Preface: this is my series of RAW and UNEDITED daily posts for NaNoWriMo. It’s going to be extremely imperfect, lauden with grammatical and spelling errors, but brimming with potential. I post it mostly for myself, but invite any daring souls to try and keep up with the winds that blow me to tomorrow :wind_face:.

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Day 101 (NaNoWriMo Part 24)

Littlewood Academia

SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE

A gentle vibrations slowly wakens me from my slumber. The sun has not even risen yet, but as a proud and promiment member of the 5AM club, my duty calls everyday. I have switched over from a phone alarm to a silent smartwatch with vibrates every morning at the same time. It is quiet enough to not wake up my partner who yet again lays in bed with disheveled hair and drooling like they are their own lake, but in courtesy for them and myself no longer being shaken away so violently by loud noises, I opted for this. I slowly get up and rub my eyes a bit to adjust for the minimal amounts of light in the room, and slowly get out of bed, get dressed, and begin to make my way to campus to make my rounds.

I step outside, and various streelights adorn the sidewalk. The neighborhood is unlike most where everyone has their own cars and driveways; instead, it’s a bunch of houses with spacious back and front yards which are beautiful connected all by sideways. Bikes instead of cars litter the backyard, but most are put away as the day has yet to start for many. As I step outside, I hear the crunching of new-fallen snow under my feet. I breathed outward, and the condensation of my breathe creates a small cloud before my face briefy until it fades into null-existence. No matter how old I get, this trick is never not satisfying. After breathing a couple more times into my hands, and I stick them into my well-worn but still well-mainting winter jacket, and crunch my way over to the main campus.

The main campus is only a short walk away from the community collection of houses. Littletown Town is founded on land bought for cheap in a remote part of the United States with a sparsely populated locale. It is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of city life, but I like it more, because it’s more open and it feels like I can breathe here. There is nature abound and in plenty, and I try my best to ensure that the land we settle down lives with the existing nature as opposed to tramping onto of it. Pretty soon I’ll be pushing for tiny home in trees as the new norm.

In the segment of Littlewood Town between the tiny homes and the campus is a series of mom-and-pop stores. They are constructure of the same template that the tiny houses are, but instead hold shop gear and items for sale instead of home abode apparatuses. The motto of Littlewood Town is to reduce, reuse, and recycle. The two most popular stores are the bicycle repair shop with takes orders in for new bikes and fixes old ones for cheap, and the other stores is the general clothing store. Most clothing is created locally to try and minimalize outside exports so we can become more-or-less self-sufficient. The toiletries store and grocery stores (notice, plural) are also two other popular storefronts in town. Oh, and the Import-Export store. They ship out and recieve external items that aren’t bikes, but random things orderely online from private sellers instead of the global hydra known as Rainforest. Oh, and a book store, book stores are great.

Once passing through the current closed-down shops, a bit of the dawn breaks over the treelines. Littlewood town is sitauted in a middle of a forest, with winding roads leading up and down to our flat platueo of land. The air here feels richer where we are closer to the stars, and certainty makes for fantsatic hikes and other community events where we can peer over our mountaintop to the nature out in the distance and below. Once the initial lights of dawn paint over the campus, the first place it radiates is the campus. This is the Creative’s Campus, a place of learning for the smallest child to th most withered and gizzered oldie. Learning is for everyone and learning is a lifelong passion, and that’s the theme I wish to push here. Each building of the campus is lovingly constructured to represent a theme in mind, and subdivied further based on that theme’s intention. Right now we have the Creative’s Guild, the Adventurer’s Guild, the Merchant’s Guild, the Wanderer’s Guild, and the Fighter’s Guild.

The Creative’s Guild is a mismosch of buildings colorfully splayed together with one side of the building being a floor-to-windom glass stucture to let the sunlight flood into the communty room. Filled in every which way is studios of various art styles, from creative writing to pottery making to painting and everything in betwee, the Creative’s Guild is always up to some sort of mischief. Smaller indie performances take place in the theather within, with acting and music being the most frequent resevers of the space. Creative’s explore within to produce content for the outside, and opposed to their foil, the Adeventurer’s Guild.

The Adventuer’s Guild fellows have a building somewhere in the realm between a tavern of old and sports bar of new. In place of food or drink always lies opportuity for new friendship to emerge, so the chefs and gourmets always have a field day here. Adventurer’s go out to explore the the wider world of content already created, and disect it into worthwhile and shareable bites to also fuel the imagination of the residents here. In these comradity halls lies the infamous quest board, a place where informal requests are pplaced when one resident needs help from another. One good turn deserves another, and a vast number of these quests don’t have tangible rewards placed at completiton. It makes for all the better, favors return when you most need them and least expect them are some of the best feelings in the world, it is a comforting feeling insinuating that people are looking out for you when you aren’t looking after yourselves sometimes. Partying up for videogames is also a favorite recurring even here, an evolution of the Surprise Saturdays of old, it’s always a party and a gameshow here at the Adventurer’s Guild.

The Merchant’s Guild is a humble treasury responsible for the collecting of community funds and using it for create better settlements, it looks a bit like a cafe because discussion of business should always be done over delicious drinks. Aspriting merchants who wish to see the world and sell wares also have a program for doing such, because as safe and cozy and this mount plateu is, there is so much to see and do in the world outside. As much of the world is connected digitally now (we have a fantastic Internet Service Provider created exclusively for the town in order to continue bolstering our self-suffiency), the battle of merchants takes place not only in person, but online. The economies of scale and opportunities over yonder are quite overwhelming at first, but with our fast learner and innovaters, the merchants here are able to buy and sell wares to the benefit of Littlewood Town. Cryptocurrency is also the favored currency type of the Merchant’s Guild: again to bolster our self-sufficiency, we decided to focus our efforts on a currency that is permissionless, highly avaiable, and highly distrubtable. The tenets of cryptocurrency fall in line with most of Littlewood Town, so this was a no-brainer for adoption.

The Wanderer’s Guild explore the facets of nature and humanity through their library-like observatory structure, and works together with the Creative’s and Adventurer’s guild to form crazy sci-fi experieriments of the future. As great as e-book readers are, there is a certain kind of magic to having a large emporium of a library. Books are amazing contructs, they hold the voices of people long gone, but still very much alive through their words, and as words are the condesment of human thought and discovery, makes for a very eye-opening and riveting events. The library section of the wanderer’s guild is a several-story edificice, with the central help desk located at the bottom floor. The center of the floor has a giant opeing to all the floors above, and through the bottom floor you can see the themes and energy of every floor above, a tower of sorts decided to the cornucipa of covered conversations. The higher one climbs, the older and older books are shown, as it has been dictated by the council that old knowledge is invaliable, and what puts us closer to the stars. At the top floor of the library, however is the observatory and experimatpon labs. The observatory is the composed of a giant composed alweays pointhing outwards, signaling that no matter how smart we feel now, there is alwya a great unknown and canyon of knowledge we have yet to cross. It is also a very scenic locale for star-crossed lovers (pun intended, but not as dangerous).

The Fighter’s Guild, a cross between a gym and a dogo, both open-aired and interior, trains both the young and old the martial arts of old. Though not wishing for conflict, by human nature it is the inevitablity of things, so I would like my residents to at least have a fighting chance should warring forces appear at our doorstep. The fight is also against the sedentary neature of developer words, to fight for the peak performance of your body is a ongoing battle with no end. Martial Arts of various cultures and disciplined are practiced here, and regularly sparred against each other to improvement the fighting prowess of eaech fighter. In addition to the gym and dojos, there is always a zen garden located at the exterior of the Fighter’s Guild. The battle outside has just as much to do with the battle inside, and mindfulness is the name of the game here for readjusting our scope and re-centering outselves with the crazyness that is today.

Community is one of the biggest aspects of Littlewood town, too. Whenever feasible, I try to add as many orphans as possible. They have had the misfortune of losing everything that was once their everything, and I want to show that no matter where you go, there will always be people aroudn who will gladly consider you their family. My plan was also to add as many shelther animals as possible from around the country as the surplus and old animals eventualy have to be put down to make space in the shelther for new residents. There was a surprisingly shortage of furry friedns during the pandemic of long ago, but as times return to normal, so did the less-than-stellar aspects too. Each orphan would be given their own animal, and through taking care of another living being that loves you for you and nothing else, it builds a resposible of responsibly and trust too. Also the idea of everyone walking around with their dogs and cats was a highly pleasant prospect for me. The idea of having lots of orphans come into the town was part 4 of my master plan of creating a community from scratch. Part 1 was finding like-minded individuals, Part 2 was finding ex-convincts with potential and giving them a chance to restart their life with meaning, and Part 3 was the same as part 2 but with homeless people. Both ex-convincts and homeless people are the fringes society forgotten, neglected, and dehumanized just for falling out, and that kind of disrespect does not sit right with me. I believe in second chances, and through giving second chances, hope that the people who were the damned of yesterday becoem the proponents of change and leaders of tomorrow. There is a LOT of hurdles to overcoming this vast dream, but once it works out, I imagine that I could maybe have these new nice people adopt kids too, and create new families. It’s all a lovely dream completely forgetting the terrible sides of humanity, but the challenge here is to believe in this vision until the end.

The culture of learning is also my favorite aspect of this town. Unlike the traditions of old that force kids to go to public and private school to churn out not indepent and free thinking adults, but moldable employees for big-wig corporations, I was pretty sick and tired of that being the only way to living a half-decent life. Indentured servitude to the dreams of robber barons of today seemed like an unfuflling life, so I wanted to change that. Let people discover what it is that they are good at, awful at, and give as many opportunties as possible to fill as many nichle roles as possible. As everyone is more or less equal, there is none of this nonsense presitge of being a “good” career like doctor, lawyer, astronaut, king. The values of your contributions is measured by the dedication of your craft to help others (though doctor is still one of the better and more respected profession in this sense).

As I make my way to the main campus, I shuffle around in my pockets to find the key to officially open up the campus. Locking up the building is not becasue I don’t trust the resident, but rather as preventive measures to stray animals and possibly outside troublemakers entering the small town. As I enter the key and turn it to open the main administration building, a younger man just shy of adulthood turns the corner and waves excitedly over as he sees me. He scurries over and eagerly awaits for me to open the door.

“Back again so early? Kids like you should be asleep, ya know”

“Kid? I am a CREATIVE, teach, and creativity never sleeps, it just takes breaks.”

The young man beams in delight at his pride, and I give him a quick headpat with my mitton hands.

“Well, no time like the present to start building for the future, right?”

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Today’s word count: zzz words
Total word count until today: zzz words

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@mariasokolowska @michellebasey @sabweld @philkastelic @nicolaworley @ParisaR @sydneydobersteinlarock @wildcat @dragon @homeroom11