• As a tween, I watched The Waltons and noodled about how smart and supportive their multi-generational common house was; the older folks were able to contribute and also have the support they needed, the parents had many helping hands, and the children had the security of more adults to rely on. Living in an extended family seemed far more balanced than the nuclear family models all around me, which tended to result in too much responsibility being carried by the mother.
• As a teenager, I read In This House of Brede (see Diana Rigg's great performance), and I was deeply moved by Phillipa's letting go of her glamorous professional life and dreamy apartment in order to join the deep sisterhood of a cloistered Benedictine community. I seriously considered becoming a Franciscan sister.
• I commuted far to college and was socially isolated, but I stayed in graduate housing at UT Austin for my master's degree. Living with other graduate students from all over the country and the world, I learned how suite-style living with shared common spaces made for easy and ample companionship, and the shared meals in the dining hall were a wonderful way to enjoy that diversity of people. I was aware that it worked so well because we were all graduate students, so we shared a lot of traits (such as introversion), values, and interests. We were a tribe.
• When I joined my first software startup company, several of the founders shared a large house, and several of the single programmers lived there as well. I envied the easy, fun lifestyle they shared. And the longer I worked in software shops, the more I realized that I enjoyed them because of the type of people who tended to work there, much like graduate school, and wouldn't it be nice to extend that environment outside of work hours? to live with your tribe?
• I reconnected with an old coworker who, depressed, had quit his job and traveled broadly. Seeing him years later, I found him greatly transformed, and I learned that he had been living communally in the local Zen center for over a year. I was amazed at the benefits he'd gotten from Buddhism and from living intentionally. I wanted what he had.