I’ve noticed that I’ve switched to a world, or universe, building mode. It’s a result of two things. The first is everything I want to do with Flowism, Flow to Your Dream, and Way of the 108: books, videos, podcasts, community, physical locations, etc. It’s a lifetime project. The second is thinking about what I want to write during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Originally I was thinking about writing a fictional adventure based on my experiences with bipolar. It would have included immortals, witches, wizards, and gods. Lately, I’ve been thinking about doing a nonfiction version where I focus on the dynamic between miltownkid and Casey—either way, I want the story to end with the creation of Way of the 108. It would be a fun way to introduce people to the system that ultimately led to my stability. (Knock on wood!). Even if it didn’t turn into a book that got published, writing it will be an interesting process of self-reflection. Just the little work I’ve done preparing has been interesting already.

Story, Dream, and Flow

I set myself up to talk about the core aspect of Flow to Your Dream. It’s nothing fancy. Story is your past, Dream is your future, and Flow is your present. Writing this book will have me take a deep look at my Story. I’m thinking about my childhood to the present day in a way that I’ve never done before. Understanding my Story is important because it informs my Dream. The Dream is your collection of goals, large and small. The Dream is important because it informs your Flow. The things you do every day, week, month, and 108 (days).

Why am I mentioning all of that… I think it’s because I’m becoming self-aware of what I’m doing with this book. I always talk (to myself) about the importance of going deep with your story to understand your motivations for doing things, see patterns, and help understand what you want to do and why you want to do it. I haven’t been in a position to do this… ever? I had a vague desire to become a Shaolin Monk or hermit or something in high school. I can’t even remember exactly what I was into during my young adult years in Taiwan. When that viral video hit, it sent me on a long adventure of becoming a persona I created, then battling it, and then (very recently) overcoming it. I don’t think I called it a “Dream Document” at the time, but there were periods of time when I created two Dream Documents, one for miltownkid and one for Casey. They would have very conflicting goals. It didn’t make any sense.

Anyhow, suppose that’s a sneak peek into the book I’m going to write. lol I made a note in my journal about how I was starting to feel Flow in my day-to-day. I feel a real connection between my Story, Flow, and Dream. I’m feeling this connection because I have a unified vision of the future, and how it directly ties to my past, and I feel balanced in the middle. I came up with the concept of Flow to Your Dream in 2013. Only took me 11 years to get here! (Knock on wood!) It took so long because of the combination of having (at least) two personas along with dealing with severe bipolar 1.

The Casey Abbott Payne Universe

I didn’t say anything about the universe other than vague ideas about content creation. The universe starts with me coaching people through doing their own 108-day cycles. Talking to them in the beginning about what they would like to accomplish and how, checking in on them daily through the 108 days, and then having an exit conversation about how things went and getting them set up to continue doing the 108-day cycles. Maybe with me, maybe with someone else in the community, maybe with friends or family, maybe on their own. I want to grow that until I’m handling the maximum number of people I can each cycle. I’m assuming that’s a number between 6 and 36.

I plan on scaling things by having other people coach people through the 108-day process. All of this will be run through the various chat apps for a long time, but eventually, I’ll build an app people can use to connect people and manage and track their 108s. I think this would be cool because people could see how long people have been using the system, how consistent they’ve been, what habits and routines they’ve mastered, etc. An app would be the final form of digital community building.

At some point between my first 108-day client and the app, I’ll establish a physical location. The physical location will go through many versions. The first version will be meeting in a cafe, maybe just twice a cycle (the beginning and the end). Then we’ll graduate to weekly meetings somewhere. The weekly meetings will either grow in size or number. Maybe multiple meetings are happening in Taiwan, maybe they’re happening all over the world. The next level would be daily in-person meetings. This could be renting someone else’s space for morning mindfulness practice, or it could be renting our own space.

I have no idea when I would go from working on this as a side project to working on it full-time, but if I’m renting a physical space I’ve probably shifted into this being my full-time gig. With a physical space and full-time availability, I’m probably doing regular community live streams, organizing talks and workshops about a wide variety of things… I’d be fully immersed in the community.

The level after a space is a whole building. I would to create a co-living community with a community center built in. Would be cool to have space for long-term residents as well as short-term space for people who want to stop by and vibe.

The level after the physical building is helping other people work through the same steps I worked through to help them make a living from coaching people through 108s and working up to establishing their own physical communities (whether coffee shops or owned buildings).

That’s it for the future vision of the CAP universe (for now until next week).

Mission-Based Crypto Coins

A friend shared a video about “meme coins” that was pretty interesting. The most interesting part was the community that gets built around a meme coin. He thinks just about every crypto coin (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) is a meme coin in essence. Near the end of the video, he talks about the unbundling of religion. He says that since more and more people are leaving religion they have to find things that replace the things religion used to do. Things like purpose, meaning, goals, identity, etc. He then says the best cryptocurrencies will replace most elements of religion. He says meme coins are the lowest level, the next level up is cult coins, and the final form will be mission coins. A coin that will replace most aspects of religion.

It made me think about how a currency could work with my 108 project, but I can’t see it right now. Maybe if there was an app and the app was a place people could exchange the currency in a way that enhanced the community, but that’s a long time from now. I’ll keep an eye on the space and technology here and there but I won’t invest much time into now. Still and interesting watch, especially if you’re interested in cryptocurrency. Video below.

I’m not going to add anything to the blog image anymore. I’ll also give a little story about how the image was created (as I’m likely going to use ChatGPT most of the time). I actually copied the whole blog post and pasted it into ChatGPT for this one. I had already been going back and forth with it for a few images before I did this so it probably took that into account as well. I’m going to try a pure copy and paste of the post next week and see what happens with that.