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I am OPTimist

I am OPTimist. I am not willing to be defined by a few words—what I do is a living journey. I am a multidisciplinary artist, empirical polymath, writer, evolutionary astrologer, libertarian/Bitcoiner. My philosophy integrates Eastern, ancestral, and cosmological traditions with psychological inquiries, praxeology, and Austrian economics, emphasizing liberty, value, resources, and self-worth in the quest for individual and societal service. I create public art commissions and immersive

religion & spirituality visual arts

All Episodes

8:49

Property or Propriety ?

I am OPTimist ·

2026/10/05

Early this morning, I was scrolling through social media (more specifically Substack), and I found this quote from the Li Ji, the Confucian book of rites:“The superior man is respectful and reverent, assiduous in his duties and not going beyond them. Retiring and yielding, thus illustrating the principle of propriety.”“道德仁義，非禮不成；教訓正俗，非禮不備；分爭辨訟，非禮不決；君臣上下、父子兄弟，非禮不定；宦學事師，非禮不親；班朝治軍，蒞官行法，非禮威嚴不行；禱祠祭祀，供給鬼神，非禮不誠不莊。是以君子恭敬、撙節、退讓以明禮。This passage is from the ancient Chinese classic Liji (《禮記》, or Book of

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22:32

The Value of Commitment:

I am OPTimist ·

2026/09/30

I have been thinking very much about value because we are about to enter yet another Venus retrograde in Scorpio.Venus retrogrades about every 1.6 years, and over eight years it returns to more or less the same area of the zodiac. Looking backward through 2018, 2010, 2002, 1994, and so on, I wanted to see where I was, what I was doing, what I was committing myself to, and especially what I thought had value at the time.Economic value is a practice.For me, this Venus retrograde moves through my 9th

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21:03

THE WHEEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I am OPTimist ·

2026/09/22

We are right at that point of equal night, equal day, the equinox.The cycle reaches the opposite point from its beginning.What initiated six months ago now exists in relationship to something outside of myself, in relationship to the other.Six months ago was the I AM moment. The beginning. Awareness. Instinct. Emergence.This year that equinox came with Saturn and Neptune together in Aries, already describing something about where we are heading.Three months later, at the summer solstice, the impulse

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3:14

The witness

I am OPTimist ·

2026/09/12

I’m in Framingham, Massachusetts, researching a public artwork called Equilibrium Is a Process, which will take another three years to complete. I’ve spent the week talking to judges, chief magistrates, probation officers, curators, architects, engineers, masons, Uber drivers, and people across the community. The whole week has been about systems, behavior, accountability, trauma, justice, and what actually allows individuals to create different outcomes. I came here to witness. That keeps becoming

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18:11

Postmodern Noodle Soup

I am OPTimist ·

2026/09/05

Eclipsisms What are we discerning now? Can you reflect on it and see the truth?Oh my god. I did not think I could have survived the tornado of what the eclipsisms was. But here I am, integrating, seeing the same things from a different perspective. Allowing my body to take shape and to speak to me how to integrate what I have been able to witness and where I am going right now. It is an exciting moment, yet I must walk slowly just to make sure that the steps I take are solidly grounded, and where I

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10:08

Some Exhaustion Brings Some Closure

I am OPTimist ·

2026/08/29

Hey everybody, the Lunar Eclipse was last night, around 12 hours ago, and I had been anticipating this for a while. The good thing about being an astrologer is that nothing comes as a surprise, but even if you know the relationship between the planets, their archetypes, and the power that they have, you cannot really predict. The whole scope is not about prediction, but it’s about understanding the meaning and the potentials, which is the reason why I follow the stars, or they follow me, whichever

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20:54

Mesmerizing

I am OPTimist ·

2026/08/22

What does it make it? Mesmerizing, as soon as there is some light integrating the realm of fantasy, imagination, even of god, with the realm of touching, grounding, earthing, the material that leads us to take action to decide. At times, the decisions can be very blurry, or they cannot be absolutely defined.Since I was little, I was always wanting to stay in this liminal place where I could still be dreaming awake. I would see colors, listen to sounds, and be mesmerized by the stimuli that my senses

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15:27

Shattering reality meets consensus

I am OPTimist ·

2026/08/15

The first of the two eclipses of the season just passed, and I have decided not to talk about it without feeling it. There's something quite clear for me: reality has been shattering. It's been broken into many, many different crystals, and each crystal projects its own perspective, its own possible reality that can materialize. Now, there are two things that are very important to question in oneself:Where do I stand in my value?What am I consenting to?I’m going to explore a little bit the recent

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16:52

Choose Life: Entropy,Order,& Alignment

I am OPTimist ·

2026/08/02

What organizes human life?What preserves agency in an age of increasing entropy?How does a human being create order without surrendering freedom?When there is entropy, we create a system. We create an alignment.OrderOrder requires deliberate, sustained effort. Entropy is the tendency for structure to dissolve when that effort is absent. Let's say that it operates in different contexts. In physics, it is a natural tendency of energy to become more dispersed and less available to do work. In some

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8:28

Standing in Your Own Place

I am OPTimist ·

2026/07/27

Note: I know I said I was taking a break from writing about astrology, but this is too significant to pass over. So here it goes.The shift is full on.On February 20, when Saturn and Neptune met at 0° Aries, I wrote an article exploring why that conjunction marked the beginning of a new cycle. Looking back six months later, I find those observations even more relevant as the nodal axis shifts into Aquarius and Leo. “Coherence is the internal harmony of all parts moving together without fragmentation,

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8:50

Four Questions and a Nap

I am OPTimist ·

2026/07/25

Hey, I sat down and I wrote two articles a few days apart. Just when I was going to start recording, I’m like, “Mmm, this doesn’t feel right because there’s something that has shifted in me. Every time I want to say something, do something, or create an awareness of the relationship I’m having with the thing, situation, or person, I’m asking the same question:-Is this solar? -Is this coming from my heart? -Does this need to be spoken? -Does this need to be published?It’s not that I became a doubtful

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10:05

An Ongoing Wavelength of Change

I am OPTimist ·

2026/07/17

BE BOLD 7/13/2025I just woke up, but I have this sense that things are moving underneath and between. Whatever calm I thought that was, there is some turbulence underneath. One that shows me that indeed things are different, and more undulation calls me to surge again.This is between the real waves of the ocean hitting, the long ocean swell that leads me to adapt, to calibrate. Some of the tides are just moving along, so I am floating, surfing, yet I have to maneuver, step by step the wave of

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4:09

Contingency

I am OPTimist ·

2026/07/10

“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 CitiesI woke up this morning with the word contingency in my mind. So after breathing a little bit, I started to decipher its etymology and the meaning of how this beautiful word, which root is

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3:51

THE AUTONOMOUS LOCAL ENGINE

I am OPTimist ·

2026/07/06

BUILD ONCE, OWN FOREVERI 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 SCOPEThis 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-time preference. Modern tokenized platforms charge you for every single query, action, and refresh -

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8:53

The bicentennial catholic nun

I am OPTimist ·

2026/07/04

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’t last very long because we drove the nun, Sister Mary Hubert, crazy. She was probably around 55 years

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3:29

The body’s silence as whispers can be slightly heard.

I am OPTimist ·

2026/06/27

IWhat 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.IIWhen I am sleeping, I am not in my body. When I wake, I land softly. Looking around. Breathing. Feeling. Being.I know I have said very few things these days as these are emotional and body experiences.Thus, the body’s silence as

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23:10

The Hungry Ghost Liberates Itself

I am OPTimist ·

2026/06/21

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 rather than only the pattern, and the figures who have stood on that degree before.I am very touched

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10:20

Multiple Brains, Zero Subscriptions, one Artifact

I am OPTimist ·

2026/06/17

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 infrastructure. I invest the time once to understand and build something correctly, and then it runs at zero

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5:19

Synthesis as perfection rather than pursuit

I am OPTimist ·

2026/06/15

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 these environments, or experiences, because I wanted to create something that didn’t have a corporate

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11:59

Ideas->ideologies-> IDENTITY

I am OPTimist ·

2026/06/06

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

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