ZOdwellings & districts

Hey, Glad you found me. I am posting on Substack now. You can find me at Audacious Living. https://audaciousliving.substack.com/ See you there! Loni

A Way to Live

I'm on a journey.

I'm changing my life, reassessing how I truly wish to live, even relocating to a new town and state that feels at once safer, and more aligned with my new life goals. I want to put down deep roots.

I'm changing my life to pursue my creative passion(s), and re-designing my place to focus my time on my creative practices... and my play. Knowing that space influences the routines and rhythms of our days, I demand my home, the property, even my immediate neighborhood be my partner in this.

I will commit to them if they will do the same.

Redesigning space and place are not new endeavors. But it's become very personal. Since 1980, I've re-designed small residential properties and large community home spaces to help folks live as they intend. In fact, I used to swing the actual hammer in my younger general contractor days, and have been an ADU, infill collaborative housing consultant and policy advisor.

Then I redesigned my own home to live collaboratively for the last 10 years. I learned so much bringing non-traditional uses into my home and onto my street.

The joy has always been to sink into someone's passions/needs to reshape the space so they can be all that they wanted to be. Now I'm doing it for me and mine to take a more substantial step toward a Creative Life.

I'm asking:

1. How do I want to live and make?

2. What makes me happy to have around me - inside and outside my door?

3. What's been set aside because there hasn't been space for it that I miss in my life?

4. And who's the family I want around me- blood relations or otherwise?

If you're also a creative, you know we have more requirements since we manufacture our products. There's design time, production time, but also raw material storage, work spaces that let us leave the mess of our works in progress, and collaboration areas that cross-fertilize, not to mention a need for real privacy for the deep creative explorations. I also want a neighborhood that also inspires, and invites me to invest in it, putting down deep roots. I need to give back not just use.

Bottom line: I want to move further into a way of life that's of my own choosing. Am I bold enough to swim upstream against the directional currents to design what works for me?

Are you?

Mine's a creative impulse, but yours can be whatever you need to gather 'round you: a home you share with animals, with other educator or entrepreneurs, sharing science or physical movement, working on bikes. Whatever you passions, please come along with.... share your process, and discoveries.

I'll be sussing out feelings and observations as I take steps. Taking pictures, sketching and discussing what works at the niche, room, home, grounds, street and neighborhood levels. It's all up for grabs.

How do we make that happen for us both? Let's see what we uncover by sharing our processes.

Monday, March 24, 2025

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