I am OPTimist

“In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal city, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe.” -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities I woke up this morning with the word contingency in my mind. So after breathing a littl...

BUILD ONCE, OWN FOREVER I am very excited to launch this today. It came to me unexpectedly, and now that I think about it, I have been building toward this for a while. THE SCOPE This is a highly selective study group (or a self-study, or 1:1 option) of two to five people who want to build a local database and dashboard that runs entirely on their own hardware. This architecture operates on a low-...

In 1976, I came to the United States of America to spend the summer. The funny part is that my mom, after my father died, decided to hire a Catholic nun from the United States. When I said “hire,” she actually sought an agency to see if there was a nun that could come and live in our house so we could practice English while my mother was working and would help us with our homework. Alas, that didn...

I What we inherit from our family is not only material. It is the nervous system, the fear, the patterns carried in the body across generations. Giving the body enough space to feel them, making a different movement, and finding the order of love is how we begin to receive. II When I am sleeping, I am not in my body. When I wake, I land softly. Looking around. Breathing. Feeling. Being. I know I h...

There is a figure in Buddhist cosmology called the hungry ghost. It has a vast, distended stomach and a throat so narrow that nothing can pass through. It is always reaching, as it has never felt fed. I did not know for a long time that I had organized a significant portion of my relational life around that figure. This time the story shows the same wound from a different angle, the degree itself...

There is a sense of freedom that connects everything that I create, which mirrors how I think, and what emerges belongs to me, running on my machine, answering to no one else. My telos is a local operating system that reflects my intelligence, my synthesis, my accumulated understanding across every domain I work in, maintained by my own hands. My methodology is low time preference applied to infra...

Hi. I can’t believe how fast this year is flying. We reached the solstice. I am very happy to share that I am relaunching my website. This is a soft launch, because I still have to update a lot of projects, and I will do that in due time, without going into crazy crisis mode. I wanted this to come from a very personal place. I started designing websites back in the 90s, learning code and creating...

Another improvised rant Have a great week 😍 listening to 👇 * This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

This week, a fast recorded message, impromptu, unedited, with real life background noise. Such is life! Beautiful & messy. —//- I forgot to mention the north node is in gate 55 and Venus now on gate 39 create the channel of emoting- play your favorite songs loud and allow the body to provoke deep emotions either dance or cry or both lol. Jin shin Jyutsu chart. Monika Bravo I AM OPtimist îs a FREE...

There is a big silence between words because there is a lot of space in my emotional body. I do not want to talk about it. I want to feel it. I am in reset. Calibration mode. Feeling a shift. Now understanding more this period we are in, which is not about waiting but about small movements with purpose. The energy is moving, and when the energy moves, everything else comes along. A smooth surface...

Do you know the difference between a sacrifice and an offering? I think we have gone a little bit cuckoo with the word sacrifice. You know, in essence, it comes from the word sacred, but it has been devoid of an important part of that sacredness that is transformational. Therefore it is lacking in full meaning. Sacrifice is the action of consecrating. So what is it that one is consecrating without...

One of the things that I am deeply in contemplation about is what identity really means. Do I need to identify as a person? As my gender? As my vocation? Just as a human being? Or as a polymath that has so many different variations depending on which angle I am willing to serve and to express in that given moment. "I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that wou...

"Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." ~Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Worth without witness... is that what value really is? Fire, then form. To go forth in trust, things I left behind. The uncomfortable angle of a quincunx is a pressure that is nameless. The space is generated to tweak slowly. Fearless in a d...

What has initiated has been taking shape as it grounds. This is Taurus season. Full moon in Scorpio on May 1st, a lunation as when I was born 62 years ago, happy solar return to me. Living with a Scorpio moon in my 9th house has made me seek for deep truth, only to realize after a long journey, that it emanates from within. There is a particular kind of discomfort that comes with understanding tha...

Aries stellium season is here; a rare concentration. The energy is intense, and so is the opportunity to observe the speed of things on a moment-to-moment basis. New Moon conjunct Chiron on the 17th, wishing you take space for your individual self as you integrate your peace within. Stability grounds through what you value, while crisis reveals where your leverage is thin, as it also shows where p...

What happens when you leave space for yourself? You don’t do it in just one day that you cross off the calendar and cancel your appointments, so you decide to go out for a walk and keep walking the whole day without caring about the things that you’re leaving behind. No. I mean something more profound than that. What happens if you take time and space for that part of yourself that didn’t even kno...

We are in the age of new beginnings after the several new/full moons this year that announced both dissolutions and brand new pastures. Pair the eclipses, the equinox and with the Saturn and Neptune new cycle, the upcoming weeks will show us an opportunity to show up and finally step UP to our new individual ways. 2027 is approaching and although it is not a prediction, ‘cause we are already wary...

## Core Realization I saw the truth of my own delusion. I was projecting and I was having a relationship with my projection and with my own shadow. What I wanted, like the kind of relationship that I was expecting, is something that I created in my head. It was a transactional thing. It was me trying to equate everything that I poured into the relationship and say, hey, you're not doing your part....

Hey, I thought I would jump in very quickly. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

NOTE: I wrote part of this text as small posts that I shared in FOTT community, but I thought that it’s a universal thought process that I want to share with you as outer and inner conflict are one and the same. These days, I don’t feel like sharing that much. I’ve been in very slow-internal processes of decoding a bunch of projections that I didn’t know were my shadows hence decoupling from them...

“Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.” — Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths In Borges’ story, Ts’ui Pên attempts to write a novel and build a labyrinth. Everyone assumes that the novel is chaotic and the labyrinth is never completed. The revelation is that they are the same thing, because the labyrinth is the novel and the novel is not linear. One storyline does not exclu...

Note; this article has been sitting on the draft box since last Friday, but my only “excuse” is that I am feeling very self-oriented, self centered, what others would call selfish; the eclipses and the Saturn and Neptune conjunction have been both a culmination and initiation in my relational fields. Big shifts in my psychic - emotional terrains unfolding. Enjoy this, I have another two articles w...

Movement I: Epistemology Metacognition is the awareness of awareness itself; the capacity to observe the structure that generates thought while experience is unfolding. The unconscious mind is capable of discernment; it has its own delicate sensibility. It knows how to choose, how to divine. — Jules Henri Poincaré, “Mathematical Creation,” lecture delivered to the Société de Psychologie de Paris,...

The word comes from the Latin incentivum — that which sets the tune. From incinere : in, into; canere , to sing. It means to set the pitch. To begin the song. An incentive is a motivating force that moves someone toward a specific action. It can be material, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. In economic language, it refers to a reward or consequence that influences behavior. In a broader sens...

I know the title sounds very dark, but actually when things collapse, other things emerge, so I am more focused on the emergence part rather than the collapsing. Yet it is here, the famous ultra-famous season of eclipses and the conjunction of a life time cycle. Today I will not speak that much. It is a small reflection, a very tiny one. What do you want to be? How do you want to contribute? What...