Author: jennynazak

“The Life Cycle

“Each stage we go through has its time of fulfillment and recession, as do all living things. …

“When we can appreciate the full beauty of each stage of the cycle of life, from bud to blossom to disintegration, we feel more at home with our own earthly process. We can be inspired not to hold back the fullness of what we have to offer, knowing that our time to give of ourselves in this way will come to pass. At the same time, we can honor others, and the little processes that go on within the larger process of living our lives. …

“Every moment of every stage has its own particular beauty, and we can appreciate that, even as most of us tend to love the spectacular moment of full blossoming most of all. When we feel the wisdom contained in the budding, blossoming, and dissolution of a simple flower, we begin to feel it everywhere, in each moment that comes and goes, in each sunrise and sunset, in every hello and goodbye, as the very essence of the pulsating ebb and flow of existence.”

(Quoted from a beautiful piece via the DailyOM. To read this essay in its entirety, and to sign up for the email newsletter which brings Madisyn Taylor’s writings and other great stuff to your inbox on a steady basis, visit https://www.dailyom.com )

Someone on NextDoor awhile back was lamenting her high electric bill, so I replied with this comment, about how my bill stays around $11. (I also talk in more detail about this topic in my book and elsewhere on this blog. The following are just the main low-hanging fruit I’ve identified in my household electricity usage.)

My main thing making a difference is probably that I do not use air conditioning or heat. (I can’t handle artificial cold air or closed windows in warm weather; it feels unpleasant to me. And winters are mild enough here that I don’t need heat either – I’m just good at dressing in layers.)

I also use a clothesline rather than a clothes dryer. (I like the results better — sun-dried laundry smells very fresh etc. — and it is easier on my clothes as well as my wallet.)

And I rarely use hot water. (But even at times with a bunch of people in my house and the water heater in use daily, the bill was only still about $25 or $30, so I think it must be the fact that I don’t use a/c, heat, or clothes-dryer that are making the biggest difference.)

Any more questions ask away, I always love helping people save money and resources!!

I also commented that, for me, $100 or $200 a month (which is what many people pay for electricity) is a lot of books and online classes, as well as opportunities to support local food.

“The Hindu Vedas described four fundamental strategies for conducting your life.

“1. Toward happy circumstances, develop the attitude of friendliness. When you see happy people, introduce yourself and support them.

“2. Toward unhappy circumstances, develop the attitude of help and mercy. When someone is experiencing sadness, show kindness and compassion.

“3. Toward the good fortune of others, develop the attitude of gladness. When someone succeeds, admire him or her with sincere congratulations.

“4. Toward evil, develop an attitude of non-attachment. Meaning, do not return bad intentions with bad intentions. You may have to adopt a guardian heart to stop evildoers, but you never do it out of revenge.”

— Harry Palmer (from The Avatar® Path 2: Private Lessons, Chapter 7, Life Strategies, Lesson 59) (I highly recommend this book and all of Harry’s writings and video talks.)

The story of how my little 130k house turned into a million-dollar mansion started a couple months back, when I commented on a Facebook ad-post from some real-estate-related company. The post said, “See what we’d pay for your home if we made an offer tomorrow!”

I commented:

“My paid-for house near the beach is ‘officially’ worth 130k, but it’s a million-dollar palace to me!! Walking to the beach anytime, and living in a city I love: Priceless!!! #DaytonaProud — That said, if you want to pay me a million, I’ll take it, sleep in a van, and invest the money in helping my community.”

Fast-forward to nine weeks later (Facebook time stamps are handy!): Yesterday, an acquaintance of mine who happens to be a Realtor commented, “Jenny Nazak please call me if you are thinking of selling or want a value.”

To which I replied: “Like I said above. I mean that. 1 mil. There’s no way you or anyone would pay that for my little place. But my price to sell it is a mil, firm. I don’t care what any expert thinks the value is. <heart emoji>”

She replied, “Good motto. You wont believe how much houses are selling right now over asking.”

For sure, it is a seller’s market these days, here as in many other places outside the major metropolises. But 900k over the assessed value would be quite a stretch!

After making that comment yesterday, I got to thinking. Would I in fact be willing to let go of my house for a million dollars? And I started to feel not so sure I would!

For one thing, where would I live? Yes I said I’d live in a van and give the money to help my community. But I have realized that most of what my community needs isn’t money; it’s a sense of purpose and pride, and collective caring. There’s a nice little 4-unit apartment building for sale the next neighborhood over for 500k, and I can just about guarantee you that if I were to buy it and offer to hand it outright to someone who would agree to run it and find good tenants, I wouldn’t get any takers, at least not any serious or capable ones.

This is not a criticism of my community or the people in it. It’s just an example of how, if people don’t want to live in a place, money probably won’t be enough to keep them there. My offer would likely attract either layabouts who’d become a nuisance to the neighbors, or some absentee landlord who wouldn’t add much to the community.

OK then, what if I gave out 50k each to 20 people aspiring to start small businesses in the area; that’d surely make a difference in the community. And I could do that. However, even in my extremely limited experience with being a source of “patient capital,” I have learned that money can dissipate easily, with nothing good to show for it. I wouldn’t be so much concerned about getting a financial return, as I would be about making my money count in terms of creating enduring value in my community and the world. Still, even so, I’ve learned that handing out money is often not the answer.

What I would have zero desire to do is hoard that million. Just like I have no desire to hoard a hundred thousand.

And it also struck me that my house could easily allow me to generate a million dollars for my community (as well as build intergenerational wealth for my family), by me living here and attracting creative likeminded people to live here (which I am in the process of doing) and engage in activism and micro-enterprise.

It also occurred to me that if I live in a van, not only would I become dependent on others for a parking space; but also, I would not be in any position to offer anyone a financially secure place to live. With my house, I am very much in that position.

Of course, with a million, I could give 40 people 20k each toward purchasing a house or commercial building. Or give four people 200k each for same. That’s still leave me 200k to buy a house for myself.

Which led to the thought … But where? There is literally no other house I would rather live in than this one, where I have spent the past three years working hard to build soil and community. (And for four years before an inheritance enabled me to purchase this house, I was working hard to build soil and community as a tenant in the four-plex across the street.)

Even with the heated-up real-estate market, I could probably still find another house right here in my same neighborhood for 200k. But I doubt it’d be as well-made as this one I lucked into, and so nicely situated on a corner lot which makes it so ideally suited to my mission of creating a hybrid private/collective space. And with a freestanding garage that is currently basically a crafting shed but could easily transition to an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) or ACU (Accessory Commercial Unit) as those categories move into wider acceptance, which I think they are bound to do over time, with demographic shifts in society.

There may one day come a time when somethings or someones in my community would warrant my selling my house for a million dollars and living in a van. And I would be able to do it! My work tools, sentimental items, and other essential possessions are set up in my house to be able to be packed into a van in 2 hours or less. Some people have a bug-out bag; I do too, after a fashion, but I also have a bug-out room. I am actually a big fan of RV life, have done it before and may well do it again in the future, either out of choice or out of necessity (for example, climate-induced migration).

It is also possible that my highly well-situated beachside neighborhood will undergo incremental development, such that the natural direction of things is for single-family residences to make way for mini apartment buildings or even larger complexes. Given the pace of climate change, I don’t necessarily expect such investment push to reach my neighborhood, but it could, and I am prepared to cede my property for the greater good. I can imagine being offered 400k or maybe even 500k in such a scenario. Bizarrely, I noticed that I would be happier receiving that 400-500k, and having my place move up to a higher use, than selling my place right now to someone who’d be just a single-family homeowner like me. Even if it meant getting a million dollars right now!

Is that strange or what? What can I say; humans are funny. Behavioral economics is a fascinating subject by the way. And experts in that field might be able to offer some rational explanation for my seemingly irrational train-of-thought!

All of this is becoming quite the rambling post, for just a casual Facebook thread about house-scoopers! The topic turned out to be deep though. My main takeaways are:

1) Money is not always what it seems. Sometimes tangible things are worth a lot more to people and communities than makes sense on paper.

2) Even an activist like me, who has tended to take a form of “vow of poverty” approach to her finances, is allowed to live in a house without feeling guilty. (I’m working on that part. For sure, this house is not for one person. I strongly feel it’s meant for at least three permanent residents and a constant parade of guests.)

And

3) Weirdly, it can be very hard to find beneficial and sound places to park money. So hard, in fact, that I don’t necessarily want to have to deal with a million dollars.

One exception: If someone really did come to me with a million-dollar offer, I would definitely check with my siblings to see if they could use it. Helping my family if they needed it would be well worth living in a van for. They probably wouldn’t have need for it, though, so I’m pretty sure I know what their answer would be.

And so you have it. The story of how my sweet little 130k, mortgage-free, rock-solid block house by the ocean turned into a million-dollar mansion!

If this post sparks any thoughts about the values you assign to things in your life, I’d love to hear your thoughts! If someone offered you a million dollars for a thing you value greatly, would you take it? And if so, what would you do with the million?

• “How the Japanese art of kintsugi can help you deal with stressful situations” (Tiffany Ayuda; nbcnews.com). “Many of us break a bowl or vase and think: garbage. But the Japanese art encourages us to the see potential for beauty in reconstructing the broken pieces. … Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Every break is unique and instead of repairing an item like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the ‘scars’ as a part of the design.”

• “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” — Marilyn Monroe (possibly misattributed?); goodreads.com

• “The Goddess of Never Not Broken” (Julie JC Peters; scienceandnonduality.com). “‘Ishvari’ in Sanskrit means ‘goddess’ or ‘female power,’ and the ‘Akhilanda’ means essentially ‘never not broken.’ In other words, The Always Broken Goddess. Sanskrit is a tricky and amazing language, and I love that the double negative here means that she is broken right down to her name. But this isn’t the kind of broken that indicates weakness and terror. It’s the kind of broken that tears apart all the stuff that gets us stuck in toxic routines, repeating the same relationships and habits over and over, rather than diving into the scary process of trying something new and unfathomable. Akhilanda derives her power from being broken: in flux, pulling herself apart, living in different, constant selves at the same time, from never becoming a whole that has limitations.”

• “Our physical selves, our limitations can help us find meaning” (Ray Waddle, guest columnist, Nashville Tennessean; in Daytona Beach News-Journal). “Death and decay insult the human spirit. They also contradict the latest predictions that humans will eventually halt cellular aging and find a kind of immortality through a succession of organ transplants. Or at least some people will, those rich enough to afford a fresh pack of viscera now and again. Similar dreams of death defiance seem to animate the new endeavors of privatized space flight, the urge to escape the poisoned earth and head for the great interstellar beyond. Escape this planetary predicament. Escape ourselves. The universe apparently isn’t impressed. The laws of life and death, order and entropy, remain noticeably in place. Is God the creator of all this? If so, then God created mortal bodies too. Maybe to do God’s work on earth. Maybe to keep us seriously engaged, keep us in the game — this enterprise of living abundantly. The life of friendship, music, food, compassion, praise and prayer is more urgent when the clock is ticking.”

• “Instead of hiding rips and tears, the visible mending movement turns them into art” (Meghan Racklin; vox.com). “Born from the Japanese art of sashiko, visible mending enables crafters to eschew fast fashion and make mistakes beautiful. When Jessica Marquez’s boyfriend ripped his favorite jean jacket, he asked if she could fix it. Marquez, a “visible mending” maker, teacher, and author, began researching hand-embroidery techniques she could use to fix the rip. She came upon sashiko, a Japanese mending technique involving a running stitch and geometric patterns. As she practiced, she realized that she wanted to start using the same technique on her own clothes. A favorite pair of jeans now has four mends, each rip patched up with darker denim and beautiful square fields of bright white cross-stitching. … In this way, visible mending is the antidote to fast fashion. Instead of seeing clothes as disposable, visible mending values sustainability and suggests a different way of relating to our clothes.”

Someone is a local citizens’ group on FB just now was trotting out that old widespread fallacy, about how we have to “find balance” between “the environment” and “the economy.”

Sorry if I sound impatient here, but I am!

This is a sad and deadly false dichotomy. A popular fallacy, among both officialdom and everyday citizens, is to pit “the economy” and “nature/environment” against one another. When in fact, not only can they go hand in hand — they MUST go hand in hand.

For any city or region, continuing down this road will ultimately trash your local natural beauty and ecosystem health (if it hasn’t already). And will harm wildlife, ultimately leading to mass die-offs of your local beloved animals and plants (if it hasn’t already, as with the mass die-offs of our beloved manatees here in Florida). And it will trash the health, both physical and mental, of local humans too (if it hasn’t already).

And in the long run, on a macro level this deadly and selfish dichotomy is what will lead to the extinction of the human race if we continue down this path.

It is not a choice between two “extremes.”
One prime example of the overlap between environment and economy is agriculture; we need to support our local farmers, local agriculture industries. And we can’t have local food resilience if we’re paving over most of the land, and spraying the rest with lawn chemicals and other poisons.

And regarding the challenge faced by elected officials and other leaders who must balance the various demands of their constituents … When it comes to ecosystems and carrying capacity, and having respect for our nonhuman brothers and sisters (or even having respect for all of our fellow humans), we passed “balance” many long miles ago. If I’m a city or county official, and some of my noisiest constituents are calling for things that keep my local region on a self-destructive course (in terms of nature AND ultimately in terms of the economy also), then it is my job as a leader to stand up for what’s right, even if it means temporarily enduring some disapproval from people who don’t have the collective wellbeing in mind.

Oh, and by the way, regarding willingness to deploy financial resources: If in our human shortsightedness we somehow cannot “come up with the funding” to address environmental urgencies, Mother Nature will be more than happy to take care of that for us. And then we’ll see what REAL expensive is.

My approach to eco-activism is to try to get people to see their self-interest in conserving resources and protecting ecosystems, via their daily household habits.

I’ve often heard it said that it’s easier to motivate people to change their behavior than it is to motivate them to change their attitudes or beliefs. What have you noticed about this? It does, for example, seem to be pretty easy to get people to recycle when there’s actually a bin for that. Same with composting.

In some countries, such as Japan and England, it’s just naturally easier to lead a low-footprint life than it is here in the USA, because of how things are set up. Streets; living spaces; public transport. You can be green without thinking about it. Imagine if supermarkets just didn’t give out plastic bags! We’d all instantly have a lower footprint by default.

Besides our everyday physical surroundings, another force that can prompt green choices is if we get people to 1) see their self-interest in doing something (or refraining from doing something), and 2) make a pledge to do (or refrain from doing) that thing.

According to a talk by Erik Thulin, “Saving Nature with Behavioral Science,” local fisher folk were motivated to self-limit their take to sustainable levels, once 1) they were guided to see their self-interest in limiting their take; and 2) they took a public pledge to limit their take.

Further Exploration:

• Saving Nature with Behavioral Science (TEDx Cambridge Salon talk by Erik Thulin on YouTube).