I am the perfect Crash Test Dummy, Part 1

I’m TJ. And while I happen to be Loni’s partner in life, it turns out I’m also the perfect crash test dummy for this project. So I’ll be sharing my experiences as an active passenger, as we go from plans to remodeling to adding housemates.

I started calling myself the crash test dummy when we first were seriously considering this project. Why?

Because, compared to most other people I’ve known, I have a very high need for physical and personal privacy. Due in part to how I grew up—large family, no private spaces, no respect for boundaries, my father’s profession requiring me to be a public person and under social scrutiny all the time. And in part due to my nature—I’m an introvert in most circumstances, and an empath who more often feels drained rather than energized being around other people. And I’m also a musician with sensitive hearing whose sleep is disturbed by noises.

My de facto solution has been to have as much private physical space around me as possible. Whenever possible as an adult, I’ve had a bedroom to myself as a creative studio and personal lair. When there was no bedroom available, I improvised: to escape living in a triple dorm room in college I moved myself down into the furnace room of the off-campus house. When I lived in the Hopi village of Lower Moenkopi, Arizona, I moved into the unheated upper floor of a stone barn to have space to myself. We were only eighty miles from the Grand Canyon, so at night it was colder than Hades. And I’m not joking. But it was a respite from the constant social flow in the main building of the old Mennonite mission.

(You could also say that by moving onto the reservation, and down inside a desert wash, I was trying to put as much private physical space around me as possible. Once you left the lower village, if you didn’t go up to Tuba City, you could drive your car or ride your horse for hours and not see buildings or other people. When my Hopi friend Lyle was still alive, he would sometimes loan me a horse, and I would ride all day by myself, soaking up the solitude and feeling my way through the seemingly endless desert .)

So, our thinking goes that if Loni, with input from me, can do space planning that adds two or three new people to our existing house AND gives me enough experience of privacy to be comfortable-- well, you’ve got some good crash test results.