Permie 'Loan' for Gappers, Ants,...

I want to share videos and pictures from The Labs. I have an awesome camera. I have a thriving need to take pictures of all the cool stuff I see. I feel like I can learn a lot and teach others a lot from The Labs. I want to share all of that with you lovely permie people! A fellow permie wonderfully paid my gapper fee. I cant thank that person enough! I really want to send that person awesome pics and vids from The Labs. I had already worked out a date and all to come out and planned accordingly with Jocelyn via email.

Here's the catch. I had money saved up. A friend was in need and I loaned nearly all of it to the person and fully expected the person would have already paid me back now. Except of course that's not how life works for me. So I am posting this in hopes that some more awesome permies, like yourselves, will be up for working out a loan sort of smelling deal. Here is my thoughts:

I would need $150 to travel from here (SE Ohio) out to Missoula, MT and three days of sitting in various buses.

There is the option of me paying back person/people who would be willing to loan to me as I do some jobs for Paul and Jocelyn (IE from the "to-do" thread).

There is the option of me making a special email send out list to people/person who loaned to me and send them bunches of extra pics and probably a few special videos of cool things that wouldn't get posted to the forums. like jetpack people special candy.

I have tons of ideas and really think that if things fall into place when I am out there that I could even hunker down in The Ant Village and work on some awesome food systems etc to re-sell off as a "Started Ant Village Plot" or something.

I would hope to be posting lots of videos. At least weekly. And do the Income Stream of a trickle of money from the youtube channel views. Honestly I don't fully understand how it works other than I would get paid X amount for X amount of video views. But as long as yall permies are wanting to see stuff going on at The Lab and I can make em then it will be a start anyhow.

I have many ideas on things to try building/making to bring in some more of the "feminine touch" that seems to be vocalized as lacking. IE pretty up the buildings, more food systems, animal systems, workshops.

If I stayed on I have been watching the Missoula Craigslist and with my animals experiences I would be very likely to start a small herd of sheep/goats to herd them around The Lab and be pasture raised. I can also butcher and would be very up for selling/trading among locals and fellow.. eh, Lab Rats? Oh a big pit roast lamb sandwich sounds perfect right now!


This thread can be used for others to share their position and how much they might need in a monetary boost to get out to The Lab and become awesome Ants or Gappers etc.

I can't help but think of Paul's "Obligation is Poison" thread when reading through your post.

https://permies.com/t/45413/labs/obligation-poison

John Wolfram wrote:I can't help but think of Paul's "Obligation is Poison" thread when reading through your post.

https://permies.com/t/45413/labs/obligation-poison

Poison is medicine in the right dosage!

It seems to me Kadence, that $150 is a proper amount of obligation and the products you have mentioned sound very worthwhile.

Good luck and safe travels,
Bill

It does sound like kadence would do great things out here, and we want to support people coming here to do good things! At the same time, we want travel, moving, trying things out at wheaton labs, etc. to be safe* and healthy for everyone involved.

A very real concern for us is that if someone is coming here without a parachute, meaning backup funds and/or an exit strategy, it could lead to problems...no one wants to be trapped and we surely don't want people here unless they are choosing to be here.

Stuff happens in life and people need to go somewhere - to a sick family member, away from here for whatever reason, to someone their heart beats faster for, you name it. Or, we might ask someone to leave, and they should be able to leave of their own volition.

Very early on we talked about possibly requiring a deposit at some point, and in an early how to visit thread, we also recommended a parachute package.

*Safe feels like an extreme word to use here. Though some times, IMHO, having extra money for food, a safe place to stay, and other things should transportation snafus or other unpredictable messes arise, does make travel a safer thing.

kadence blevins wrote:If I stayed on I have been watching the Missoula Craigslist and with my animals experiences I would be very likely to start a small herd of sheep/goats to herd them around The Lab and be pasture raised. I can also butcher and would be very up for selling/trading among locals and fellow.. eh, Lab Rats? Oh a big pit roast lamb sandwich sounds perfect right now!

If you are sufficiently competent at butchering to train other folks in it, this strikes me as an excellent potential income source, and a draw to bring people to the lab. You might also get some mileage out of clearing land with goats, if there are plants/areas suited to this.



Jocelyn, I think a parachute package/contingency plan is a really good thing to worry about; while it might seem a little melodramatic to talk about 'safe' now, if someone were, for example, to fall ill or be laid up with a broken hip, etc, while at the lab, without having even sufficient funds to travel to somewhere else, things could get pretty awkward pretty fast. While there wouldn't be a concrete obligation on Paul or anyone to take care of this person... the alternative of dropping an ill and penniless individual at the nearest town is undoubtedly not something anyone would feel good about. And even the ride is an assumed obligation!

At the same time, as you say, raising the entry criteria is an unfortunate thing in terms of drawing people to the lab... A conundrum.

Dillon Nichols wrote:
At the same time, as you say, raising the entry criteria is an unfortunate thing in terms of drawing people to the lab... A conundrum.

Based on the reports from last year at the lab, raising the bar to the level of adulthood would be a reasonable threshold. Sad that it needs to be done explicitly, but experiences has show the need to set expectations with clarity. Traveling without sufficient funds to manage a likely change of plans or emergency is simply irresponsible, IMNSHO.

Julia Cameron, in The Artist's Way, coined a phrase, "Keep the drama on the page," meaning to use the tendency to create drama in one's life as creative inspiration, not a distraction. Paul and Jocelyn need to keep the drama in the soil, not more distractions, expenses, and crises.

Ann, I completely agree that a greater degree of responsibility is required. I'm less sure that adulthood/an arbitrary age is a good test for how responsible an individual is, but I suppose it has the virtue of being simple.

I do think that as a general rule adding a hoop to jump will deter some proportion of people who are able to pass said hurdle, as well as those it is meant to deter. It also means more work, however minimal on an individual basis, for whoever is managing the visitor approval process. This might be no big deal now, but every little bit of friction adds up as systems scale.

Still, compared to the amount of drama/BS the podcasts depict as the historical average, this seems rather inconsequential!


Explicitly set expectations sound good, but podcasts include a baffling array of anecdotes about people who obviously understood their responsibilities/obligations and simply... didn't feel obliged to come through. So clearly there is more to this. IMO the 'these are your responsibilities, if you want to be here' document/conversation needs to explicitly end with 'and if you don't do XYZ, you will be asked to leave, immediately'.


Sorry, Kadence, we've gotten a ways away from your original topic! More to the original topic... have you considered offering pre-orders for some product or class you are confident in being able to provide? Smells a bit different than a straight loan...