Emotional Challenges of Building our House
It’s totally awesome and exciting to self-build our off-grid home. It’s inspiring even to me when I think of what we’re up to. But as we all know there is always challenges that comes with a project this big. So this week I wanted to share a bit about our emotional landscape.
Feelings of overwhelm. There are just too many things to do on a BIG scale that we’re not used to. The distance we need to travel, the weights we have to lift, the earth we need to dig, the trees we need to cut and process, the machinery, the research, the management…
It’s hard to stay present, organized and on top of things while wearing multiple hats and balancing our own business at the same time. Forgetting is a real problem.
Life in the land is dirty and uncomfortable. Having no water, other than buckets of water, no place to take off our shoes and kick back to relax, no kitchen nor bathroom builds-up physical and emotional exhaustion over time.
Lack of personal and romantic time. We have almost no time and energy to just enjoy each others company. Even-though we’re together all the time, I feel that we’re getting disconnected.
Lack of relevant experience. We’re constantly questioning, researching and over thinking every step. We often battle with self doubt which makes it hard to finalize decisions.
Loosing business due to time and energy we devote to building our house.
Stress around the amount of money we are spending on tools, equipment, expertise, materials; even though we’re cutting costs.
Feeling ungrounded due to not knowing or having control over time this project will take.
We can probably count few others but these are the 8 most destructive challenges we struggle with.
Few days ago with the sudden realization of ‘if we don’t change anything, by the end of the project our relationship may also end’, we decided to do some instant adjustments:
We committed to having a morning meditation practice together. And the universe brought us ‘The Miracle Morning’. So now we’re starting our days with this routine.
We re-evaluated our shared values, priorities and personal limits to be on the same page. Because assuming that we know each-other doesn’t always work.
We also distributed tasks so both of us know what we’re in charge of. This allows us to stay focused on our own tasks and stop worrying about everything.
Most importantly we made it a priority to take-care of our selves first and cultivate love.
Without love this is just a big dirty task. We truly love the challenge of building our home; when we’re so accustomed to get everything done by others as a culture. Modern life is serving life to us in a silver platters; yet as a society we find things to complain about every day. This experience teaches us to be humble and grateful for the most basic things. We’re also made believe that only rich people can live healthy, luxurious and sustainably. That’s why we’re not just building a tiny cabin but we’re building a modern home with sustainable principles. We want show that it’s possible to create a natural, beautiful and meaningful life debt-free with a little creativity. I cannot wait to see where this creative exploration will take us; but in the meanwhile, there is so much to live right here and right now.
