Hey there,

It’s been over two years since I’ve sent out a newsletter. Some of you are getting this for the first time, others haven’t heard from me since I stepped back to focus on building a house and working on ReCommon.

Welcome back to my world.

The Peak and the Valley

The past year has been by far the most transformative of my life.

Within twelve months: we moved into the house that we built, I married my beautiful wife on our land surrounded by family and friends, and I got a very clear signal from the cosmos.

That signal came during the week between our small family ceremony and our friend celebration. Two phone calls.

First: funding was suddenly disappearing for ReCommon, the nonprofit I’d been running for three years.

Second: UnCanny Wellness, the CBD company that supported me through my twenties, was closing and my royalty payments would stop.

The universe had a message: You’ve reached a beautiful peak moment - house built, love of your life married, mountains gazing back at you. Now the endeavors that got you here are complete. Time to move on.

For the first time, I had a clean slate.

The Humbling

I panicked about income and started applying for jobs. Climate work, blockchain, environmental anything.

Then came the sobering realization: I was relatively unhirable, especially in this job market.

My resume read like a greatest hits of failed entrepreneurship - hemp company CEO, blockchain impact lead, nonprofit founder exploring “regenerative community governance modalities.”

To me, this was a compelling story of working toward the betterment of people and planet.

To a recruiter scanning countless applications? Red flags everywhere.

After a hundred applications with zero interview responses, I faced something deeper than rejection. In a world already shifting beneath everyone’s feet - politically, economically, technologically - who was I if not these ventures I’d built my identity around?

The dark place found me.

Rock Bottom Has a Gift

Winter hit. I picked up construction work with the general contractor I built the house with, trying to figure out what comes next for someone whose entire professional identity just evaporated.

Then: a tiny cut on my finger while demoing a stairwell turned into a serious infection. ER visits, swollen hand, bedridden for days, antibiotics that didn’t work, steroids that made me break out in full-body acne.

Middle of winter. Grappling with professional death. Infected hand. Unable to work out or do much of anything.

But being stuck at home, online more than usual, grappling with this identity crisis while physically sidelined, I started noticing something: frontier conversations about AI were happening everywhere. A technological revolution was unfolding in real time.

Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to get a new perspective.

The Plot Twist

In this unique headspace - questioning everything while bedridden and more plugged into online conversations than usual - I made a conscious choice: I would not sit on the sidelines of a technological revolution.

It was already staring me in the face. Here I was, looking for work, observing these frontier discussions about society and technology. Just like the early internet adopters who jumped in and completely changed their life trajectory, this felt like one of those moments.

I started learning to think and build with AI as my partner.

From total beginner in October to launching multiple full-stack applications by spring. Web apps, iOS apps, databases, APIs, the whole stack. Not because I learned to code the traditional way, but because I learned to collaborate with AI in an entirely new way.

For the first time, I have a creative outlet where nearly any digital idea I have, I can build.

This breakthrough gave me a pathway to rapidly upskill in a highly relevant field, breaking me out of my rut and allowing me to quickly build a new portfolio of skills and work.

At the same time, I was grappling with questions I’d been wrestling with for years about the physical world.

The Real Estate Revelation

All my work with ReCommon - three years pursuing regenerative communities, innovative governance, bioregional organizing - had taught me something crucial:

There’s no shortage of people with vision for sustainable communities. But there are fundamental missing pieces.

At the end of the day, whether it’s an ecovillage or a regenerative community, it’s a real estate project.

Land. Housing. Infrastructure. Power. Waste. Food production.

Without these foundational layers, all the beautiful community building and spiritual integration goes nowhere.

The epiphany: real estate ties it all together. Land acquisition, water rights, infrastructure, buildings, capital - it’s all real estate foundations. You can’t build a new town, let alone a broader movement of new towns, without mastering these fundamentals.

And here’s the beautiful part: sustainable real estate is a massive, growing industry that’s perfectly adjacent to the regenerative space I’ve been in. I can pursue this civilizational vision while entering an established, professional pathway that complements everything I already understand about ecological design.

What’s Next

I got into the Master’s in Real Estate program at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.

This isn’t just career pivoting. This is about getting the tools to help visionary communities actually execute. To make the financing work. To turn dreams of regenerative living into built reality.

Making the Right Decisions

We live in exponentially changing times. Technology growth isn’t evenly distributed, so not everyone feels it yet. But it’s here.

I use AI as my coworker daily. AI-powered autonomous vehicles drive smoother than most humans. These aren’t future possibilities - they’re the present.

As global conditions continue shifting and the world order keeps unwinding, one thing becomes clear:

The real preparation isn’t stockpiling supplies and building bunkers.
It’s building resilient villages of the future - the ones we all want to live in and know deep down are possible.

Not just knowing your neighbors, though that’s critical. I’m talking about returning to the village as a way of life. Building new settlements that blend the best of traditional community organization with cutting-edge regenerative technology.

Whether you’re actively working toward land-based community or exploring what regenerative living means where you are - this is the path forward.

Resilient villages oriented to their landscapes. Technologies that serve human thriving. Ancient wisdom woven with cutting-edge capability.

That’s the future worth building.

For me, the next nine months of this journey involves diving deep into a graduate program, but there are a lot of exciting developments ahead that I’ll be sharing. I’m reactivating this newsletter to explore these intersections - technology, consciousness, regenerative design, and the practical work of building the world we want to live in.

I’d love to hear what’s landing with you and what you’re working on. Hit reply - I read every response.

And if this resonated with you, share it with someone who might appreciate the journey.

Talk soon,​
​Alex Corren

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