The Blog is Back

by Raven Cotyledon

If you have looked at this blog over the last six to nine months, you will have noticed that there have not been a lot of posts.  I stopped managing Commune Life about the middle of last February due to a combination of internal politics and some burnout. Since then, the quantity of posts has gone way down, with a flurry of posts around this summer’s Communities Conference. Over the last few months there has been one post a month, written by me.

Prior to February, we had been publishing three posts a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. One of the things contributing to my burnout was trying not to have most of the posts be written by me.  I was constantly contacting communards and requesting posts from them. Unsurprisingly, most communards are busy people. The most common response that I got was that they thought it was a great idea and would love to write something–when they had time. Sometimes they would write something, eventually.  Often the result was repeated email chains promising “soon…” or, worse, no longer even responding to my emails.

In spite of that, I managed to keep to the Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule for twenty-one months, nearly two years.  Some folks might regard this as a symptom of insanity. Further proof of insanity would be that I intend to return to that schedule again, starting with this post.  But there are some differences.

The biggest is that this blog is now part of a whole Commune Life family.  Maximus took over the management of Commune Life this summer and has expanded it to include a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and an Instagram feed.  Commune Life is no longer a lonely little outpost, but part of its own little community. One of my difficulties had been having no understanding of or skill with social media. Now there are other folks working on the social media aspects.

Where I had devoted Mondays to new articles and Wednesdays to photoessays, this time around, I will include both on Mondays and use Wednesdays to repost the YouTube videos that Maximus and others have been making.  Fridays will once again feature re-posts of pieces about communes from around the internet. And, unfortunately, many of the Monday pieces will probably be from me.

I will apologize in advance. I want to show the diversity of income-sharing communities and feature a variety of writers but, given how busy communards generally are, I will give them and me a break, and just write a bunch of the upcoming posts.  That said, I still hope to get as much new stuff from other folks as I can. This is not *my* blog and there is a good chance I may get other folks involved in the future which may result in more writers on this blog.

And while most of the communities featured will be part of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, occasionally we will do posts on communes out of the FEC, either because the communities aren’t in North America or because they don’t fit in the current FEC criteria, which I hope will change soon and I will talk about next week.

Finally, and best of all, the blog and the YouTube videos and Instagram pix and Facebook features are all part of one endeavor. Or goal is to show that communal life is a vibrant reality.   Another world is not only possible, it’s here. And at Commune Life, we want to make it visible.

 

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