It is difficult to find a nice place to live in once you are over 30 and out of university.
The options that pop up are:
- Live in a flat by yourself, alone.
- Share a flat with 20-years-old students.
- Share a flat with other 30+ years-old employees which are interested in sharing a flat just because it is the only affordable option.
None of them fits me.
I have been single for 2 years and it is difficult to find a place to live that I love because:
- I don´t like living alone. I can, that is not a problem, but I don´t enjoy it as much as sharing spaces and experiences with other people. Sharing life with others is enriching, more fun and of course cheaper.
- I don´t match with 20-years-old students anymore. It is great talking to them, they are interesting, fresh and full of energy and dreams, but for the main part, we have different rythms. Usually students are more in party mode and their worries and responsibilities are very different from people that are already working.
- I want to share the flat with people that are willing to share experiences, not just because they can´t afford to pay a flat for themselves. Most of the times, these 30+ years old people are employees with kind-of a boring daily life. I have been there too. I want to share life with passionate people that are proactive, creative and take care of their soul and body.
Community living
The solution to that comes from community living.
It is not that there are no people in your city or in the world that share that interest for living in community. It´s just that we are not together, there is no facilities for us.
- It is possible to find hostels, but that is for travellers.
- It is possible to find residences for elderly people or for students, but, what if you are not part of these groups?
Therefore it becomes necessary to create a new community.
A community of people, no matter the age, that are interested in:
- Sharing spaces and facilities
- Sharing life experiences, their passion and knowledge
- Travelling, getting to know other cultures, getting to know themselves by getting exposed to other ways of thinking
- Making their dreams come true, bring their ideas into action
- Personal growth, that enjoy reading, meditating and exercising
- Taking care of their health, in terms of mind, body and soul
Mixing long and short stay people
I have been developing the idea of building a hostel already for some months.
Here was mi idea of a hostel with yoga.
But, wouldn´t it be more enriching if it would be combined with residents?
I would like to live in that community that I build.
And after my experience as a volunteer in New Orleans, living in a hostel is great for a couple months, it´s an amazing place to get to know travellers, but you can also miss the long-term connections.
I would say it is not a good option for long-term stays, because hostels are a place for travellers.
In a hostel, people usually stay around 2-3 nights. You connect with them and, by the time you feel confortable with them, they leave. It is incredible how this experience makes you grow, because you can learn from their experiences and from yourself talking to them, but long-term connections and friendships are also beautiful.
If I want to live there, I would like that there are long-term residents as well, people that you already know and you don´t have to explain again your life from the beginning each time.
Finding the right people
As with almost everything, the solution comes from inside.
I myself wanted to find a space as the one described while I was making my online business grow.
I needed a place to stay for long term, a place where I knew I had my space to work and focus, but also a place where I could talk to other people that are in similar conditions.
Co-working spaces function this way: they bring together people that otherwise would be working on their own.
But you cannot live in a co-working space.
And therefore you miss a big part of people´s lives.
That´s why a residence for those so called digital nomads with facilities for working would be great.
These digital nomads or online workers, the same as me, are people that like travelling (that´s why they want freedom to work from wherever they want), are proactive people (the pursue their dreams) and enjoy personal growth.
They are basically travellers that need a permanent residence for some time.
But they enjoy connecting to others.
Hostel for travellers and residence for online workers
I would say these 2 groups match perfectly.
- Travellers usually want to extend their trips but don´t know how to make a living while travelling; that´s where the online workers can help them.
- Online workers want to feel like they are travelling while they make their businesses grow; that´s where travellers share their experiences and that works as an encouragement for them to work harder.
As a consequence:
- Travellers can connect with locals, which they are almost always willing to do, in order to learn from their ways of living, good places to visit and eat.
- Residents can connect with travellers and have this refreshing and multi-cultural feeling of new people coming in town
As a general scheme, it could work like this:
There would be 3 blocks:
- For residents. They would be sleeping in their own private rooms and they would be able to focus on their work in their working space.
- For travellers. They would be sleeping mainly in dorms and would be able to hang out, read, meet other people or do their stuff in the living room and common areas.
- Common facilities, those spaces that bring people together and connect them: kitchen, sauna and room for meditation and yoga
Both travellers and residents would be allowed and encouraged to use the other spaces: travellers could find a spot for working and residents can get to know other people while hanging out in the living room.
This whole thing is just an idea.
It´s actually getting bigger from what I had in mind 7 months ago when I started my trip, which was simply finding a flat or refurbishing one for me to live in, but this idea of community living sounds good and much more exciting to me.
Let´s see where it takes me.