start

The project - commoning problems

Each person from the group share a problem they would like to commonise
The group becomes one avatar who has all those problems
The avatar was born on 17/02/2022 and will live until 05/05/2022
The group / the avatar finds ways to live with / solve / grow out of the problems. The aim is to improve the life quality of the avatar (= the life quality of the individuals in the group).
The group will meet every Thursday to reflect on the process and develop it further
The process will be documented and shared with a public on 05/05/2022 (should we call it the funeral day ? :)
A proposition for the Thursday routine

Propositions :

Have a coordinator for each problem
Prepare a doc with a description of each problem and the strategy of how to deal with it. Update the doc every week.
Write the daily diary of the avatar (pad? hotglue? other?)
Build a narrative around the life of the avatar (name, background, characteristic, etc..) that is somehow a combination of you all
4 hours Thursday meetings with Adva (14h - 18h): March 17th, April 21st, May 5th

A presentation of the process to public: May 5th at 19h

Franky's Big Problems

The 7 problems:

1 I struggle finding stillness, focus, myself.. I mess up my daily planning because I want to do too much and end up doing nothing.

2 I would like to find a new interest but can't develop passion for anything + I feel its too late to start learning something new

3 I miss a sense of permanence. I would like to go back to working and living collectively, but dont manage to bring myself to do it. {KAPITALISM MAKES MY SHITS WEIRD AND RUNNY}

4 I am doing too much and loosing the sense of my own self because of that. I dont know how to give up projects/plans.

5 Morning and night are the most difficult moments of my day. I dont know how to make the right choices in order to feel good during those moments.

6 making contact socially: I have trouble making phone calls, asking people out/to spend time with me.

7 making contact professionally, monetary: how to build on a professional network? how to turn your practice into money, so you don't have to worry(worry less) about side hustles.

Structure:

Check in round 1 - each person talks about how they are in relation to the process. The more transparency and intimacy being shared, the better can the project go deeper
Check in round 2 - each person checks in as the avatar

Each meeting we have a person responsible - MASTER OF CEREMONY
MC's responsability: leading the round, responsible of the time, organizing that notes are being taken
- coordinators talk about their problems based on the diary entries
- HOMEWORK: fill in the dairies!
- 1 problem a day keeps the MC away...
- 10 minutes /problem/meeting
- each meeting 2h, break after 1h, 15 min -> 105minutes
checkin round one 15min
checkin round two 10min
80min
-> 10min/problem + 10min reserve

- Discuss the state of each problem and how to handle it next week
- every meeting gets a protocol, which will be the point of reference for the following meeting (process, development)
-> it would be nice to have a way to trace the process visually!

Coordinators: 1 Joao, 2 Jaco, 3 Seba, 4 Trees, 5 Violette, 6 Noah, 7 Brendan

Check in for yourself ONCE a day to notice, which of the problems you have encountered and take notes. Decide for yourself when, where and how much of a diary entry you take.

-------------------------------------------CHECK IN NOTES--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
03032022
Good (end of the day) ritual
Rewarding
Double happy - acknowledging and apreciating when things went well
Making some problems I never had before my own; discovery of a problem
Mind and decisionmaker came back togheter
Problems shifting : what my 'main' problem was, is now less of a problem and 'someone elses' problem became my problem more and more
I'm taking more and more peace with doing less and canceling some plans
Focussing on the problems I feel most connected with; they often overlap -> It's nice to have this structure of several different problems/topics
I think I still failed to really get into the avatar
Collecting data to shape Franky's profile

10032022
Confession: I didn't write a lot for Franky due to a lot of writing exercises
Felt good about writing on the problems, it took some time and tries to feel that.
Spring washed away alot of problems, when i have a good time it's hard to be busy with the problems
I liked going through other peoples problems more then writing my own experience
You have something in common, you cherish your problems, we share our problems. You're not alone with these problems.
Franky The Farmer wearing overalls (What is Franky, What is Franky not)
The problems are allways there, amplified by circumstances and when the circumstances are not 'problematic' we tend to forget that these problems still exist. Feeling like the problem is gone when you feel good is 'the paradox'.
Writing about the problems allways takes about an hour
I catch myself writing when I'm experiencing the problem

14042022
Didn't find the time, wanted to be busy with it because we only have a few weeks. My day is pretty much filled with things to do and so at the end of the day I find myself trying to find some rest and organize myself mentally, resulting in having no time for Franky.
How can I round it up for myself, how do I feel in this process, what is my role in this project, trying to find the words and the meaning of such problems.
Has been difficult to journal on a daily basis, lost track of time even though I thought about Franky several times.
Miss the practicalities on my issues, I feel that I could be more active in "solving" them or at least act towards a different process that could spark other ideas and/or routines that could enhance the possibilities of the problem.

It hasn’t always been easy for Franky these last couple of months. They had to visualize their problems and share them with every part of Franky. They where confronted with all of these problems almost every day by reading them and writing about it and that sometimes took its toll. Some days Franky lost their discipline because they thought ‘today I feel good so I don’t need to talk about my problems’ which is very understandable. When you feel like having a good day you don’t want to be confronted with problems that get you down again. But maybe we see problems in a too negative context and this is also what Franky learned to understand throughout this process. Sometimes their problems can be not visible or just be irrelevant on other days but Franky learned to talk about that too. And it made them much more connected to their thoughts.

But Franky has been longing for some more rhythm so that they can find this balance back. Because being confronted with their problems makes them confronted with themselves. And this confrontation is terribly annoying but it always gives a lot of satisfaction afterwards. Everything is organized again, is healed. It is like meditation or sports. It is really annoying to start, to get yourself to doing it and you are beging confronted with yourself. But it is an exercise to learn to be with your thoughts and to let them also go.

So I do think that Franky left a big mark and hopefully they will still continue doing that.

To continue this we would love to have future frankies to become limbs of Frankie. This would only make this experiment even more interesting to see how it continues and grows in different groups of people.

To be able to carry on with Frankie we will have to look at the errors that we bumped into and find ways to work these out. So there can be a ready-made plan to start building up a Franky but also what needs to be changed for every different group to make it work should be documented. There can be different ways of documenting.

We encountered that it wasn’t always as easy for everyone to write in the online pads because it can be very tiring after a whole day of working on your computer to find ease by writing about your thoughts and troubles again on a digital format. Some of us used than a personal journal to write further in but then it loses the idea of communalizing problems.
So another interesting way you can approach this is to use an analog format, like a big journal that everyone has enough space to write in it (if you are like Mama Franky who had 7 different limbs). Then every week someone has the journal for the whole week and tries to write in it everyday. On the last day you pass it on to the next person, for instance by mailing it to them. So this you can keep on repeating until the Franky journey is over. In this way you are able to read everyones journaling thoughts when the book is passed on to you and they can afterwards read yours. This method can also solve another error; the arrangement of the physical meet ups. In this way it can be practiced without coming together all at once in the same place. This is also a great method to use in pandemic times ;) ( but maybe also not because then you will not be able to write in it for three days to make sure that all the viruses are dead and by then your week is already half done and )

Anyway… I can say that there are a lot of ways to put together new frankies but it will depend on the group, the dedication, the situation,.. and so on.