The way things change…

Manuela and I are beginning to be accustomed to things changing. Almost on a daily, or hour by hour basis things go from one extreme to the other. We had one property in mind for Share-it Community to begin, then that idea fails because of some unmovable ideologies of certain sellers. We already knew that the bureaucracy was bad in Italy but now with so many interested and commmitted parties involved we have to push on through the mire of buying costs and negotiations, finding enough space for the community and all the other assets we each own, and then greedy sellers. I mean, the guy had his property up for sale for over 4 years, rejected every offer ever made, some even close to the asking price, then decides the best thing is to raise the price, when we make our very reasonable offer. Un-believeable logic….

So as you may or may not know, we have been trying our hardest to collect decent and honourable folk, present them with a really great community idea and find the right balance between investment and rental methods, to include as many of these people as a property allows. For over seven months now we have visited umpteen properties, spent oodles of money on fuel and driven around about 7000km to meet people and learn about how we can create an ideal self sufficient and long term sustainable community on (almost) a shoe string. We have faced weather from every season in one day, set up and organised a face to face meeting in Umbria (which was vey well attended) and gone the extra mile for our dreams to become reality living in our Winnebago Warrior in just about every campsite and carpark from here to Timbuktu. And, finally we arrive here back in a place near Gubbio, living on the site of our dear friends house, planning the next attempt to purchase a property with so many people wanting to join, we can barely conceive of where we could home everyone. YES!!!

We really hoped to start small and grow over a few years, but as you can possibly feel the mood of the world, groaning under the weight of illness and new diseases and war in yet another neighbouring country, we are finding so many people desperate to get out of the drudgery and live in a peaceful and caring community. This is actually a good thing for our community and similar projects. What is now becoming clearer to us, is that we will have to expand the vision quite quickly, or put some people in a kind of holding area (figuratively speaking obviously) until we can find more capital investment to be able to create a second wave, or additional local property for more people. We really don’t know yet if everyone interested is fully committed, nor whether each of these people will fit together peaceably in a community, as we are so many unique individuals from so many backgrounds. In theory this is absolutely amazing as a landscape, in practice we have yet to see, but believe me when I say we are doing our level best to discern the best way forward.

We have always maintained our transparent and forward thinking visions, and will continue to do this. So what we really need right now, is some extra funds to be able to co-create a better way of living that will incorporate and utilise the wonderful skill set of each member and their dependents. Manuela and I had a very thin window of opportunity to return to Germany over the past two weeks, and as you would expect we made a lot of contacts and received so much committment from some members, whilst also visiting relatives who were poorly, and collecting some very useful furniture items for one of our newest live-in members, Tamia. To be fair it was a whirlwind tour and we returned quite exhausted, but with so much appreciation for the many people who made us welcome and treated us like royalty in their homes. So a BIG THANK YOU to each one of you.!!

Now we are back and a little better rested, we held the first of a series of zoom call meetings to share our good news with as many people in our group as is possible. The first meeting was a really great insight into what we can achieve with some persistence and patience, and the group shared some really nice conversation that we are sure will further help to bond our community to the Share-It aims. Over the next few days we hope to find opportunity to include many more potential members and interested people, so please feel free to join our telegram group and we can send you a link to be involved. Email us directly at the share.it.earth@gmail.com address and we will be happy to organise this for you. Obviously we still need more investment to realise the aims of our community, but as we have always said, we believe that things will find a way, as we are not truly interested solely in people with money, but it does currently grease the wheels of purchase, sadly. We hope this update will keep you keen to find out more, as we have a new property in mind and are near to making and offer over the next few weeks. Again we will try to get more information about this in the very next post here.

In the meantime, take good care of yourselves, laugh lots and search out ways to share more and expect less. Giving is evidently the best form of creating a happy space for the efforts of united love, in “creating abundance for others you will find that you lack very little, and will live in abundance yourself.” PW.