Got Stability?!

It’s Ben here writing this to you on Friday the 19th of December at 10:07am. I'm currently sitting at my parents kitchen table, where are you? I hope you're feeling good and looking forward to a break.

I have just returned from a walk I often do when I'm visiting Cornwall between Poltesco and Cadgwith. It was raining all day yesterday but the clouds float lighter in the sky today and vivid blue seeps out from in-between them. I saw a seal, five ponies and many birds whilst walking along the coast. The waves moved underneath the surface of the water at a heavy, lumbering pace and exploded when they fell upon the rocks.

This year has been a tumultuous one for me (as well as probably 99% of everyone else) and one that has forced me to examine some of my priorities when it comes to life and work. After what could be quite appropriately described as a burnout, I took a step back from everything. I quit, I postponed, I dropped out, I became reliably unreliable. Cut loose from responsibilities, I would like to describe that time as good and free, which in part it was. But my professional quitting was done out of a necessity.

Since it happened I've taken to doing more things at home, not only because I'm socially tired but because I think it's important that I spend a large quantity of my day looking out the window at the birds in the trees and watching the clouds pass by in the sky.

Unfortunately, staring out the window won't pay my rent and after spending several years in relative financial stability, I am now back to drifting, unanchored from income streams, and only able to stay afloat because of savings. Yet still, I feel it is more important than ever to gaze out of windows as well as climb, surf and walk (i.e not work) as much as possible. I bought a Playstation 5, which for me is the height of unproductivity and prioritised play.

I feel the acute pressure to earn a living and to contribute bearing down on me but I just want to go to the beach all the time. What’s changed? Has my motivation left me? Will it return and soon I’ll be back on track or am I now traveling to a different destination entirely?

Back in 2021, I read an article by Kate Davis Jones titled Making Space for Fun Under Capitalism. It's about the author's new found interest in surfing and how the structure of her life changes over time to prioritise it as an activity alongside the doubt of whether it makes sense to do so.

Surfing is something quite close to my heart. When in the sea floating around, paddling and occasionally riding a wave, I enter into a different mode of being that isn’t afforded to me in my Normal Life. Surfing involves attention, resilience, agility, and a commitment to play. When I’m doing it, I’m not doing anything else. Sometimes I wonder what if I just stopped doing everything else and just surfed?

“It felt wrong—or somehow overly self-indulgent—to focus on surfing. I had the college education and the handful of skills. I was supposed to be making the world a better place or whatever, not selfishly spending every spare moment chasing waves.”

Four years of riding that ambiguous wave of "development", I was the most financially stable I had ever been and, at the same time, the least mentally stable I had ever felt. I woke up with anxiety every morning and I couldn't sleep at night. I had successfully become the Cultural Worker that art school had taught me to be.

Recently, I’ve begun to slowly pick back up the things I want to do and say no or maybe to everything else. Whilst I feel the ability to do so, I've taken time to think about how I want to work in the future. I’ve written a few times about how I want to feel immersed in what I do and that impulse still stands. The feeling of only doing one thing, all bodily senses combined. It's not something that comes easily when work consists of a desk, a chair and a laptop. But occasionally, given the right circumstances, it hits. Something similar to surfing, to jumping into a lake, to swimming in a pool.

Soon at Extra Practice we'll begin piloting The Pool, an income sharing model that should stabilise our individual practices with a baseline wage. This year I’ve had a complicated relationship to stability. I’ve been wondering why we feel the need for it, what areas of our lives do we feel need to be stable and what areas are we happy to keep on a looser leash. And, importantly, what comes after stability?

After spending quite some time thinking about the possibilities and pitfalls of stability, I thought what better way to understand it than through the eyes of those around me. So I asked Extra Practice what they hoped financial stability would bring each of them as an individual and to us as a group. Here is what they said:

Individually, I'm in the lucky situation that stability is not really something I need from the Pool, thanks in part to semi-regular teaching jobs. Collectively though, I do have clear Pool hopes. In short, that stability will create more space for art, play, self-initiation. Earlier this year we decided to focus our ‘XP maturing’ efforts first on stabilising our individual practices. As long as some of us are drowning in work or money stress it is a bottleneck for collective work. Future dreams sound scary, hopes become tasks, plans get postponed. From my position of relative stability I often feel like I want to go faster, do more, realise all of our dreams! Let's divide those responsibilities, set the plans and let all flowers bloom. At the same time I don't want my hastiness to create a dynamic of collaboration that would center just my desires. My Pool hope is that collective financial stability creates space to temporarily forget the next invoice, space where desires can breathe. I just want us all to not feel stressed and do things we desire, and to be swimming in this energy.

What mostly excites me about the pool is not so much having a secure monthly income, but what it could mean for the potential of Extra Practice. I really believe in this space and what it could become. We have so many ideas laying around, we have the tools and talents and creativity and curiosity and commitment, and a community of people ready to take part! But I think the fragility of our individual freelance lives has often stood in the way of exploring that collective potential. If paid jobs didn't always get priority over the XP newsletter, maybe we would have had 12 newsletters this year instead of 6. Maybe we would even have done printed issues, and weekly radio hangouts, and monthly presentations, screenings, and a breakfast club, etc etc!!

So for me, financial stability would mean taking care of the group together, feeling confident that we’re all surviving each month. My hope is that reducing individual precarity frees up a little more time, energy, and courage for experimenting, hosting, publishing, collaborating, and expanding whatever lovely thing we’ve started building here. I don’t know if it will, but to at least fully try it feels bold and important!

The extreme ebbs and flows of income within a freelance existence (one month a few thousand, the next month nothing, etc.) makes it difficult to plan ahead, to invest in the future. Simple things, booking a holiday, planning trips home, or buying a piece of equipment for your practice become daunting when you do not know how much you will earn in the coming months. More recently I have noticed how much this financial strain affects my mental wellbeing.

Within this paradigm it is hard to see beyond it. My hope is that working together to create some financial stability and regularity will ease this burden, and allow us to see into yet to be defined futures. Practically I hope it allows me to understand what I can afford to do and work towards. I am also curious to see what it does to moments where we have less work on. Will it ease pressure to find more work, safe in the knowledge it’s coming in the future, allowing us to explore seemingly mundane ideas? Or will it encourage us to find more work that supports the group allowing us to celebrate in the now collective successes?

I’m distant about my opinion for stability in a working life environment, and what type of stability would be the way to achieve what I desire, probably ‘cause I haven’t tamed the idea and haven’t yet suffered the lack of it.

Does personal stability consist of the equilibrium points and periodic orbits that you unknowingly cultivate, autonomously of pecuniary issues ? Financial stability would not be the capacity of remaining in some condition or position in spite of influences, but having the possibility of financially supporting decisions you make. Would I then touch the consistency of possibilities, understand the bearings, the dimensions of my reachability and zone of range of inclinations, and not feel suspended or withholding ? The eye of a hurricane can appear clear, filled with low clouds, or obscured by the central dense overcast, especially in weaker storms. It may seem calm. Its trajectories will then change status, from eventualities to possibilities and the hurricane will keep his eye in the center while his reach fluctuates with ease, sliding through the atmosphere and not scraping and triturate itself. Blessed are the phenomena, which do nothing but soak up entirely what constitutes them, always in a sheepfold, a stable, not safe, but protected.

can i start charging for writing website proposals?
what happens beyond financial freedom? once we have stability, what then?
are we addicted to talking about money? as xp, as a culture?
if we were all investment bankers and money was not the issue, what would the pool be about?
everything is about money. nothing is about money.
did you know you'll get 1 euro off if you bring your cup to the cafe hotel next door?
as an american, maybe i have a complicated relationship with money. as an american, maybe i can't treat it lightly.

recently i dropped my phone is the toliet. the repair shop took the entire phone apart and cleaned it thoroughly. when i picked it up, the repair shop guy said, "just so you know water corrosion will come back. it could come back a day from now or a year from now." i laughed but he was serious.

While writing this I really needed to continuously remind myself to not question how the financial stability is reached and simply think about what I’d hope it leads to. Maybe this is partly because if we’d consider the fixed monthly wage coming in from the pool as the stable factor, my hope is that working with that pushes me to keep tabs on my expenses more precisely as well. Gaining more control over my finances seems both a cause and consequence in that sense. Beyond that I’d hope that it will be easier to plan longterm and feel the freedom (in the Hanian way with “ties that set us free”^1) to spend time doing things we care about. And of course finally start saving up for my pension (you hear that Dad?).

We are pleased to share that the editorial team published our article on the platform: https://www.are.na/editorial/pools-for-conviviality. Words by Kirsten Spruit and Gijs de Boer, illustrations by Jack Bardwell, all in collaboration with everyone from XP. Many thanks to Meg Miller and Amirio Freeman for editing the piece and all the support!
Jack will be working with .ZIP on the development of their space in the new year and with Sophie Allerding on her exciting ceramic installation at Art Rotterdam. In the new year he wants to work on more exhibition projects, so get in touch if you are a curator/producer/artist and have a project in mind.
Ben has been interviewing people about Rural Technology, you can find the recordings here, here and here. Next year, he wants more web/programming projects - send him an email if you want a situated website.
At XP, we’re trying to figure out how to legally try out income-pooling. Anyone know a good creative bookkeeper we could have a chat with?

For the locals on this side of the Atlantic who couldn’t make it to the launch last week in NYC, we are throwing a launch event at Extra Practice on Friday January 16th. More info soon.