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Mike Hoag started a couple of great threads in Transformative Adventures, giving examples of what a “stacked permaculture income” / regenerative right livelihood might look like. You can read Thread 1 here; and the follow-up Thread 2 here. The discussion also includes how to secure housing for minimal cost.

I weighed in with my thoughts, which I am copy-pasting for you here:

My “stacked income”:

On my tax forms, my occupational description for myself is “Sustainability Educator, Self-Employed.”

That has been my description since around 2008ish.

It is a convenient umbrella that encompasses a mixture of the following:

• organizing & promoting PDCs
• teaching classes (permaculture; living skills; consciousness training)
• public speaking
• consulting
• landscape labor, farm labor
• graphic design
• writing and marketing a book
• commissioned artwork
• making & selling jewelry
• a pt job i had for a couple years at a retail shop a block from me. I got to sew for money.
• house-cleaning & decluttering gigs
• Having roommates / housemates covers part of my housing overhead, and I consider it part of my “sustainable education ministry,” as low-footprint living comes with the territory of living at my place, and is how I keep the room rents modest.
• I have a blog, and just added my Cash App info to my page in case readers feel like they have gotten value and want to contribute to my “tip jar”
• I want to start marketing Mike Hoag’s book and the creative products of other fellow permies
• Other plans include: write more books (including fiction); start making custom hand-embroidery creations

HOUSING

I find that low-cost housing is essential to a low cost of living, which in turn I consider essential to my personal resilience and occupational freedom.

Back in Austin TX, I lived in an RV park where the rent was $220 when I first moved in in 2000. By 2010 when I moved out, it had gone up to 375. The various artists & blue-collar workers who lived there may sometimes have had to stretch to make rent, but all in all we were lucky to have such a cool spot for modest rent. Many of us did not have cars so that eliminated a huge expense.

When I moved to Florida, I found an adorable micro apartment for $400. Then later moved to a bigger sweet apt, 1br, for 550 but I made it into a 2br by making a roomette for myself in the living room out of bookcases, so i could get roommates to live in the real bedroom and our rent would be just 275 each. (By the way, I LOVED my cute little bookcase roomette; loved the creativity of making a cool space out of tall bookcases scrounged from curbside that were still perfectly good. And I loved hanging out there; it was cozy and full of life and I always knew where pretty much all my stuff was. I even fit little knicknacks and tiny artworks on the shelves along with my books.)

Over the years in my neighborhood, low-priced apartments have become pretty much extinct. A cheap apartment now is like 750. Most are more like 1100 or 1200!! The few remaining apartments for 600 are never empty, and constantly have people asking if there are spaces available.

In 2017, my Mom died (my Dad had died 7 years before), and my siblings and I inherited money. I used my money to buy a house mortgage-free, so the expenses are just taxes and utilities and insurance. I rent out the 2 big bedrooms to help cover those overhead expenses. And I turned the tiny dining room into an emergency space for friends to stay if they need it. (The livingroom doubles as the default guest room.)

Ultimately I feel like I would love to find 2-3 longterm deeply compatible folks to become co-OWNERs of this darling house. This would include us all being portable & adaptable enough to migrate elsewhere as a pod if climate or other conditions made leaving this place necessary or desirable.

Regardless, my goal is always to build community, reduce social isolation, help my space-mates on their own paths to financial stability and right livelihood; creative/occupational freedom.

My bedroom/studio/office, a 6-1/2 by 7-foot micro cube of a room, was previously the utility room. I prefer to wash clothes by hand in a pot of rainwater and line-dry them, rather than use big clunky machines which burn too much fossil fuel and can break down. So the itty bitty former utility room is now freed up to serve as my creative zone & bedroom.

Housing is a huge area of my permaculture activism. I am always working for expansion of lower-end housing options (adding back in SROs, Mom & Pop urban RV parks, tiny house villages, bungalow courts, micro apartments). If I had not inherited money I would still be housing-precarious as a renter in a tight market. I will never forget that experience which sometimes included skipping a meal or three to make rent. (Or, I would have moved to some old industrial town and tried to go in with 2-3 people to buy a place for 20 or 30k — many are available, or at least many were available as recently as 2 years ago. But, I felt called to serve here in my Florida adopted hometown, and am happy to have been able to work things out thus far.)

I will never lose my passion for small low-end housing. My days living in that little RV park were very happy, and I am committed to helping to create more environments of a similar kind, not only to help people economically but also in terms of social cohesion.

I have become convinced that extreme income inequality is a huge source of ecological damage and social injustice on the planet. My aspiration is to only make as much money as I need. Right now that is about 13k/year. (At times over the past years I made as little as 7k before taxes. Most of it went to rent.)

Finally – like many fellow artists and permies, I have been burdened by limiting beliefs about how much money I “deserve” to be paid for my hard work. A couple years back I realized on a deep level how little I thought I deserved. I even believed deep down that I was self-indulgent for being so stubborn about insisting on pursuing my deepest calling and “not getting a real job.” But, I have worked through those beliefs and am forging a path that meets my ethical standards AND allows me to meet my basic material needs as opposed to (for example) skimping on healthy food.

I want to encourage people to pursue what lights them up and helps ecosystems and fellow beings. You can do it!!!!

The people with the least to lose from the disruption of the status quo have the most power to change things. And the most to gain from such change.

The people who have the most to lose from a change in the status quo, and the most to gain from keeping things just as they are, not only can’t be expected to be a force for meaningful change, but can be expected to put up a huge roadblock against such change.

Which is why we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for governments and corporations to change things.

Many climate activists are asking if we need to escalate our action to include actual destruction of property and disruption of business as usual. Right now, some activists in Australia are blocking coal-bearing trains from reaching the world’s largest coal terminal.

Some sources (coal terminals operator) say the disruption has been minor; others say it has wiped millions of dollars from Australia’s economy in days.

Regardless, the activists face 25 years in prison. While I applaud their courage and commitment, I would hate to see a bunch of young people get sent to prison while business just keeps up as usual.

One of my heroes, Mahatma Gandhi, emboldened the everyday Indian people to shake off British colonial rule and become self-reliant. He encouraged people to make their own salt (an illegal action against the colonial monopoly) and weave their own loincloths. This was part of a larger movement to boycott all British goods.

We might have to resort to civil disobedience to stop the destruction of the biosphere. But if you’re not quite ready to risk your life or submit to a prison sentence, that’s OK. In our consumerist colonizer society, just refusing to buy stuff is tantamount to blockading a port or dismantling machinery — without legal penalties.

In modern-day consumerist colonizer society, one method of disobedience available to just about everyone is to disobey the twisted consumerist culture norms. Simply stop buying as much stuff as possible from large distant destructive entities. The power of this non-buying is often overlooked.

Disrupting a coal shipment is powerful for sure. But ultimately the producers will find a way to get it to market, to the consumers who are demanding it.

What would be really powerful is if that coal got to market and found no buyers! Don’t think it can’t happen. We can’t all boycott everything, but we can boycott enough to put a big dent in business as usual. We have the least to lose, and the most to gain.

Really our best hope is to address the demand side. I see it as analogous to the war on drugs.

P.S. A few days after I wrote this post, someone shared the following quote in a discussion about our excessively busy and money-focused culture:

“In modern times the ultimate act of civil disobedience is being content with little.” — Einzelganger

Further Reading:

• “The case for a more radical climate movement: Author Andreas Malm on the failures of climate activism and the need for escalation” (Sean Illing, vox.com).

• Thread on Gandhi and civil disobedience started by Mike Hoag in the Transformative Adventures group.

• “Gandhi’s manner of dress and commitment to hand spinning were essential elements of his philosophy and politics. He chose the traditional loincloth as a rejection of Western culture and a symbolic identification with the poor of India. His personal choice became a powerful political gesture as he urged his more privileged followers to copy his example and discard — or even burn — their European-style clothing and return with pride to their ancient, precolonial culture. Gandhi claimed that spinning thread in the traditional manner also had material advantages, as it would create the basis for economic independence and the possibility of survival for India’s impoverished rural multitudes. This commitment to traditional cloth making was also part of a larger swadeshi movement, which aimed for the boycott of all British goods. As Gandhi explained to Charlie Chaplin in 1931, the return to spinning did not mean a rejection of all modern technology but of the exploitive and controlling economic and political system in which textile manufacture had become entangled. Gandhi said, ‘Machinery in the past has made us dependent on England, and the only way we can rid ourselves of the dependence is to boycott all goods made by machinery. This is why we have made it the patriotic duty of every Indian to spin his own cotton and weave his own cloth.’ The image of the emaciated, almost naked, and obviously nonviolent Gandhi hard at work at his spinning wheel had an electric effect on millions in India and across the world. He was hailed as the father of Indian independence, and starting in 1931, his traditional spinning wheel became the primary symbol on the flag of the Provisional Government of Free India.” (“Spinning for India’s Independence“; Theodore M. Brown, PhD, and Elizabeth Fee, PhD, in American Journal of Public Health.)

• Einzelganger’s website: “The author behind the pseudonym Einzelgänger is a lover of wisdom in the widest sense of the word. He has been studying Stoicism, Buddhism, and Taoism since 2013. His interest in the meaning of life led to him obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Social Studies and a master’s degree in Religious & Ritual Studies. He approaches this project mainly from the viewpoint of a scholar (or just out of curiosity and willingness to study), exploring a wide range of different topics and presenting them to you through his own lens.”

When I was a kid taking swim lessons, the instructors taught us to use the backstroke or sidestroke as a “resting stroke.” A way to take a break from the more strenuous swimming stroke, which was usually the crawl.

In parts of my daily routine, I find there are natural “resting strokes” as well. I’m learning that the menial little chores I used to find annoying or tedious (such as taking out the trash, tidying up the contents of my canvas carry-all sack, putting air into my bicycle tires, reattaching a fence-board that’s become detached because the old screws rusted out) are actually a deep refuge. A “resting stroke” from the more challenging items I’ve chosen to take on my To-Do list; the things I consider my actual work. Preparing for a radio show; putting together a lecture for a permaculture design class; composing an email to suggest ways for my city to reduce its carbon footprint or mitigate heat; making a plan to speak at a meeting; writing a blog post; writing fiction — that sort of thing. Tasks that force me to stare down the abyss, confront self-doubt, sit in the discomfort of the unknown.

The fact that these menial little tasks like finding more cover-matter for the compost pile have to get done is like a mandatory break from the hard stuff. The hard stuff is ultimately my heart and soul, and I would never want to shirk it. But the itty-bitty tasks I have really come to appreciate as a sweet place to get centered, recharge, unhook from mind-exertion.

Of course, Buddhism and other religions have always counseled humans to be mindful in the present moment. I love the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chödrön, to name a couple of spiritual thinkers whose writings have helped me more fully appreciate the here and now.

But this “resting stroke” realization I had recently is like a whole new level of appreciating the present moment. I think I’ll keep it!

Instead of a call to arms … A call to arts!

“What is called for here is a special kind of love for the world, the love of those who discover the sublime value of life because they are about to lose it. For we are on the verge of losing this most precious and beautiful of worlds, a miracle in all the universe, a home for the evolution of souls, a little paradise here in the richness of space, where we are meant to live and grow and be happy, but which we are day by day turning into a barren stone in space.

“So a new existentialism is called for. Not the existentialism of Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, negative and stoical in spirit, but a brave and visionary existentialism, where as artists we dedicate our lives to nothing short of re-dreaming society. We have to be strong dreamers. We have to ask unthinkable questions. We have to go right to the roots of what makes us such a devouring species, overly competitive, conquest-driven, hierarchical.”

(From an article by Ben Okri, “Artists must confront the climate crisis — we must write as if these are the last days”; in The Guardian.)

On a personal note, I am taking an online class in architectural drawing; thinking it might help me draw super green vegetation-covered apartment buildings and urban streetscapes of my imaginings.

Frugality is power. Growing at least some of our own food; doubling-up to reduce housing costs; avoiding car ownership or at least minimizing driving; minimizing household energy use; getting clothes and furniture from thrift stores or curbside. I always knew this but learned it on a deeper level when I went through years of living on 7k-10k a year, self-employment income, before taxes.

I am also at the same time working to change the rigged system that is trashing the planet and creating untold human suffering. But as long as the system is as it is, frugality is one of the best ways for a person, household, and community to get out from under the thumb of parasitic and usurious entities. And take control of their lives and livelihoods!

It’s also how to dismantle the corporations that profit by trashing ecosystems and indigenous economies. Not to glamorize poverty — I would like for everyone to have their basic needs met without having to struggle. But, if you have to pinch pennies, don’t think of it as deprivation; think of it as mastering valuable resilience skills, and squeezing the profit margins of corporations that are draining the life from your community.

Christmas is coming. For many people who are trying to practice de-growth and disengage from the consumer treadmill (and free themselves from having their houses and garages jampacked to the rafters with unused stuff), gift-giving holidays can bring anxiety.

For those whose families are big into gift-giving, a short note might help. Or it might not! But if you feel strongly about this, you could try writing a short note. I wrote this as a possible example after someone in one of my groups was looking for guidance on how to convey to her relatives that she and her husband don’t want holiday gifts:

Dear Family: Christmas time is approaching. For many reasons, we are no longer celebrating the gift-giving aspect of Christmas. For those of you living nearby, we hope we will get to spend time together with you, simply enjoying each other’s company. We’d love to have you over for coffee, drinks or a meal. We could play some cards, play board games, tell stories, or do a puzzle together. For those more geographically distant, let’s enjoy each other’s company in a similar manner by Zoom.

(Some people may still end up giving you stuff — but you have made your wishes clear. Just quietly give the items away, and take joy in knowing that someone who really needs them will use and appreciate them.)

Have you succeeded in conveying to family or friends that you don’t want material gifts? Have you been able to do it without hurting your loved ones’ feelings? And do they abide by your wishes? If so, please help others who are on the same path by sharing what you said/did that worked!

Some people in the rich industrialized world have gotten way too comfortable with the idea that we can’t possibly cut consumption enough to live on renewables. Do you consider nuclear to be an acceptable option? I do not.