Thank you for reading my first Substack post. If you continue reading my posts, we’ll be doing one of my favourite things: weaving a new constellation together: you and I, in relationship, and discovering what’s alive here.
I believe that in every new constellation we form, that constellation holds all our other constellations each of us is a member of. Through this constellation weaving, we get to world generatively, as inspired by Bayo Akomolafe, one of my favourite teachers, in ‘These Wilds Beyond Our Fences’:
‘There are no beginnings that appear unperturbed, pristine and without hauntings. And there are no endings that are devoid of traces of the new, spontaneous departures from disclosure, and simmering events that are yet to happen. The middle isn’t the space between things; it is the world in its ongoing practices of worlding itself’.
I look forward to worlding a new constellation with you.
Coming Closer to Financial Right Relationship
This post was intended to introduce myself but as I wrote it I found that it became a contract with my collaborators and clients, and with life itself. Writing it has been medicine. Between the first word and the last, it holds an enquiry on financial right relationship in these times, and how I might bring myself closer to it.
My enquiry feels deeply personal but I hear from those I’ve shared this post with as a draft that my enquiry holds something more universal. I do know that I am not alone in questioning how to live a life in grace, in kindness, in right relationship - especially financial right relationship - in these times, and I notice curiosity about whether my plans will land for readers as ungrounded, reasonable, exciting; or a bit of al of that.
I don’t know where I first met the term right relationship - where we met each other - but it must have sunk itself into my bones because it’s how I navigate. It is the inner prompt that guides my decisions and against which I adjust my responses, perspectives, and direction.
For those of you that haven’t yet been introduced, right relationship, as I hold it, is beautifully described here:
I fell in love with right relationship because of its wholeness: that it holds as sacred both our inner and outer worlds; not as dualistic, but in relationship, entwined, the one affecting the other and the other being affected by it in return. With the perspective of right relationship, my gut instincts, my body, and my feelings are my signals. I know I am out of right relationship through how I feel in my body, in my heart, my feelings; in the same way, these direct me back towards right relationship.
A Cellular Rearrangement
For the last few months, I’ve been in an intense flare-up of health issues I’ve navigated for over twenty-five years. As much as I hate these flare-ups, I find that during them my perspectives, beliefs, and relationships are alchemised into new possibilities, pathways, and perspectives. It’s like these flair-ups rearrange me on a cellular level.
During this recent flare-up, I found myself in internal dialogue about financial right relationship, facing the ways I am more in financial wrong relationship than right, and wrestling with the fact that money and security so strongly impacts who I get to work with and the relationship I have with my clients and colleagues. When it comes to living my life as a participant in (and beneficiary of) dominant global systems, I often feel in wrong relationship. I am daily aware of how my financial choices impacts individuals and communities I can see (and those I can’t), the ecosystems we rely on, and the planet that offers us solid ground to walk to.
When wrestling with money, every option I could envision to right myself meant choosing a life that was too physically, emotionally, or financially tough for someone with complex and costly health issues. I can give some of my time for free alongside charging other clients; but this is what I’ve been doing for the last few years and it has led me to burnout. I could move more into gift economy, but I’ve tried that and it hasn’t arrived. I could limit my life, or withdraw fully from current systems, but I want to be a useful and active member of my communities and do work that might help lead us towards a more beautiful world.
The experiment I am now entering seems to offer me a path that will hopefully cover my core needs, enable me to do the work I am deeply in love with, and bring me closer to right relationship. It’s an experiment of two halves: paired, in-relationship, each half affecting the other; just as right relationship is.
An Experiment of Two Halves
1. Something Bird Income
I am currently the only Director of Something Bird Ltd in the UK, where all my freelance and project-related income lands, such as my freelance consulting and facilitation through Open Facilitation, which I am a founding member of, and my income as a partner at Nestr.
Something Bird income is my main income. The amount of income through Something Bird is a conversation with each client and partner and the intention is to arrive at an exchange that leaves us all feeling in right relationship.
You will find Something Bird Ltd company details here on the Companies House site and you can read about my work on my website, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
2. Seaspray Collective
The second half of the experiment is setting up the Seaspray Collective, a donation-based non-profit collective situated on a fully-transparent fiscal host: Open Collective.
Seaspray clients will be:
Groups and communities devoiced and harmed by our dominant global systems, the kind of groups and communities that wouldn’t normally have access to consultant and facilitation services or the information and knowledge I have been privileged to have been able to study, explore, and practice.
Non-profit groups, communities, and organisations committed to community-led, stewardship-based systems and structures, such as applying Eleanor Ostrom’s principles for managing organisations and communities as a commons, Doughnut Economics, or community building and activism.
These groups, communities, and organisations will have to have fair and transparent finances so that I can best try to ensure that these donations and subscriptions are utilised as they should be.
I will allocate my time to the above clients at the hourly rate set by The Living Wage Foundation. At this time of writing, the hourly living rate outside of London in the UK is 10.90 GBP per hour. I will also expense any basic travel and accommodation costs, such as third-class train tickets, coach tickets, bus tickets, or (if necessary) flying coach, along with a simple food and drink allocation. (I will try to minimise travel and accommodation but working in person in a group can be much more impactful than working via Zoom.)
Considering the rising cost of living in the UK due to decisions being made by the ruling political party, I cannot imagine that anyone can survive in the UK on 10.90 GBP per hour. The fact is that many people earn less than that, since the minimum wage in the UK is lower. When I was pondering what felt like the right way to do this, looking to the current living wage was the best starting point. It gives me enough income to ensure that I can allocate some my work-focused capacity to Seaspracy clients but isn’t leaving me with no income at all.
All money generated through donations and subscriptions will be made fully traceable: who benefits from it, the rate of the services offered, and the activities of the time allocated. Anyone can see the accounts by going to Seaspray’s Open Collective page. I’ll also post three-monthly updates here on Substack (and for my patrons) about subscriptions and gifts raised and how they’ve been allocated to clients, as well as reflections and adjustments as I learn from this experiment.
I imagine that if, in the future, my Something Bird income covers more than meeting my needs, I will shut down the gifts and subscriptions that form the second half of this financial experiment, and instead increase the amount of my time I give for free to include the client work that the gifts and subscriptions are intended to enable.
A Fully Transparent Fiscal Host
A fiscal host is a way for community groups, grassroots movements, or non-profits to utilise the banking system without creating their own legal entity or opening their own bank account.
I have chosen to open an account with All for Climate because it’s based in the EU, it has lower fees than the other hosts I know of (at 3%), and because one of its founders, Leen Schelfhout, is a very close friend and partner in Open Facilitation. I trust her implicitly: her motivations, her actions, and her perspectives. And, importantly, she keeps answering my questions as I navigate utilising a fiscal host for the first time with (seemingly) never-ending patience.
Through All For Climate, Seaspray Collective gets access to a bank account and office records. All For Climate then creates an account for me on the fully transparent Open Collective, a legal status and money management platform.
I was going to set up an Open Collective account in my name but when I talked it through with Leen she thought that others might want to offer their time this way too, so I have set it up as a collective so it’s ready growth (if that happens). If trusted colleagues are inspired to join Seaspray, we’ll have to clarify the Seaspray Collective agreements to ensure best practice in choosing clients to work with and to work with each member’s living wage (I’m sure it’s different in the UK than in Belgium, for example). Changes like this will be available to see on Open Collective and will be shared via Substack.
Sources of gifts and subscriptions:
Substack paid subscriptions
Patreon subscriptions
Gifts directly into Open Collective
Gifts via Seaspray’s crypto wallet: 0x915f6bfd244c245be0c100E0f3ae6Fe4D7b888DF
An Experiment
As I write this article, it lands as right that just as right relationship is of two halves, my financial income will be of two halves. I’m curious to see how this experiment unfolds. I’m curious to see if it will open up new pathways and opportunities I cannot see, or whether along the way I’ll stumble into hidden fissures or meet dangerous animals.
Thank you. For witnessing this contract, for giving me your attention when there are so many things that tug at our attention insistently and consistently, and for weaving a new constellation with me: you and I, in relationship, discovering what’s alive here.
Thank you so much for reading my articles on Substack. Please feel free to share.
Free and paid subscribers receive the same Substack content but if you feel excited and financially able to support the Seaspray Collective through a paid Substack subscription that is very much appreciated. Paid subscriptions enable me to work with groups and organisations that are disadvantaged and devoiced by our current dominant systems at no cost to them. You can read more about the Seaspray Collective here.