Hello from California! 🌴🌴🌴
Right now I'm driving through the Mojave desert on an impromptu road trip with my college best friend Emily.
Fun fact: this is our 7th road trip together, and I estimate that we've collectively spent 9 weeks of our life together in a car driving around places without agendas.
Each month I focus on a different principle. June = Communal Effort. Full list here.
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1. June = Communal Effort
It's a new month (side note: WHAT) which means that time to define our theme!
(What typing the principle into a calligraphy generator looks like 👏)
(A community of flamingos = a "flamboyance." Amazing.)
As always, I start with inspiration from Burning Man's own definition:
At Burning Man itself, Communal Effort is when all the magic happens. I still find it astounding the amount of effort that people put in to create massive structures and art works, for no commercial purpose, that will only exist for 1 week. It's inspiring.
Some of my own fondest memories at Burning Man are from "Build Week", the days before the event officially opens where theme camps can come in early to set up their infrastructure.
Those days are true Communal Effort at its finest -- a bunch of folks doing a bunch of manual labor for the benefit of those who won't arrive for days and probably won't fully appreciate all the work that went into it. It's difficult, tiring, and rewarding.
2014 Camp Atlantis Build. If you have a hardhat you're safe, right?
In thinking through what I wanted to do for Communal Effort June, I had a few things I wanted to accomplish:
- Work together with others
- Create an experience
- Forge friendships
- Be "vulnerageous" (vulnerable courageousness)
So with that in mind, I reached out to my friend Caleb who taught me the word vulnerageous, and we came up with a larger "Communal Effort" action we're going to do together.
Drum rolll........
(Not a good drum roll, ftr)
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2. Vulnerageous Group Is Happening!!
For the larger "Communal Effort" action, Caleb and I will be leading / facilitating / organizing something we're calling the "Vulnerageous Group."
DETAILS!
We're going to meet for 1.5 hours, 3x in one of our backyards in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We'll take up to 10 souls, and we ask that you commit to making at least 2 of the 3 sessions. We'll start each session with a short mindfulness of breath exercise that I'll lead us in, then we'll talk about how we could invite more vulnerageousness into our life and talk about whatever Ego Dragons we're dealing with that week. 🐉🐉🐉
It's going to be awesome -- I've led a bunch of circles like this in the past, and people uniformly leave feeling inspired and connected, even to people they just met.
You, yes, YOU.
I know that some of you are feeling curious just reading this now, and yes YOU are perfect for the group. Drop me an email and we'll get you in.
Vulnerageous Group Dates (please attend at least 2):
- Wed, June 14th, 7pm
- Wed, June 21st, 7pm
- Wed, July 12th, 7pm
Sweet!!!!
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3. Interviewing Strangers 😱
While meeting to discuss the Vulnerageous Group, Caleb suggested that for my small daily "Communal Effort" action, I should go around and interview people in my neighborhood on what community means to them.
This sounds terrifying and time-consuming, but also kind of cool, so I decided to give it a whirl.
I started day 1 here in LA, and thank god Emily has been here to help me because approaching strangers is awkward (as identified during January Radical Inclusion month where I said good morning to 3 people every day).
So far so good! Turns out people are really friendly and very willing to be interviewed.
More reports from the road, next week :)
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Thanks!
Have a great week! Don't forget to wear sunscreen! Also, call your mom, okay?
Thanks for reading!
xxx maria 🙋
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