And with all the energy around village building, I am starting to wonder if that will happen even sooner than I had been dreaming.

If you’d like to live in one of the BioHarmonic OpenSource Regenerative Communities, let us know!

OpenSource EcoVillages

Ozarks BioRegional EcoCenter

BioHarmony EcoVillages