Pathway Reflection

Reflecting about my LIPD I can say that I started to build up skills I wanted to gain. Although I started with only three projects in the LIPD I had far more going on at the same time and was not able to concentrate myself only on these three projects. Like I planned I did my second OP about these three projects. There was so much content that it was very difficult to put all of it in one OP and as I already suspected the projects only scratched the surface. After that it was clear that in my next OP I would document not all my ongoing projects because it would go beyond the scope of an OP with a limited word count.

So far my pathway was rich in experience on the social and practical level. I stayed very spontaneously all the time and adapted to changes in my environment. For example I did not plan to do an educational project for this OP already. But as I was asked by a teacher to give a lecture about environment in the school and to assist her, I just accepted the offer and prepared the lesson on a content-related level. Also the assistant for the student workshop was absent for a longer time, so I was asked to assist in the student workshop. This fortunate combination of two different education programs was a great invitation to document them and to do some further research about learning and education. Therefore I decided to use the project "Education" in this OP.
For the largest part I was constantly involved in the project "Bee-keeping", because some people Lebensgarten are interested in bees. They invited me to several hive inspections and afterwards I researched more information in books and the internet. As I spent most of the time with learning about bees, I decided to document that in OP 3.
It was often challenging to get everything reconciled, with all the different projects and my internship. To get an idea of my other ongoing projects, look at the XMind on the right site. I really appreciated to work on so many things at once and to always find a balance between thinking and doing. Sometimes it was very challenging for me to say "no" to new offers, because I want to learn so many things and a community with many people with different interests is a perfect place to learn.

After I delivered OP2 I started to set new goals and promises for my next OP. For the bee project it was quite easy but afterwards I think that I have planned too much. This is not bad, because this way I only realized the plans I had a good opportunity for. The other promises would have been for the case that I would have had some time left.  So I sorted them after priority, but nevertheless some things changed their order in time, some new ideas occurred and some plans I completely forgot about. I also managed to meet promises for the soil and building project, which are not documented in this OP.
The education project was very spontaneous, so I had no clear goals in the beginning but they developed over time and they still are.
In the future I want to get my promises done more effectively without too much effort and track/document them mostly automatically. Therefore I recognized it is important to really split up the promises into very small tasks and to never loose track. For my next OP I want to experiment with a learning map where I can visualize all my tasks to achieve my promises in the end.

Working as an intern in the permaculture park next to the community "Lebensgarten Steyerberg" is a great learning opportunity. Especially in summer there is a lot to do with harvesting vegetables and fruit, an activity I really like. There are many other activities going on in the park and I can always feel free to attend these (herb festival, building a dome (yurt), chicken tractor).
Summer is a great time here and I enjoy it. Furthermore my boyfriend and I are researching about our next place to live, this should be a community combined with permaculture in Southern Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain). We are researching a lot about communities in these regions. In September we are going to travel to Italy, where we will attend the European Permaculture Convergence and visit two communities. Maybe at one of these we want to stay longer? With my everyday life and making future plans my days are relatively full but I enjoy everything. It is a feeling of freedom without which I probably could not live!