How often do you live in true alignment with your personal values? Does the current ‘social construct’, as you perceive it, support or interfere with that?
And how do you “attribute value to” things in life such as: time, skills, experience, information, creativity, wisdom?
As we begin 2026, I’m about to try an experiment – to offer my work as an educator to the homeschool community on a Pay What You Can basis. It’s not that I can ‘afford’ to financially – I’m homeless (temporarily housed) and live minimally (well below the official ‘poverty line’), but still have bills I need to pay, and I have no regular income. These last few years have been a relentless process of stripping back, letting go of many things I once valued most – loved ones, places, beliefs & notions of self, stability – helping me to examine the most essential expressions of value in my life.
I’ve struggled all my life to shoehorn my many creative skills into the ‘monetary value’ system, while remaining tenaciously committed to my most authentic sense of self, to living with integrity and self-determination, and my lifelong motivation to contribute inspirational energy to the world. I’ve attacked the problem of ‘monetary value’ from so many angles it’s really not at all amusing. I’m 60, and it’s just too exhausting to keep throwing myself at that particular wall. Like many autistics, all I actually want in this world is just to Be, which is often misunderstood as self-indulgence; for me it includes sharing my abilities with others through teaching.
My choice to try this experiment is a response to many things I’ve been observing within myself, and the world around me over the last 18 months in particular. Forces of change are on the move, regardless of whether we choose to move with them or rail against them. I’m on the side of positive social change, of the human capacity for values that truly support living well together. Any one of us can choose to set our personal compass in that direction, and every day offers us that opportunity.
But it’s no Utopian fluff – it requires challenging ourselves at the deepest levels, it requires gumption, honesty, radical trust, vulnerability and strength beyond ‘the usual’, the capacity to step willfully like Capn Jack Sparrer straight into the gaping jaws of Uncertainty and say “Hello Beastie”….
An Invitation to reconsider Value
Here’s a little story about surrendering to the Unknown, living in faith, and human openheartedness, and a big reason I’m trying this Pay What You Can experiment.
In Oct / Nov of 2025 I took myself to the South Island of Aotearoa / New Zealand for 3 weeks. It was a radical thing for me to choose at the time – back in Tassie, I was homeless, had barely enough money to pay for my flight & campervan hire, and I’ve only travelled outside of Australia once before, more than two decades ago. In part I was going to see my daughter, who had moved there in March, and I missed her very much; but I also felt a calling from the place itself. Although I had been managing my homelessness fairly well as a fulltime housesitter, something in me was agitated and dissatisfied, treading water, and challenging me to push even deeper into Uncertainty in order to grow.
Many people take travel for granted, especially if they’re well-funded (in which case, they often take many things for granted). I was shocked at the levels of fear that surfaced in me at all stages of the journey, from preparation to return. Financial, logistical, emotional, sensory & social….I had already been living on faith as an Unhomed person for almost a year, yet now this was being turned up to 11 on the dial.
In the months before my journey, partly to open up possibilities for income, and also out of a genuine desire to contribute rather than be a tourist, I tried to ascertain whether I could offer my workshops to schools as a visitor, and what sort of safety checks I would need in order to work with children (as we have in Australia). In fact, I was even happy to offer my workshops for free – I love teaching and autistically it’s one way I can feel comfortable connecting with community.
The education dept weren’t able to answer my questions with any clarity, so I let it go. Then in the last week before I was to fly out, I reflected on how my most recent Tassie workshops in Oct had been almost entirely attended by homeschooling (and predominantly neurodivergent) kids.
I did some quick research and found that, like Tassie, New Zealand has a large network of homeschooling communities. I emailed a few homeschooling groups on the Sth Island, explained my (very) loose itinerary, and offered free ‘pop-up’ workshops to anyone who felt like organising (at short notice) a venue and a group of kids.
Well! It was such a delight when two mums from different communities responded with enormous enthusiasm, and excitedly proceeded to organise two separate workshops each for the first week of my visit – 4 workshops of 12 to 16 kids in each, ranging in age from 8 to late teens. As it turned out, the attending families were almost all from Christian faith communities (of various perspectives), and a large number of the children were neurodivergent.
The workshops were all an absolute delight, the kids were really engaged & happy, but what really had an impact on me was the incredible openheartedness, warmth & welcome, generosity and sincere appreciation that radiated from both the parents and the kids. Several parents described their feelings of isolation as homeschoolers and how starved they were for interesting learning opportunities for their kids. One young boy with an obviously autistic passion for drawing announced “This is the first art class I’ve ever been to!”.
All of this love would have been reward enough in itself, and the positive energy we generated collectively was powerful. But I was completely taken by surprise when, at the end of the first workshop, I was introduced to the Maori practice of koha.
In a yoghurt tub decorated with cutout love hearts and ‘Thank You!’ written lovingly on the lid, was a bundle of notes and coins – superficially, a collection of donations, but according to koha, imbued with much deeper meaning, and I felt the energy of the intention powerfully. It brought me to tears many times over.
For one thing, the koha had been gathered and its container decorated prior to my arrival, before I (a complete stranger) had delivered any service – apart from whatever they gleaned from this website, they had no idea what quality I might provide, or what ‘value’ I would normally place on it. Their trust & appreciation preceded the event, and this energy passed into their gift. And because I had originally offered from the heart, their gift felt more like a reciprocation of heartfulness than a payment or exchange for ‘services rendered’ – closer to the spirit of koha.
While I didn’t assume it would happen again, I was also presented with koha at the three subsequent workshops. The flow of generosity & kindness in meeting these people continued to resonate for the remaining two weeks of my travels. And without their koha – which averaged around $300 each workshop – I would not have had enough money for food & petrol to complete my journey.
The experience showed me yet another way to trust the process, surrender control, and remain open to unexpected possibilities.
So now, back in Tassie and living even deeper below the poverty line, I’m choosing to surrender to it more by offering Pay What You Can. I’m not asking for koha as I don’t feel ‘culturally qualified’, but I do want to invite people to think about how they apply value, how they might shift from a model of exchange to a model of sincere reciprocal appreciation.
I have a wealth of creative skills, abilities, insights and lived wisdom to share – 60 years worth, in fact, and the totality of my Being is my currency…it’s all I have, and all I want is the opportunity to get on with what I’m here to do, and to thrive in doing it, unimpeded.
To book for the Lenah Valley 9-week Creative Drawing group in Term 1, email Fiona: fiona.lohrbaecher@gmail.com
For more information or questions about the program, or anything else I do, email me: bradfield@bradfielddumpleton.com
On a musical note:
Another way I’ve creatively transmuted my process of homelessness (and accompanying spiritual growth) is by documenting it in music. From January to July 2025, I recorded the Tasmanian Primitive series – 13 albums of improvised acoustic guitar instrumentals, responding to each new environment as I moved from house-sit to house-sit around the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and Huon Valley. In keeping with the themes of movement & being in the Now, the styles roam and meander in many musical directions, weaving elements of traditional fingerstyle folk, blues, American Primitive, classical, ambient minimalism, experimental abstraction and jazz. Environmental recordings from each locality (especially birdsong) are featured as well. If you want to help support me and original Tasmanian music, you can donate $10 or more at bradfielddumpleton.bandcamp.com to download any album from the series, or from the rest of my back catalogue documenting my musical adventures since 2005. You can also read about, and listen to, most of these earlier recordings here.
And an on-the-other-Footnote:
The Australian poverty line for a single adult is currently defined (as of 2025) as $584 / week. These figures are arrived at AFTER HOUSING COSTS have been deducted. (https://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/poverty/)
Centrelink payments for a single person are $205 below the poverty line, and as of this writing – without rent to deduct from my calculations – I survive on less than Centrelink payments. Thanks to some recent extraordinary generosity, I now have a temporary home for the next 6 months, rent-free though I do need to contribute $100/wk towards utilities. In 14 months I’ve relocated 25 times, so this is the most stable housing I’ve had for over a year.
Loss of stability, being homeless and without income is more prevalent than our culture cares to acknowledge, it can happen to anyone at any time, and it doesn’t always look like desperation, squalor and defeat. In fact, a lot of us just learn to tolerate the strain and remain invisible, adapting through superhuman resourcefulness. I prefer to speak openly about it not out of victimhood but because, like so many problems of human conscience, it needs looking at, talking about and acting on – the responsibility is with all of us to shape the narrative.