New Day Podcast

After weeks of being stuck indoors, and working through my notebooks and frameworks, I felt the urge to relaunch The New Day Podcast which had been dormant for more than a year. I knew I had to get back in the groove of putting something out into the world, after spending so much time on my journey inward, I had to find a way to reconnect with the world, and more specifically, with some community.

Somehow, through some website backlinks, I find myself connecting with a member of the Indie Hackers community. And with a few correspondences between email and a video conference call, I realize that this is the kind of community that I have always wanted to belong to. And this could be the year that I move from integration to community contribution. I have made it a goal for the podcast to occur on a daily basis, and I believe being in community will help spur that goal into fruition.

As I decided to be in community, I decided to return to the country that I was in exactly one year ago. I somehow figured that I knew some folks there and I had previously done real-life events and this might be a good way to start reconnecting with community and building connections again. During this period of time, the gradual (yet surprisingly swift) increase in the Coronavirus turned out to be an upheaval and disruption in plans.

The initial plans to start hosting events again quickly became impossible because of the new changes occurring almost daily. Within a short period of time, it became illegal to meet outdoors and all public places (and venues) were closed. Ironically for me wanting to be in community, now isolation was encouraged. I reverted back to introverting my energy and time by spending most of my days reading and writing. But yet deep down, I knew I needed to be in community. I just didn't know how and where I could get started.

I participated in a retreat during the first week of 2020 and I was open to what I was supposed to do in the new year, with all that I had been through in 2019 seemingly integrated within me, I was wondering how and where to get started. During the retreat, I became profoundly aware that I needed to be in community with the right people if I was ever going to make a difference with the truths that I had discovered along my journey.

I realized that even if I wrote a book or sang a song or crafted something magical, if I wasn't in community, the discoveries would only remain mine. The journey I had been on, up till this point, had eventually become intensely personal, but now that I had completed this part of the journey, I have to embark on the next part which is to find and connect with others in the shared human experience. So I make the decision to do so. Little did I know, it would take a few months before this happens.

I had compiled notebooks from months of inner journaling, as well as contemplative writing and resolved that this year was more about the necessary journey inward than the rush to create an outward artifice. I had come to see that the integration of one's authentic self into their lifework was of paramount importance.

The ancient Chinese concept of 功夫 reflected this truth to me, and by the end of 2019, I had developed several practical frameworks that helped in navigating the journey towards what I like to refer to as "integrated wellbeing" and "Optimal Living", which focused on one's authentic core, as a basis for expanding one's life and work, rather than being fragmented by juggling multiple externals.

I moved to another country, again, by August of 2019.
My journey of transformational recovery was still underway, and little did I know it would take me to the heart of what would become the true message of living optimally. It was during this time my authentic self would be discovered. The heart of the jungle is within, and my therapy and solace was found in months upon months of journaling and writing.

With the initial few episodes recorded on my phone and mostly featuring music jam sessions with the emphasis on "new beginnings" and improvisational inspiration, I included it on "The New Day Podcast". However, within the first month of 2019, I moved to another country and was working on a partnership project that took up a lot of energy but ultimately proved to be a journey of deep personal awakening and transformation.

I came across the Anchor.fm app around this time, and I had been toying with the idea of doing a podcast for quite some time. The ease of the app and my own desire to "just get started" prompted me to record from my phone, and just launch an episode which featured a post-dinner conversation around a table. I went home and configured the page and that was kick-off!