(Super)Moonly Review 🌕 Covid City
First time in a city after a looooong time in a tiny island. Oh, and I'm missing a tooth 🦷.
Happy Full (Super)Moon*!
Make sure you take a look at it tonight! It's supposed to be spectacular.
After living for a year and a half in Pico Island, I'm back in a city for the first time, to address a little problem:
I originally broke my tooth at the age of 12, when my face had a rather unpleasant meeting with the concrete surface of a street I was cycling on. I got a fake tooth, which broke around 10 years later, which gave me a bit of an edge on parties, especially if combined with some crazy outfit and energy of my best friend at the time.
And here we go again. I bit (the forbidden) apple, and the tooth broke for the third time, hopefully the last.
After 1.5 hours procedure and a copious amount of anesthetics, I now have a screw inserted in my bone, serving as a foundation for a new tooth to be mounted in a few months. In the meantime, I have a temporary fake tooth which I need to be super careful with, which is a great opportunity to practice mindful eating – something I'm not very good at.
Fun fact. The tooth is mounted on a screw that looks like this:
Looking at the new addition to my body I can't help but wonder if I'm going to be beeping at the metal detecting gates.
But while my dental adventure took me to the city, my mind wanders into a different direction. Because it's the first time that I'm a city after a long time, and it's also the first time that I'm experiencing the Covid City (for context, Covid is not really a big deal in my island).
This journey inevitably brings a lot of thoughts, and I've decided to document it as a short v-log / documentary / video diary, which I hope to share with you in a few weeks. For now I'm still deep in the processing stage, and also not fully recovered from all the dental drugs 💊.
A few things that are alive in me right now
Things are finally moving.
I've been going through an identity crisis in the last few weeks, and while I'm still riding the wave it now feels that I'm on the other side of it with new energy.
Silvia interviewed me about this journey recently, which you can see here:
It seems like people were enjoying my toothless-look 🏴☠️.
With all the new energy and insights I'm making some adjustments to my life course. Here are some things that are alive in me right now.
Sailing
I've updated my sailing CV, and I'm putting myself out there – I want to sail somewhere around the Azores / continental Portugal / Spain this summer (and I'm open to other routes, too). It's time to kick my sailing dreams forward and it starts with making a decision (check) and putting some energy into it (in progress).
Updating my sailing CV also helped me clarify some of my long term goals. I don't feel they are fully spot-on just yet, but I'm getting closer:
My long term goal is to divide my time between my home community in Pico and sailing around the world while running personal development experiences at sea and connecting with various mutual-aid communities and projects.
Bottom line is that no other experience in my life created such a continuous sense of deep presence, connection and freedom. I'd love to share it with others and harness this space to co-create something beautiful with a few beautiful people on board. I did this once, back in 2017 in a beautiful complex of lakes in Poland. The trip, called "Sailcubator" was a powerful experience. Now it's time to take it to the high seas.
Perhaps that's a project that could even attract some investors/collaborators, who could help me realise it sooner than I imagine it right now?
Funny enough, I always had an idea that I need A LOT of money to buy a sailboat. However, I recently came across a few different stories from people who acquired their boats for less than $5k. The boats required a lot of work to be ocean-worthy, but I'm actually very keen on doing that kind of work plus it's a great documentation project potential.
I'm open to hear your ideas if you want to share 💜.
Our Patreon
It seems like our Patreon is growing. We have now 9 people supporting our work, which feels absolutely amazing 🕺. Part of me still doesn't believe that we could actually be supported by the community at some point without relying on selling products, but every time I receive an email that we have a new person on board, something shifts in my heart. I'm curious where is the tipping point and I hope we'll be able to find out! 😄
This week I'll be updating our onboarding emails for JournalSmarter to direct them towards our Patreon. In the long term I like the idea from Sailing Uma which combines Patreon with a custom membership plugin to create a vault with extra resources. I might create a similar solution for JournalSmarter.
Back to Art
This is still a bit shaky, but I feel I want to come back to being an artist. For context, this was pretty obvious to me for most of my life, until I got hyped by the idea of passive income and digital nomads. I really enjoy the path of creating my business, but I'm becoming very clear on the fact that something is missing.
I'm the guy in the red pants, and totally in my element – directing a scene for a music video.
Thing is: art is a language, that allows me to express myself, and face people with ideas that make them expand their perspectives. I tried a couple of different media for this purpose (eg. non-fiction writing), but nothing really works quite like art for me.
But now here's the problem: How can I make it into a living? And actually: Should I make it into a living in the first place?
I have a few ideas that I'd like to explore, which might be completely bonkers, but hey – I love bonkers ideas. Worst case scenario they won't work, and that's okay, too. And perhaps as our Patreon grows I won't have to rely so much on needing to sell art.
For now, I took a first few steps, and actually created something. It's not the best, but I'm glad that I put it out there. All I need now is to practice. A lot. I've had a way too long break from that.
I feel very attracted to writing these kind of stories combined with photographs. If you enjoy it, you can have a look at Timeless, which I wrote back in 2017.
Crazy idea #1: Write more of these and put them into a book?
🤔
Craving Land
The last thing that I want to mention is a deep desire to find a piece of land in São João village in Pico. Let me be more specific: 6-10 hectares of forest, with some ocean view and perhaps a ruin or two. The idea is to buy it with a few friends and set up a small regenerative village with an agroforest, tiny houses, communal building, and some exciting experiments with decentralised power, internet and organizing.
I'm writing it here, so I get clearer on what I want. Thanks for helping me figure this out ☀️
***
Sending a powerful, toothfull, wave of Love your way. Maybe it be a wonderful day 💜
Michal
ps. Funny thing – I notice that this trip to the city brings up my need to dance in public. Perhaps it's my inner clown noticing that it has potential to bring some joy to people. 🕺
If you’d like to get my Moonly Review, then you know what to do ⤵️