Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: move-in question re-phrased...

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

As you move the group dynamic may change considerably. its one thing to have
a bunch of meeting, its another to actually LIVE with people. You will have
a whole different set of LIVING issues that are way different than
construction, planning issues. You also will find that there is a transition
necessary in your approach and thinking. In construction decision mode you
had to made a bunch of concrete, unchangable decisions. This is mostly over,
most the living decisions you make are totally changable, temporary and
transient. You don't, "try out" a roof material. You choose and its done.
You need to approach living together with a "Lets try it out" mentality. All
your social life together issues will have  many approaches. In my opinion,
successful groups cultivate a try it out experimental approach to these
issues. People will be mentally stuck on the concrete decision mode, and
they need to ease out of that. The way you deal with meals, money,
relationships, pets, kids, gardening is all way flexible, you can try things
out, change them later. This is for some groups a huge change that comes
with moving in


Rob Sandelin
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Jim Snyder-Grant
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 6:56 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_move-in question re-phrased...



Be prepared for the heavy nesting phase.  Families going inward to more
familiar insular ways in order to recover from the shock of moving. Moving
is intense & tiring & bewildering.  There's a source of potential additional
stress at move-in time you can actually do something about: the expectation
that all newcomers should be connecting with each other, and participating
fully in community life right away, and feeling great about cohousing right
away.

Go easy on your new neighbors. And especially go easy on yourself if you've
just moved. A hot bath or a solitary read or a simple dinner with just your
familiar housemates may be just what the newly-moved household needs. Think
of moving as just slightly less stressful than surgery, and act accordingly.

I don't think adding in a lot of expectations or process or policy is going
to help much. Just expect a roller coaster, and hold on.

-Jim
--
Jim Snyder-Grant
jimsg [at] newview.org
18 Half Moon Hill
Acton MA 01720
New View Cohousing
http://www.newview.org
On Tue, 21 Jan 2003 21:38:56 -0500 Ted Chesky <tchesky [at] earthlink.net>
writes:
>what I really meant to ask about were
> interpersonal or community difficulties that commonly come up around
move-in time,
> or  within the first months afterwards, rather than actual move-in
logistics
> (issues around learning to live together, setting boundaries, gossip,
and
> privacy come to mind). We'd like to do some advance thinking about
> how to handle them.



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