In our blog and actually on our whole website we are talking about community all the time. Fair enough, as it is THE puzzle tile you need for, well, pretty much everything. You can create the most beautiful coworking space in your town, having the coolest kid of street artist and most renowned interior designer creating your badass space. Yet, if you don’t have any community filling it with life your project is pretty much nothing worth. I wrote about this more in detail in this article.
One might argue that the more we miss something the more we bounce around it in one way or another. If you are desperately looking for a partner, you might find yourself more often than you might want to admit on an app for singles. If money is constantly scarce in your life you probably dedicate more on whatever money mindset online course rather than going on an investors pitch event to check out opportunities to smartly invest. And if you are struggling with overweight chances are you look out for the latest trends on how to finally get rid of the extra pounds for good.
My point is: the same can be valid for whatever community that you might be missing on. Your tribe of like-minded people. Some people dedicate a tremendous amount of time to actually find it trying a lot of different things and places. And well, we talk about being location independent where social isolation is one of the most severe issues in fact.1
The more we miss something the more we actually dwell on it.
Change of scenery: during the first upcoming of Corona (Covid-19) in the first half of 2020 I got kind of stuck on Bali. Well let’s say I didn’t really make a big effort to leave the island the moment the Indonesian government handed out an emergency visa for all foreigners which was valid until further notice. My flight to Thailand got cancelled anyway and I took it as a sign from above that this island wanted to reveal some more of its secrets.
When my time was almost over and I was looking out for a place to stay for my last days I got a message from Travor who is managing The Nyx community place a bit outside of the town Ubud where I was staying at.
The photos looked stunning. A humongous mansion on several levels directly at a creek. With a coworking space, artist space, music studio, common kitchen area, pool…..
WOW!! ALMOST TOO GOOD TO BE.
A PERFECT MATCH?
Well that is something we tend to not want to believe so easily. Life disappoints us too often so that from a certain age on we don’t fall for our illusions and perfect world fantasies anymore. Life is tough, and there is no free lunch. Paradise doesn’t exist anywhere.
And that’s exactly how my mind was working:
“Ah come on, this is too expensive.”
“Don’t get fooled by pictures. They are what they are: pictures. And of course you present the best of the best and not whatever mediocre ones, so heads up!”
“Probably a bunch of hippies or vegan fascists around there, something you should always assume when there is such a thing being announced to you”
“Hey, it’s not worth it for my last days, I might even like it and want to stay longer and then….”
AND THEN WHAT?
Yeah what if I was actually afraid of really liking it, leave alone falling in love with it? You might or might not know the phenomenon of meeting someone great right before you are about to leave a place behind for good.
Okay, I looked at the pricing again and made the math…well, it was actually a pretty reasonable price for my personal means. And well, it was a 10 minutes ride out of town to check out the place and to get a personal impression. What would be the worst thing that could happen?
What if you actually really like it or actually fall in love with it?
So I went out, saw the place – and decided to stay. I had some last wonderful days in that place, met beautiful people there and the spirit was absolutely easy-going and liberal. And yes, I made connections, met more people and learnt about things happening around I would have never known about myself hanging out in a random guesthouse – just like I did before for all the while.
And though it had been such a short time that most of the people will probably forget about me a few weeks after in the best case, it had a lasting impression on me. Writing and spouting off about community, co-creating, co-living and co-#chooseyourself is one thing.
Another thing is to be in the midst of it and to really feel it. I know, it’s been only a couple of days, I hear you.
But I want to come back to my main point. The fear of community. Or maybe the more general fear of one of your most ardent desires turning into reality. Like having that date with that gorgeous person you can’t quite believe that s/he would even bother about you.
Now in my case it was kind of easy. As I said, ten minutes of a scooter ride to check out what I would get myself into. But what do you do if that very place is hours away by flying? Like in the case of our Economadia Coworking Farm project back in 2017 in Portugal, we had people coming over from Canada for instance to spend a month with us in the Portuguese countryside. Well, what if for some reason they would have encountered a fuck-up cult-like hippie place?
Well they didn’t of course; instead they had an amazingly awesome time, needless to say 🙂
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
– George Bernard Shaw
So whenever you are thinking about to get to a rural coworking and coliving such those here or any other occasion where you feel insecure of what to find, you might go through the same stream of thoughts as I had it.
Sure, you should do your homework before hitting the sign up button only to realize that there are some nasty reviews on Facebook that you haven’t checked out. Don’t be shy to ask for a video call with someone to get a better picture – and if said place actually really exists. You know, pictures are pictures. Informing yourself about the payment procedure is not a bad idea either.
Well, the rest then is what we call the adventure of life. Enjoy it!
Read more articles Listen to our podcast Go back to main page
1 Check out The 2020 State of Remote Work here: https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2020