Re: living without money(O.T.)

[Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

I've done a number of long hitchhiking trips, and they were some of my 
most formative experiences. I think it helped lead me to my current mode 
of traveling/touring, and even to the kind of work I can handle doing 
for money. I need to have control over my time. I feel very lucky to 
have ended up in computers, which has enabled me to have complete 
flexibility, working by the hour from anywhere. (The 
getting-paid-by-the-hour component is important - the concept of salary 
never sat right w/me).

I wasn't necessarily going to share this here, but after some shakeup in 
my personal life it has turned out that I'm not going to be based in 
Mexico anymore. For the time being I don't have a fixed address, I'm 
just bouncing between friends and family in the eastern half of the US 
while preparing for my next tour. I don't feel the need to have a solid 
home base, and with wanting to tour most of the time, it wouldn't be 
much of a home base anyway. But my communities are VITAL to me, whether 
it's old friends or groups like LD where there's common ground from 
which new friendships develop. That's where my solidity is.

Funny, just last night a friend told me that there's a growing movement 
of people doing something like what I'm doing, and then Stefan mentioned 
the couchsurfing groups (which I'm definitely going to follow up on). 
Inspiring.

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com


> Its an incredible waste of human resources, that most people divide 
> their life into "free time" and "go to work".
> We are only free if all of our time is free time, including the work 
> we consider being important...
> When I started to hitchhike again, I not only realized that suddenly I 
> was much more free to go wherever I want to, its also a complete other 
> way of social exchange. In the money world everything turns into a 
> deal. But still most of social exchanges are not deals, they wouldn't 
> work as a deal...
> Just lurk on any of the couchsurfing groups, and you'll know that this 
> spirit is strong and makes happy...
>
> Deals (money involved) can be fine unless this way of thinking isn't 
> pushing all other social activities into the background...
> Obviously it is possible to survive without money, but we could not 
> survive without our communities. And this LD community is a good 
> example how things work extremely efficient without being a deal...
>
> Stefan