Anmls Grounding in Freestory Village, Part 1!
Aligning with a more balanced approach to community, online and off.
Good rising, Animals. I hope the beginning of this week finds you well.
I experienced a bit of a shift in thinking last week that I wanted to share with you all — and articulate why I think it’s best for everybody tuning in to this newsletter! (Thank you!)
I caught a higher-level glimpse at what we’ve been doing with NFTs, and it struck me how incredibly outstandingly innovative what we’re doing is. It is so progressive, that I can see how it leaves many people unable to innerstand, and unable to connect. And it’s important to me that I make things that offer incredible value in people’s lives. And I want to reach a lot of people.
Meanwhile, I had also been feeling the call to be more sync’d with Brooke Lawler, my beautiful bride and mother of my 3 children. She and I have been on a multi-year long journey now, moving towards the launch of what we are calling Freestory Village. In 2019 we sold our home in Camarillo to rent a very tiny house in the Santa Monica mountains from some friends. We were in the process of cutting costs so that we could pursue our dreams. I did not expect it to take this long, but I also didn’t expect the entirety of the last 2.5 years of this plandemic. Several wise counselors in my life have said ‘what happens to you happens for you’, and I continue to marvel at this process, which has ultimately strengthened us so much more than we could have imagined. The journey has also been much more difficult than I ever imagined it would be.
Properly selling the top of the previous crypto market cycle would put me in quite a different place right now — but then, it would have robbed me of the experience of truly needing to ‘walk by faith’, and experiencing what I have in recent months, which include going full-throttle as an NFT artist and launching ANML Style on Jan 1 this year. Launching my artwork through this collection, and finding supporters out there who value my art has been tremendously encouraging (the process of getting there is also emotionally taxing!). I connect a great deal with being ‘non-fungible’. And I love the NFT as a medium, which might be the most abstract concept we have in culture today!
Which brings me to discuss my need for grounding. My need for real-world space and community in order to create Anml Style to the fullest, and reach it’s potential, which I don’t see an upper limit for. This grounding is the the realization of our vision for Freestory Village, which Brooke has recently begun a substack newsletter for. I encourage you to subscribe, she is a great storyteller, and the Freestory Village newsletter will be the primary source of updates on that front.
In short, Freestory Village is like a WeWork meets YMCA, but grounded in nature.
We are aiming to start in the Malibu Ventura county area we live in now. It will be a place where parent’s can bring their kids to learn and play in an outdoor/ forest school model, and adults can co-work and enjoy some self-care. We are experiencing first hand the challenges of homeschooling while entrepreneuring — and it’s HARD. Parents need more support. They need a village. So that’s what we’re creating.
So I am in the process of revisiting our Freestory Village business plan, presentation deck, and website, which honestly feels incredible to be doing once again. It feels much more balanced than pursuing NFT sales alone. We are looking now for the first investors in our vision for Freestory Village. I know that by creating this space for families, entrepreneurs, and home-educators to grow together is the way I can bring an abundance of value to many, many people over the near and long term. And I do think this is also the best way to build a family of creative ANML’s, contributing to the A+ stream we have outlined in a lite paper over at Anml.style
In summary, I will be playing my role as a visionary cofounder and CEO of Sol Forms Inc, which will be focusing on the launch of the first chapter of Freestory Village this year. Brooke is taking the lead on Freestoy Village, and is networking with all the right home educators and specialists to pull this vision together. To me, it makes all the sense in the world to build our real world community AND online Web 3 communities in parallel together. I’m really, really excited to pull it all together and find the people who will make this vision a reality with us.
Stay tuned for part 2, where we can dive into that a little deeper ; )
And for now, I encourage you to subscribe to the Freestory Village newsletter, where you can learn about our story in more detail : )
Thank you for tuning in!