Update edition 1.0 - January, 2022

written bet. Nov 14, 2021 & Dec. 26, 2021

Mearth & Earth World Building Update (progress report):

Since life's been so wonky with continuously rebuilding for Covid and climate change flux this past year, I decided, rather than have to report on what I cannot do as desired, I'll be sharing that which I HAVE somehow managed, instead. * Plus a few personal notes and thoughts on surviving (scroll down below).

So, you see? —the upcoming year feels much better already. ;) Lol

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Let's hope it's less nuts!

** Housekeeping and intros in this this first Update make it a bit longer than it should be in future.

NEW AUDIO COMING:

Yellowhair:

Thanks to our dear friend Zoe Wilding, who's now playing the voice of River and others, Season One (the one here on Wattpad which now has TTS) is ALSO being edited and soon will be performed by humans narrating the podcast in Mearth! ... It's not yet released, still working backstage, but it's underway. (And, l will let you know in these updates as soon as it's out!)

NEW CHAPTERS WRITTEN:

"Otherborn: Earth's Crust Survival" Chapter 18 - DONE √ 4100k

Now stuck in Town Camp with a mad gang of kids, Maddie tries to adjust, while Fin's in collapse, but popular they aren't; and soon Neon secretly throws them a clue as to why they could find themselves hunted by somebody worse.

** Re: Otherborn: the dystopian serial was first published to Kindle Vella in 2021 & in the summer ahead we have high hopes we will sprout other new Otherborn books (can I say that?) to follow on Wattpad. Haha. They should each stand alone, but much better when followed.

For our dearest knightly friends here, if you haven't been able to read this dystopian adventure on Vella, since Vella is only US, now the early reader feedback version of Otherborn is posted in my private online copy which I can share with a link as you wish. The play button for the text to speech, male voice should be working as well, and seems to play best from inside individual chapters rather than from the main cover page. You'll always need to use the most recent inbox link for new episodes though. ;) TTS is wholly grand and you're welcome, of course! ;)

Please do let me know if I ever miss sending your updated link through our inbox exchange or if you want to read beyond Previews, 1-3 posted in this World Building book.

NEW WATTPAD CHAPTERS REAL SOON:

Hettie Goes Missing and The Fae Perspective - still pending. Will be out shortly...

REBUILDING THE VILLAGE:

How Did We Get Here?

I don't need to say the world's in a bit of upheaval.

Project News & Inspiration will be out soon!

A few people know I used to work in global news & community project startup, so in the course of that experience, different projects I encountered really stuck with me. They meant a great deal, so in no particular order, I'd like to tell you about WHY these mattered to me, and why I think they're important to all of us now, starting with the Gaviotas Project, which was how it was referred to at the time I first knew it.

How did we get to this point that we would need to find inspiration in Gaviotas and the like of such projects?

I'm sure we all have our theories and contributions to this multi-dimensional kind of response, but I'm going to throw my hat in the ring with Rebuilding the Village (my scrapbook notes)... For now, I think that we most forgot how to listen.

Be warned though, next update I'll likely tell you my answer is something else too, but I want to share thoughts since we're on this page here together.

** Note re: RBV: Rebuilding the Village will sometimes overlap with bits of Updates here and sometimes will not. So, if you like, add both "World Building" and "Rebuilding the Village" to your reading, as I write randomly and add chaotically onto those thoughts. Who knows what will get posted where in the end.

CLIMATE CHANGE CHAOS & COVID SKILLS COMBAT:

I've always been willing to live life a bit raw, I guess, so truth or dare life disclosures here... (note that I've just said 'a bit'—so underscore that, pretty please. It's always a relative 'bit'.)

I've assumed for ages that a lot of the current climate changes and crazy times we are living would one day arrive. So without putting any money into it to speak of, I've been practicing my own tiny lifestyle adjustments through so many years in quite different ways.

One of the best teaching tools I've ever found in creating new projects has been to ask myself (or others) how I'd live when the power has gone out. How do priorities change? I've done this for years. I mean, I've been asking this question. I don't mean turning my power out myself. That happens well enough on it's own, but it does keep things sharply in focus!

I now feel prepared to survive (not to bare bones, but having resilience) and my answers aren't yours and my space isn't yours and my time isn't yours, nor are my needs, abilities or my restrictions—at all. Please know that I get that. And that you have different issues, your environment and your own brilliant strengths. Your limits, as well, have their needs. We are all special beings, completely unique. Our life is one of a kind. And we can surpass our previous goals, by making them different—all shiny and new—as we forge ahead in creative endeavours.

So, what's our resiliency plan?

My own recent twenty-some years has been learning, finessing the growth of organic food in some way that might be accomplished by even my weakest of children, and seniors or friends, marginalized folk, anyone fighting just to survive through possible ever-onward changing conditions for all. (* Working from lowest common denominators throughout our world seems relevant to me for compromised friends to be able to eat—friends and neighbours who can't see themselves outliving these times—thinking things through ahead of times coming and having ready the help they might each one need some day really soon might be how we can each best respond.)

What do I need and feel able to do and still cruise along?

I address things from the point of my limits and not from my strengths. I build around those. I have my own solutions that work where I am and those change every day, just like I do. I like to try to improve, stay healthy, happy and live on a third of the usual power (maybe less) with no special building and no particular effort that doesn't fit into my life.

Heat waves, storms, floods, disasters would all be exceptions to short term success, but not to the 'plan'. They are the plan itself or, more importantly, they're what the plan's for—resilience to live on in freedom and make life robust, cause nature to thrive in every way possible every minute we're here.

Truth be told, it's not why I live in a hole in the woods—and really, I do. I am here just because I can't bare to be parted from nature.

I feel like it's time to include this in Updates, because we're all living in a trickier world, and who knows, perhaps some of the nut-so things I do at home (none of them big things, but taken together) can help somebody else devise another resiliency plan—city or town or anything rural—plus reclaim some more calm and maintain through the storm, or storms, or many more storms, from inside our 'eye'.

DISCLAIMER: this is NOT REMOTELY ADVICE. There are as many ideal situational reactions to life as there are brains x seconds x ideas and so on. These personal notes that I'm going to include now with Updates in "World Building" are just what I happen to do, accounting for trials and tribulations in my own personal much-limited day, aware that life will always require some added experiment by this time next month, and so on it goes...

So many crazy things I could tell you, but might as well start with the first of my day.

Thus here's what I'm up to at home...

Mad Skills & Crazy Times: Personal Backyard Updates

My Own Mad Skill #1: Cone of Silence. Say What—?

If I'm cheating death (and these days I feel we are all facing challenging concepts in spades) I'd choose 'cone of silence' right at the top of all my mad skills, even almost over having a knife, antiseptic, tools to make fire, hockey tape, tarps, ziplocs, cordage, wool and layered clothes— well, you get the idea. I could go on. But who the heck's choosing?!

What's Cone of Silence?

It's just an agreement to respect inner silence (and our listening) space. Myself, I can go from harried to peaceful in under a moment by thinking these words around me to self... or out loud. Did I say, mad skills? Perhaps I meant magic!

It might just get missed on most sensible lists, but I believe cone of silence is my favourite tool for survival through such crazy changes as we're all facing now.

And truly, this reminder to self seems to alter the entire scale of time.

Cone of silence is my personal control switch / command key to center back into 'listening' mode. And listening mode is what leads me to everything good that's rewarding in life, not to mention, psychologically fortifying as heck.

Having control over 'safe space' anytime, anywhere—that's a fabulous thing!

In combatting climate and Covid change chaos (Try saying that!) this tops off my, trust me, most maddish of skills. It's the one reminder-to-self I want to use far and above all the others, so I put this one first, although the experiments I've come to call 'skills' won't be here in any real order.

Cone of Silence could also be termed an agreement-skill (I guess I have categories) for calming everything down or beginning new work, a meeting, resolving disputes, creating a solitary moment's connection between you and a sunset—whatever you need and want it to be.

Especially for creating and maintaining relationships (and why I first found out how useful it is ;) ) in homebound epidemics, evacuations and other such stresses, I think this is key. Cone of Silence can be whatever you wish. It's personal time.

An agreement with friends and family to have 'cone of silence' ready at hand—for any old use—is almost sacred. It's born of respect. And it's so much more. Using this tool is almost a path of it's own. It's easy. It's instant. Most of all, it calls for solutions.

It's my number one wish to lean hard on this skill. Did you get the idea I'm creating a list? Well maybe I am.

* If anyone's unsure of the term 'cone of silence', I'll save you from looking this up. It originated from an old 1955 Get Smart TV series episode and refers to a cone-shaped area of radio silence above, but for purposes here, easiest to think of it as entering something akin to 'library' reverence mode.

*Note to all users: does not require batteries, but may optimize better when having good friends. Plus, therefore respect. (Not that any 'we' or 'wee' humans would have trouble with such.) Cone of Silence = an un-maddening, unscrambling, un-panicking tool. A skill we all have over our heads (*reference to space over radio towers and brains and the like, or anything else).

And that's why I would rate "cone of silence" my Number One skill.

Skill #2, next Update.

Signing off note:

Changing Our Hearts

Have you ever perceived someone's words in the center of your chest? Either way—would you share back whether you notice that doing this makes a big difference to your own perceptions of life? I'd love to hear it. And more of what you might think! A difference to what—? Or anything else you want to share.

I'd like to thank @GideonEaston for commenting in Rebuilding The Village, first post entitled "My Personal Viewpoint on Science" where he mentioned he was glad to see I'd (unwittingly) as he termed it, "inherently linked kindness with listening—"

"—That is crucial", he wrote and (of course, ever humble) I so much agree! LOL

Seriously, it seems to me listening would be the core of all things human: whether we do or don't listen and to what degree.

Cheers 'til next update!

* Updating frequency: will be erratic for now, until I figure out how the heck Erratic makes schedules.

≈ We can one day all be on the same page when our hearts unify.

Thanks for reading,

≈ Wez

Be in the stillness...