How far do you have to invest socially in your neighbors?

You are starting an intentional community and there will probably be an expectation to socialize but how much is mandatory?

Technically/ legally none at all but i will say you should try to be in the common house as much you can to maybe get some organic conversations going. And I'll also say you should establish some type of indirect ( or direct if you're community is built for it ) way of communicating your level of preferred engagement with people for that hour / day in the common house.

So lets say you know you're going to be working from home all day but you want to switch up the scenery by working in the common house. You might wear a wrist band that signals that you are working and don't want to be disturbed frequently. You might sit in an isolated part of the common house next to the window to make it physically harder to talk to you. You might wear headphones

There are plenty of options that allow you to enjoy private shared spaces at your own pace.

It's very common for there to be shared meals in cohousing and there might be a highly suggested amount to attend. You could have a once a week suggestion. You could have a once a year suggestion. It all depends on what your specific group feels is appropriate. Especially considering you'll have mandatory monthly meetings to discuss the community anyway .

A good rule of thumb in my head is that you should try to plan for what you can commit to when you're the busiest and what you should limit yourself to when you have the most free time. So if you're working 80 hours a week and you have kids during one half of the year , maybe you're only in the common house once a week to bring the family to eat a common meal. If during another season the kids are with Grandma and you're only working 40 hours a week maybe you limit yourself to 20 hours a week in the common house out of the 30 hours of time you could be spending in the common house.

So expressed in math terms, the person in this example should commit to 126 hours in the common house a year

Until next time

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