What is Island Life Plus?

Vision and Manifesto Slow Travel Sustainable Living

My friends know I’m exactly the type to run off to the islands and live a life on the beach. 🏝

Now at 42, with a family of my own and mom to a toddler, I’m revisiting this deep desire with different lenses.👓

What is island life and is it for everyone? Is it for my family?

🏝 Slow
🏝 Simple
🏝 Back to basics
🏝 Nature
🏝 Bugs
🏝 Flipflops

What is Island Life Plus?
🏝➕️ with interesting like minds: conversations!
🏝➕️ sense of new: innovation, ideas
🏝➕️ art, theater, music
🏝➕️ sports
🏝➕️ people sharing themselves: hopes, dreams, expertise, experiences, stories, advocacies
🏝➕️ people working together, both personal and professional collabs: schooling, gardening, dream projects, businesses, tech startups, labs, tinkering spaces, farming, hubs.

Writing all these down this Sunday morning excited me again to no end, and it’s how I know it’s still my life mission: it’s alive! Alive in me, and I will keep it alive in others who wish to share the journey.

My dream project has transformed from Alaya to Montalut to now Leadia. It’s not for everyone, but it definitely is for my family. Wherever we end up building @leadiagrowth, it’s the place I want to be in everyday, and the place I want my daughter to flourish and make lifelong friends. It’s where I see @korayerimez and I growing old with wine in hand, dancing into the night, laughing with friends who believe in dreams, wealth, abundance and deeply connecting with people, nurturing our stories and talents as gifts to ourselves, to each other and to the world.

How are you dreaming these days, friends? 🌟


#dreams #islandlife #creativecommunities #growthliving #conversations #inspiringenvironments #everydayart #everydayartist

Building LEADIA: What is Community?

Gathering People My Nuvali Home

In 2011, I was living in Nuvali, an ecocity in the Philippines. I’d just built my first home and documented my journey to sustainable living in a blog, MyNuvaliHome.

I’m now incorporating that blog into Montalut, and came across abrasive comments on my About section, where I shared the Why of my blog. Reading between the lines, one can tell that the person was angry at something, yes, and it was at the promise of Nuvali.

When you’re building something out of the future, all you have is your vision of it. You are emerging something new, something that doesn’t yet exist. To see it too, some people need a proof of concept that it’s been done before or that you’ve built a prototype of sorts. Some need more than that–they want to feel it directly benefiting them before they jump in. If the benefits fall short of the promise, they bite.

And yet a few already see the future with you, and choose to journey with you.

Reading that comment today made me recall what community is, at least to me.

Here’s the reply I wrote back in 2012, and it still rings true today:

Nuvali is a beautiful place that I’ve personally invested in, and it’s just one of the many new developments in the South that seeks to address the congestion problem in Metro Manila.  Anything can happen years from now, but as someone who’s already betting on this community, I also hope to be an active part of what will make it truly a home — along with my future neighbors and those looking to contribute to and benefit from alternative communities like this.

Community is what we make of it, and as with anything in life, you get what you give. You give nothing, and you get nothing back. You give love and joy, and you get love and joy back.

Childhood is our marvelous, lavish treasure trove of memories.

Everyday Life

Great reminder today from my all-time favorite poet, Rilke.

I revisited his letters, and realized the line I remembered so fondly was actually much longer.

“If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place. And even if you were in a prison whose walls did not let any sound of the world outside reach your senses – would you not have your childhood still, this marvellous, lavish source, this treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention towards that.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

As a parent, I greet today with this extra insight: to safeguard and nurture such a childhood for my little one, and give her a treasure trove of memories that will make her everydays rich, marvelous and lavish well into her adult years.

Have you heard of AR (Augmented Reality) Art?

Portfolio

I’ve always been a fan of open-ended art, or art that invites the viewer to linger and participate in the creative mood, and Augmented Reality (AR) + art does just that. Beyond creating an animated version of an artwork, it asks something from its audience because it needs activation. It says, “Hello, I need and invite you to engage,” so you’re no longer just a viewer, but a participant in the joy and delight of the whole experience. Think modern day trompe l’oeil art, which has been used for centuries to create optical illusions that “makes us question the boundary between the painted world and ours.”

For Christmas 2022, I’m so happy to be part of a collective of artists bringing together a curated AR Art experience for 25 days leading up to Christmas on December 25. You get a calendar with 25 activations, each one leading to an AR experience especially created by an artist, alll in all for 25 days of fun.

The calendar itself is an NFT that you can buy starting November 17th, and registration (it’s free to register!) for premint prices is open until November 16. Details below👇

HOLIDAZE 2022: 25 Days of AR Art

Join HOLIDAZE Premint Allowlist by November 16th

🔷

Premint Sale 0.09 ETH / Public Sale 0.2 ETH

🔷

Premint Sale through 11/16 #cryptogift #holidaygiftguide #nftcollectors #HOLIDAZE

A collaborative AR experience from the Inaugural HOLIDAZE Collective Artists:

@XXIMIW3L, @GlitchVisceral, @monicaseggos, @anim8dead and @montalut

Join the Premint here: https://forms.bueno.art/holidaze

Off to Bali to check out creative communities on the island! (2017)

Green Design and Architecture

First published on July 12, 2017. Reposting these from my old (now deleted) IG account.

Here’s a peep at the 5am sky with the full moon saying goodbye in the distance.

Hello from #Ubud! Video is from Yoga Barn, which pretty much lives up to the image I had of Bali in my head: green, dreamy, and with a whirling energy that doesn’t seem to land.

This time last year I was in Chiangmai where I first encountered Laughing Yoga. I loved it there and found solace in the cuckooness around. #Bali seems to be a place where iterations of #cuckoo are born everyday. We shall see how the next few days pan out.

Now having lunch with ducks and a ricefield as company and a cool breeze just made me pull out my jacket. 😎
#creativecommunities #alayaPH

Remembering the expansive ricefields of Bali (2017)

Enterprise and Wealth Creation Green Design and Architecture

First published on July 23, 2017. Reposting these from my old (now deleted) IG account.

Here’s a vid of my pretty friend Liudmila and I trying to overcome being camera shy and showing you 2 of the 5 intentional energy pavilions of #VisionVillas. These pavilions were built in relation to the Chinese elements of Wood, Fire, #Earth, #Metal and Water, each with its attendant energy and intention. We’re standing next to the Metal or Steel pavilion that inspires answers to the question #How?

What a brilliant idea to dedicate physical spaces in our homes with #energy #intentions.

1st stop in Bali: Green School (2017)

Green Design and Architecture

First on the #Bali agenda is a visit to The Green School, which like most #alternative schools, was put up in 2008 out of need. Inspired by Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, the Hardys created a #natural #school for their own children that was aligned with #sustainability. From 90 kids, there are now over 400 kids at the #GreenSchool. The students are on summer break so we were able to take our time exploring this morning.
#creativecommunities #alayaPH

First published on July 13, 2017. Reposting these from my old (now deleted) IG account.

My absolute favorite place in the #GreenSchool: the #river. We visited one classroom where you could hear it flowing and wow what an everyday environment to be in. I’m not sure how I’d be able to sit still and listen to a teacher with a river calling out to me like that.
#Bali #creativecommunities #alayaPH
I loved this! Walking through the Bamboo “forest” in the Heart of School, the community center of the Green School. The Japanese kids behind me were also having a good time 🤗👍 #Bali #creativecommunities #alayaPH