Our House...

Ok I know I haven't posted in a while, sorry busy with work, love, life etc. So to catch everyone up I'm living in this intentional community called Surrealestate in Bushwick Brooklyn.

When I moved in at the end of May I was living on the first floor. Though part of the house (three stories in all) 13-1 is not part of Surrealestate. Some call it Succeedestate because well they succeeded a while ago from the other two floor and the intentional community.

That floor was a disaster to live on. The first week of residing in the building I attempted to clean the most used communal bathroom which I was betting had either been deemed a space for some sick art show or a science experiment – either way it had to be detailed. Hours later it looked just as it did when I started the clean up project. No dice – too many people and not enough of them cleaning.

Other social drama made living there a lesson learned in what not to do so at the end of August I moved upstairs.

After being voted onto the island as it were, I’ve been living in a larger and much cleaner room with two windows and a loft for storage space. Brilliant. With a few exceptions. The people who lived here before had a very open door policy so my room is hang out central a lot of the time – and my windows look out onto the back porch – i.e. the ongoing party that is Surrealestate.

Other than that, the house drama has not stopped, just changed in its tempo – and somewhat important – the way people deal with it.

Classic me I jumped into this situation without knowing what I was getting into. Learn as you go seems to be something I’m still doing and not really thinking about enough. Oh well, something else to work on.

Alright so – intentional community. What intention – well if you ask me they are still figuring that out. I would say at the moment it is mostly to party. But they do work on consensus based system and not knowing what that was at first, I’m learning quickly.

Honestly, I think at this point I am more of a fan of voting than I’ve ever been. However I will say that I like how respectful people can be of others and how they make it a large point to include everyone’s view points in the decision making process.

Downside – still living with a crap load of people who don’t really like cleaning up after themselves and like drama way too much.
Upside – the people here are mostly very cool, really loving and very fun to be around. It is great living with a bunch of cool people and I do enjoy coming home…most of the time.
Growing up I always wanted to have tons of brothers and sisters running around – I guess I got my wish 

Work is good, although I don’t really have enough of it right now. I’m taking a trip to Ireland and England in September so that should be fun. It will be another first for my New Years list of firsts - Ireland and staying in a Hostel. Never been to Ireland and never stayed in a Hostel before.

Happy to say that I was also able to provide my Mother with the opportunity to go to Paris again. She left this evening and hopefully will have a great time with Mark her husband on their tour of France.

In other news I’m really, really happy in Brooklyn and living the life I’ve made for myself here. Of course I still miss my friends in other places, but I’m still able to get back to NC at least to see a lot of them which I’m consistently grateful for.

I’ll post pictures from my trip to Greece in July soon as well as my trip to Ireland and England at the end of September.

Oh and my pictures for Restaurant Guru.com are up as well.

For pics please visit www.flickr.com/lifeartfriends/

I promise to write more often as long as you all are still reading this.

Hugs to everyone!