Everyday Life - Montalut

💚 What feast surrounds you every three months? 💚

Sunflowers are blooming in Turkey now.🌻 They’re such happy flowers, we just had to stop by the road to get closer to them.✨️

Fun fact: the Turkish word for sunflower is ayçiçeği which means “moonflower”.🌝

I’ve seen the fields around us transform throughout the four seasons now, and I’m endlessly drawn to their changing colors.🏵 So many times I’ve asked Koray to stop the car so we can “smell the roses” in their changing forms: the whites of cotton, the colors of spring’s white daisies and red-pink-purple wildflowers, the browns and oranges of wheat and saz (tall reeds common in wetlands). It’s amazing how nature shows off without even trying.🌱

💚 On Green Day, step back and observe nature around you. What sensory feast do you see? What awaits you next season, and three months after that?

🧡 What do you get to do like a boss? 🧡

RhythmOrange Day

Here’s our 5yo shopping like a boss.🛍 She also gets to eat ice cream like a boss and climb a tree like a boss. Actually she feels like she can do anything like a boss, because deep down she has an unshakeable belief that she’s a boss: to Mom and Dad, she’s more important than anything.🥰

🧡 On Orange Day, find that unshakeable belief that lets you feel like a boss. Then go strut your stuff: Dance in the street, run on the sand, sing your heart out…or just go shopping and give yourself a great time.🥳

💛 What do you make with your hands? 💛

RhythmYellow Day

We live in bread country, where the assortment of daily bread is astounding.🥐🥖🥨🥯🫓🍞 That’s why it amazes me that @korayerimez still labors over homemade bread which takes at least 4 hours from start to finish.

I’m guessing the satisfaction is similar to painting with real paints, swooshing that brush and knife and getting messy (plus cleaning up)–they’re all a big part of it.🎨

💛 On Yellow Day, do something that gets your hands dirty and remember again what it’s like to create something handmade.

❤️ Who is on your calendar? ❤️

RhythmRed Day

I book my personal catch up calls on Zoom now. There’s something about putting a conversation on my calendar that makes it happen: it’s important, it’s not just chitchat, and it deserves its own timeslot.📲

Old me would frown upon this and say it kills spontaneity to schedule heartfelt conversations. Unguarded moments cannot be planned.

And yet the alternative has not been effective either. I didn’t realize how withered my friendships were, some going as far back as a year since our last catch up. ☎️

❤️ On Red Day, go through your friend lists and qualify each relationship: is it flourishing, healthy, status quo, wilting, maybe even dying? Who gets to be on your calendar?📅

💜 How tech-dependent are you? 💜

RhythmPurple Day

We’re now in a double whammy of Mercury in Retrograde and Ghost Month. Communication and gadgets are extra prone to mistakes and malfunction.🔌 What took me 5 minutes to do with AI last week is now taking over 2 hours (and counting!).💻

I’m a big fan of automation, and am always on the lookout for the best productivity tools out there. Today was a reality-check on how much dependent on tech I’ve become, and on the other hand, how much I appreciate the help it provides.🙏

💜 On Purple Day, imagine life before the tools and helpers in your life. Do you think you can still get into flow without them? How do you find the balance between being tool-thankful and tech-independent?

🤍 Can you go off-season? 🤍

RhythmWinter, Seasons, White Day

In 2 weeks it will be my first anniversary in a four-season country.🌏 Adjusting to a new season every 3 months for the past year meant adjusting to changing weather, clothes, food, daily activities, and daily habits.🕶🧣 The secret for tropical girl me is to tap into the seasonal rhythm, embracing it vs resisting, and actually seeing it as fun. Yes even the dreaded cold of winter and extreme heat of summer. İt’s all part of life.

Taking it one step further is to relate this rhythm back to non-four season countries.😎 I still have friends and family back in the Philippines who I connect with everyday. So I also need to be aware of their own season, their changing weather and activities.☔️

Working with a global team, there’s also the awareness of different hemispheres and inverse seasons. 🌗 İsn’t the world amazing?

🤍 On White Day, let’s step back and look at the global map. Take in the different seasons of the world happening simultaneously right now. Somewhere in the world İt’s really cold, really hot, wet and rainy, dry and humid. Just like traveling, there is an awareness of the world that comes from season-hopping. It’s a familiarity with nature that expands our sense of time, and maybe our sense of awe and compassion.🌟

💙 Are you streetsmart? 💙

RhythmBlue Day

I learned how to commute when I studied in Madrid after university. I was in my 20s and on my own for the first time, and I loved it.🌏 I loved looking at maps and getting lost because it meant discovering a new place. I’d ride the bus to nowhere in particular, just people watching and taking in the sights of the city.

Twenty years later, I’m living in one of Turkey’s most well-connected cities. My daughter gets to ride the bus everyday.🚎 She stands next to bus stops, observes neighborhood landmarks and streetlife, and picks fruits from sidewalk trees. She’s growing up with a more intimate knowledge of the streets than I did, and thinks of train rides as fun and exciting.

This sense of the streets–knowing how to find her way around, making friends with bus drivers and neighborhood people, asking for directions–I hope it lets her grow up with an awareness of and familiarity with life outside, that she exists in the context of a neighborhood and city.🏡 She has a place in all of it. She belongs, she enjoys it, and in turn, she has responsibilities to care for it.🌿

💙 On Blue Day, let’s reconnect with our streets, our neighborhood and our city. This is the bigger body outside of us, and in the same way we explore, enjoy and nurture our own bodies, let’s explore, enjoy and nurture our streets.🛣

💚 What’s your music? 💚

RhythmGreen Day

When I was building my house, one feature my brother insisted I put in was built-in speakers 🔊 It was an inexpensive add-on to the house that gave so much value in return. Having that surround system envelope me everyday while I worked, painted, ate, slept–it was therapy. It makes me smile just remembering it.

Music speaks to feelings in a language altogether its own. It is feeling itself.🥰 And I’m happy my daughter has her own relationship with music, even when she borrows mommy’s playlist. She loves it like food; it’s nourishing for her.

💚 On Green Day, let’s check the music we play everyday: what’s on the playlist? What’s on repeat? Is it easy (or a hassle) to play it? What’s the sound quality of our everyday music? 🎶

🧡 Who will you thank you hug? 🧡

RhythmOrange Day, Gratitude

Our daughter came home from school with a gift bag. Inside was a dress with a note from her classmate: “Thank you for a great summer. Enjoy this dress with good wishes.”👗

It was a sweet, unexpected gesture, and we spent the night preparing a thank you card in reply. Her classmate’s thank you gift started a thank you chain, and even just the act of writing thank you made us smile–gratitude really is the best pickmeupper.🤸

🧡 On Orange Day, reach out to people with a thank you hug, no explanation needed. While you’re at it, go ahead and thank you hug yourself too! 🫂

💛 What happens in a wildfire? 💛

RhythmYellow Day

Çanakkale is burning 🔥🥺

A forest fire has been burning in Northwest Turkey very close to the city center. Nine villages have been evacuated; animals brought to safety.

We don’t have wildfires back in PH so I’m just starting to understand them–how they start, why they can’t be stopped, what happens to the land afterwards. In this case, they say a farmer may have started it by burning stubble or the straw that’s leftover after harvesting grains.🌾 Firefighters on the ground, 22 helicopters and 7 fighter jets deployed from above.

Here’s the Trojan horse, an unmistakable icon of the region. We stopped by Çanakkale on the drive back from İstanbul in June, and I distinctly remember loving all the yellows everywhere. Now I’m not sure what we’ll see on our next drive there.

💛 On Yellow Day we’re reminded that we exist in a context, with conditions beyond our control. A wildfire can spread at the drop of a hat. When we create, we also unleash something into the world–whether it inspires or ravages is sometimes not up to us.

❤️ Do you have fun lenses? ❤️

RhythmRed Day

Can you find beauty in the ugly, joy in the pain, fun in the same old things?🌟

Red Days are vision days. And our vision–what we see–depends on many things: our viewpoint (are we high or low?), our pathway (is there anything blocking our view?), and our lens (are our eyes working 100%?). Sometimes to see life with rose-colored lenses is frowned upon and we’re asked to wake up–but I say, why not see life in color? Why not have fun lenses everyday?🥸

🇹🇷 We love this rooftop bar in Istanbul, where we got to see this beautiful city from up high. It was a moment of joy, beauty and fun.

❤️ On Red Day, put on some fun lenses and seek out the joy and pulsating energy that makes you get up from bed with a smile.😊

💜 Do you get proper sleep? 💜

RhythmSleep, Purple Day

Days are starting to get shorter. It’s dark again by 830pm, and my body feels it. It asks for sleep. More sleep than what it’s been getting over the summer.

Overheard on a kids show: sleep is magic.🌟 Amazing lesson not just because it helps get our daughter to bed, but more so because it’s true. When I get proper sleep, I feel different. I feel wired and put together. It’s the best make up, productivity hack, and creativity tool, and it’s free, abundant, and part of everyday life.🤸

💜 On Purple Day on one of the last Mondays of summer, let’s honor our sleep. Let’s block it into our calendars as a sacred, can’t-be-rescheduled everyday priority.