Crowdfunding

27th January 2020

Matt asked me to count my hours working for Silent Haven for transparency for crowdfunding. I felt frightened by it. I have done this before for benefits or to prove to people that I am working and I hate it. I hate it because now all the work I enjoy doing for Silent Haven is suddenly coloured by money. Suddenly everything I do equates to money and that is not the reason why I am doing it. However, I have to have money to keep going because that’s the way the world works. I tried to forge another route but the planners kicked the shit out of me (excuse the expression, but after that process, that is exactly how I felt. It took me 3 years to recover) and forced me to make money to keep the precious cabin. Ironically, when they gave me full planning permission, I asked if I had to keep making a certain amount of money and the planner said, “no, you can do what you like”. The other thing is, that Matt is quite structured and boundaried and so he may find it easy to put in his hours and get paid for his job and so I am now in competition with him. What if he gets paid more than me because I can’t remember what I have done and I have forgotten to write it down? Then I will feel resentful and it won’t be worth doing it. Silent Haven is me. How do I separate it off as work? This is what I tried to explain to the planners. If you so wish, you can see the Planning Application (260 pages, good luck!) This is what we were doing when we hardly had a roof over our heads. I kept thinking about birds building their nests and being forced to fill in paperwork before they could shelter from the rain. Why are us humans so torturous to each other?

I have a list, most of them are about or related to Silent Haven, so now I am clock watching and it makes the work unenjoyable and, what’s more important, adds more to my workload. I am a person of feeling, I will do what is necessary, but when I feel like it. It makes me happy to do it. So, one minute I will be working on one thing and the next minute it will be something else. How do I figure out how much time I have spent on everything? I told Matt I would get a stopwatch. Silent Haven pops up in personal conversation, in fact, if it is useful, I will bring it into any conversation if it will help it to keep going. I have been reading “Women who run with the wolves” by Clarissa Estes Pinkola, an enjoyable pursuit but every few minutes I must quote her and write something down to explain Silent Havens philosophy. So, is that work or pleasure? (work is my pleasure). When something is your life you can’t separate it. After our crowdfunding conversation, I couldn’t sleep thinking about, and processing it. Is that work? Do I put that on my time sheet? 

I did it today, wrote down everything I did. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it’s sustainable in my world. I will endeavor to do my best.