I'm currently on a layover on my way to NYC where I'll be spending the next 10 weeks, but before I write about why I'm moving there and what I'll be doing, I want to reflect on one of the most important parts of my time in Austin. For the last 6 months, my daily schedule looked roughly like this:
I absolutely loved this schedule, and it was the bedrock that formed one of the most productive periods of my life. Some of you might see this and think, "wait, but you were working all day long, and you work by yourself — didn't you ever get lonely?"
Nope, because loneliness is pretty hard to come by when you live in a house with 40+ other people.
For most people, the world outside of home is where they go to be social before returning home to be mostly by themselves and recharge. With a community house or co-op, it's different. When you go from living by yourself or with a few others to living with lots of people, "home" transforms into a source of community that feels a lot more conducive to well-being than how we normally think of home. For indie makers who don't get their social fix from interacting with familiar faces at work, I don't think there's a better way to live.
Every community house is different, but to give an idea of what it's like to live in one, here were my favorite parts of the one I stayed in:
My house drew in people from all walks of life: students, researchers, massage therapists, freelancers, marketers, receptionists, software engineers, and lots and lots of people from abroad. (One time, I drove some of my housemates to the grocery store and when the conversation turned into a passionate criticism of American cheese, I realized that I was the only American in a car full of Europeans.)
Given the diversity of backgrounds, conversations were pretty much always interesting, ranging from me looking dazed while one of my housemates explained her quantum physics research project to hearing from another housemate about how fun and scary he found installing a sign while being high enough where falling off would've killed him.
It felt a lot like living in a hostel, except instead of being in a 16-person room with bunk beds, I had my own room which was nice for the times when I actually wanted to be alone.
I loved that after a day of working by myself, I could come home to friends who'd be down to cook together, tell me about something crazy that happened that day, play Secret Hitler, watch some obscure movie, or go out for ice cream. When living in a community, you don't need to make plans to hang out — it just happens, which is especially nice when you saunter over to the kitchen at 4am because you can't fall asleep and find someone else there to commiserate with.
Every Sunday, everyone got together for a family dinner where someone cooked for the whole house.
Heated accusations being thrown around in a game of Mafia.
I was "Tex-Mex" for Halloween.
Thanksgiving with the fam.
A grocery store called H-E-B pretty much owns all of Texas and sponsors stuff like Christmas light installations for people to enjoy.