Skye Kimel recommended Jesse to participate here. I had heard of Jesse through mutual friends and had even taken a peek at his small-home development, The Hiatus, last winter, so it was a treat to finally meet him. We had a lovely and lively conversation and I left feeling invigorated. I transcribed the bulk of our conversation for your reading pleasure here, but there are some fascinating off-shoots that you'll have to listen to the audio in order to enjoy. I appreciated so much that Jesse's train of thought was often introspective and void of judgment. My guess would be that we could all take a lesson from that behavior… I know I certainly can.
JR: I am Jesse Russell. I am currently a developer and builder, but I don't think I've ever really identified with my job in the way that it is who I am. I was a reality TV producer for a long time and I never felt like, I'm a reality TV producer. For some reason, I've never been the person that whatever my career is defines who I am as a person. So, I think I'm just a guy that is interested in a lot of different things. And every once in a while something pops up that I get interested in for a really long time.
ACT: What concerns you about the state of the world and humanity? What affects you personally? And what motivates you to do something about it?
JR: I find I don't have as much time to spend with my buddies — with my good friends. One of the things I really love about the friendships that I have is just sitting around and talking and speculating about the world and our lives and how we're moving through it and all of that. Now I have a family, so it's a little bit more difficult to find the time to do that. And I think that's so important for all humans to try to stop and sit and think and wonder about themselves and their part in the world. And that's not a place you get to where you have it al figured out; it's continual change, all the time, for an individual. And, for me, I really value my friends' opinions about that and they've helped me immensely through all kinds of different chapters of life. I find that I don't get enough time to do that. And I think the reason I don't get enough time to do it is the reason a lot of people don't get enough time to do it — we get really obsessed with things easily. I think that's as Americans. You go Europe and they have a little bit better work/life balance. And I've really strived to do that in my life. And as of late, with this development, I haven't really been able to do that. I'm getting back to that place where there's a good balance of time to sit around and think about stuff. I think everyone's moving a little too quick sometimes, including myself.
To me, balance is the whole deal. You don't just attain balance and hold it. It's a lifetime of trying to continue to balance stuff. If I'm working too much, something's going on that's not right 'cause I'm not feeling happy or I'm not feeling like myself or whatever it is. You try to balance it out. You try to find some time to do something else. Or change radically. That's what I did with my career in television. I was like, I'm done with this. I can't do this anymore. And I don't know what it is I'm gonna do, but I need to change this. And that's when I started taking more time to do all the classic... I meditated, I went on yoga retreats, I did ayahuasca in Peru. I was on this search for balance, really. It wasn't even, Who am I? or any of that; it was, How do I balance my life back out so that I'm enjoying my life again?
Ironically, coming to the tiny houses was that. When I built the first tiny house on wheels I had real balance. I was really enjoying being home. I had my friends. I had physical work that I was doing. And it was interesting; I didn't need any of the meditation or self-help books or yoga or any of that at that point because the physical labor of building was giving me this thing. You can't get too existential while you're framing a house. You can think a little bit, but you really have to think where the hammer's going or where the tape measure is and what size things are. And I think that just gave me this meditative thing where I stopped thinking about, Oh, what am I doing in my life? Am I living it right? Should I do this? Should I do that? And that just led to where I am now. Why couldn't I just be happy building one house, living a super simple life? I had to turn it into this big, 22-unit development that we're trying to do now. And now it's gobbled up my life and I don't have balance anymore. Weird.
ACT: What do people mean to you?
JR: I love people. I'm a people person. I think most people would tell you that about me. I'm pretty outgoing. I like to talk to people. I like to hear about their stories and what they're doing and who they are and where they've come from and where they're going. All of that is really interesting. My close friends have just been really good people to not guide me through life, but to be there to talk about how to get through it. I grew up as an only child. It was just me and my mom and she was a bartender, so I spent a lot of time alone. I always thought of that as what helped me to be really independent. But, as of late, I think it affected me in a different way. And the way it affected me was a need to have people around all the time. I'm not very good by myself. I don't like to sit much by myself. I like to have people around. Whether that's a fault or not, I really enjoy having a community and having a family.
Even here, the workers that work here and the investors — it's an amazing group of people that came together to help with this. From the really wealthy that had the money to be part of this to the guys that are framing the houses or painting the houses, it's been a really good group of people. And it feels good to be part of a big project that everyone's working together. And I couldn't do this by myself. And he couldn't do it by himself or she couldn't do it by herself. But together we all put our parts in and it becomes something that's greater than even what I thought it was gonna be. It's a little bit of a cliche now that I'm thinking about it. There are struggles, too, with the people. It's not just like everyone's living in harmony.
ACT: That's what I was just going to ask. What do those people mean to you?
JR: I think I believe that all humans start out good and we've got good in us. I think people can get really confused for various reasons that have to do with even their genetics, but also just the way they've grown up or what they've been taught or how they were informed. So, I tend to try to give people the benefit of the doubt to a certain degree. However, there's a line where it will feel like someone's taking advantage of you or your friends or your family or whatever. And I think when that line's crossed, it's important that there's some action that's taken. I'm not a fighter or anything, but I definitely think that there's times in your life if there's someone that's in the wrong, it's okay to let them know that.
ACT: I define community as our relationships to each other and the world we live in. And most people I've talked to place a lot of value on their relationships. But there's a lot of injustice, so why aren't we doing a great job of showing that value and being considerate of others?
JR: Well, I think there's a human condition problem. There is a human condition that is suffering that has to do with a defined ego. At least in America — and a lot of America has bled out to the rest of the world, too — we're encouraged to really define who we are. We're really encourage to be like, I'm Jesse. I have a family. I live in Bend. I snowboard. I am a developer. I'm left wing. I don't like Trump. I drive a truck. You know, whatever those things are, we're encouraged to define ourselves as much as we possibly can. And once you've done that, it's harder to have empathy for other groups. Because you've defined who you are and maybe who your friends are. I'd like to think I have a pretty diverse friend group, but there's definitely some things that are total similarities. One of those things would be politically. I only have one friend that thinks Trump is a good president, for instance. But when you define your tribe like that, it's really hard to see the other person's reasoning for why they think what they think or they're doing what they're doing. And it's hard to have compassion. If everybody can somehow just remove who they are just a little bit to be able to see other people, I think it would be really helpful. I don't know how you do that.
I think if humans could get to the point where they just relaxed a little bit and were able to be open to other people's... I have friends that are really, really left-winged and they judge other people by that. You couldn't say that you were a Republican in front of some of my friends. They wouldn't even hang out with you. They wouldn't even talk to you. That's the huge problem, right? As soon as you can't have dialogue between people, you can't accomplish any kind of equanimity between groups.
You don't know what that life story is that that person has had. Going to rallies and reading books about it... it's like preaching to the converted. You just have to be open. There's reasons why people are the way they are a lot of times. And sometimes those reasons are really tragic. The more you define your values and your ideals, you're not open to ever questioning your own shit. The more people continue to do that, the less movement you're ever gonna have as far as any kind of innovation or helping the world. It's really cheesy to say it, but why can't everybody just get along? Why is that? It seems kind of weird, right? Why can't we all just be nice to each other? And I think it's because we've defined who we are and what we want and what we're gonna do. And whether we've done that through our life experience and our genes and how we were raised or we just happened to go to college and the friends you got while you were in college believed that or you met some professor who told you about it or whatever the thing is that defined that, if you can't stop and examine why you're thinking those things, it's really difficult to get anywhere with any kind of progress for problems.
ACT: I've been exploring the idea behind the statement of 'you matter'. We're often told that we matter as a message of encouragement or support, but I'm more interested in it as a point of accountability. Your actions are not just affecting you. They matter and you matter because what you do affects all of us. I'm often wondering if someone is doing something intentionally, if they'e doing it intentionally but they are un- or misinformed, or if they're doing it absent-mindedly.
JR: I truly believe we don't know what the fuck we're doing it. I don't think anyone really, really knows. You can look at celebrities or politicians and they have real identity of who they are and we can feel like we know them because we see them in this intimate way — like a television or movie or whatever — but they're going through the same shit. They're defining themselves in some way and that helps them to go, Oh, that's why we're here. That's why religion exists. It's why people buy Lamborghinis when they're 50. All of these things are just to go back to Why the hell are we even here? Why are we humans? Why are we on this Earth? What's the bigger purpose? Humans seem to need to have something that gives them some sort of purpose.
And that comes out in all kinds of different ways. That can come out in a big truck and if you see someone bicycling, you don't like them instantly because that's just how you've informed yourself. Or vice versa, you can be on that bike and you're like, I can't believe that these cars don't give me space to ride my bike. It just gets back down to people defining who they are and not being able to open up to other people. We're all just here trying to figure it out. And there's things that we do to help us feel better about the unknown of life and death.
ACT: Do you have a sense of purpose?
JR: I'm not a highly religious person, so I don't have purpose in the sense of the spiritual. The only way I've been able to really think about the grander scheme of things and people mattering is that when you die... this is a really simple way to look at it, but if you can live your life where people give a shit when you die, that's a good thing. 'Cause there are people who die and people are like, Good riddance. I'm glad that guy's gone. He was a real asshole. Once you die, the only thing that's left is these ripple effects of how you affected the people that were there. I do think that that's how you live on past your death is how you've affected people while you were working through the world. And that can be negative or positive.