Cumulative Timeline of my Pathway
My second Action Learning cycle took me almost three years. I started my cycle in February 2017 after we visited some communities and organic farms in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. I struggled with the decision about what projects I want to work on and laying out my learning Intentions.
Then I got pregnant and more than ever we wanted to find a place where we can settle. My pregnancy provided me a project focus as I wanted to learn more about holistic pregnancy, motherhood, and healing.
We noticed that it will need more time to find a homeplace, so we looked for other options. We decided to build a Tiny House on Wheels, as a temporary home until we find a place to settle. We moved to the Tiny House, which was placed on an organic farm in Austria when our daughter was three months. A real-life adjustment living as a new family on just twelve square meters, but it worked!
For several reasons, we decided that we want to buy our own property. After a very research-intensive time, we found a property with a small house and 2,5 ha of land. The only restriction is that we are not able to register residence in the house as it is officially dedicated to agricultural purposes. So in 2019 we started to experiment growing herbs and want to build up a permaculture-herb business in the next few years.
RESUME
Since 2014, our greatest need has been to find a long-term place where we can settle down and live a nature-connected life.
I would say that our personal vision of sustainable living and the experience we gained from visiting communities has strongly influenced our decision to buy the land. Additionally, my pregnancy greatly accelerated the search for a place to live.
Support Network in my second Action Learning Cycle
As the graphic below shows my support network steadily grew over my Action Learning Cycle. I recognize that the more I felt home at a specific place the better my support network was and still is. For me, a home-place is very important because I can reach out to people more easily as I know that I can keep in touch regularly in the future.
OP1: Learning Intentions and Pathway Design (LIPD)
Original goals from my LIPD
OP1: Learning Intentions and Pathway Design (LIPD)
The purpose of the LIPD was to lay out my learning intentions for my second Action Learning Cycle with Gaia University. I defined the fields I want to work in and build expertise. During this project, I also envisioned my life-goals and defined steps I need to take to reach them.
Context: I started to write the LIPD without knowing that I am pregnant. After realizing I needed some (personal)-reorganization. The consequence of my pathway was that I adapted my project to the new circumstances. I planned my projects independently from a home place and with topics relevant to my life (pregnancy).
The focus of the OP: Planning projects with the topics "pregnancy" and "holistic motherhood" and "natural healing".
Goals: XMind below shows my original LIPD goals
Key Outcomes: Specified my project ideas and found a clear thematic focus. With the OP I had a guideline on how to proceed in uncertain times.
Tracking Goals from my LIPD
OP2: Life Transition Pregnancy
In OP2 I document my project about pregnancy. The focus is on a personal level, trying out a lot of treatments/methods/philosophies that are valuable for a holistic pregnancy.
Life-Context: Being pregnant and planning and building a Tiny House (as a mobile home) without knowing where we will place it.
Focus: Critical reading of various resources (share them on our blog) and experimentation of the deconstructed knowledge
Key Outcomes:
- Share valuable knowledge for pregnant woman and make it accessible on our blog
- Document my personal transition from a girl to a mother
Main LIPD goals met:
- Conscious design of my life
- Applying design thinking
- Valuable knowledge about holistic motherhood
OP3: Laying the Foundation for our Future
The purpose of OP3 was to document our process of designing a concept for our land-based project and finding a place that we can call home. I also document in this OP several small implemented projects (e.g. first bee-keeping experience, blog article, Tiny House…).
Life-Context: Living in our Tiny House with our daughter on an organic farm in Austria. Insight that we need to go to another place where we may design our land self-directed
Focus: Envisioning, Researching, planning
Key Outcomes:
- concept for our land-based project
- found a property that we can call home
Main LIPD goals met:
No significant goals were met from the LIPD. Life circumstances and learning intentions for the project changed since creating the LIPD.
OP4: A Design for our Property
The purpose of this OP is to document a typical land-based permaculture design using different permaculture tools and methods. The goal was to create a first rough design for our property so that we know where to place different systems and elements in the long term.
Life-Context: Combining my Bachelors Degree with the International Permaculture Diploma required me to write my future Ops with a strong focus on permaculture. Having a very wild property makes it necessary to focus on the most important things. During writing this OP I am pregnant with our second baby.
Focus: Designing and planning, but also implementation and prototyping. Applying permaculture methods and tools consciously (since I started the permaculture Diploma a clear focus on permaculture is important!)
Key Outcomes:
- a Pattern Design for the Property
- clear focus for implementation and next steps
LIPD goals met:
- found our longterm place
- natural health professional skills: learned a lot about herbs and their usage
- effective working hours on the Laptop
Cummulative Surveying Patterns (optional)
Official Element of a Survey: Gather Information about a specific topic
I am good in:
- Researching and collection information from different sources without making a fast judgment
Main Resources for information:
- Internet, Books
- Experience and knowledge from people I know
Best practices:
- No judging when collecting information
- Visualization of a "spider web" in my mind to connect information
Learning edges:
- Often I can not make the step to stop gathering information
- I am working on many projects at the same time, so a Survey of one topic always gets mixed with other information, that sometimes makes my thinking too complex
- Often I am losing myself in too detailed information
Resource Reference for this Page
Graphic - Cummulative Timeline - Created by Carolina Jakobi using Libre Office Calculator
Graphic- Support Network - Created by Carolina Jakobi using Libre Office Calculator
Mindmap - Original Goals from my LIPD - Created by Carolina Jakobi using XMIND
Graphic- Tracking Goals from my LIPD - Created by Carolina Jakobi using Libre Office Calculator