Honestly, it's weird to call The Curious Hermit a "business." Cuz it's just me living my life and posting about it. Creating things I want to create and sharing them. Talking about my journey of personal and spiritual growth from an overly dramatic hot mess in a toxic marriage to a vowed hermit living life as an independent Queer Heretic Nun devoted to a deity that I made up, shitposting on Facebook, and doing magical Service Days for donations.

Also... my life gets weirdly dramatic at times, which is good social media fodder... like when I hexed my now-ex husband in September 2019 cuz he pissed me off on my birthday and then he accidentally shot himself three days later... he survived, the police were suspicious but didn't investigate hard. But I had to clean up a LOT of blood. Arterial wounds squirt, and when the bullet goes straight through the arm twice, that's a lot of spurting. That's a whole ass story I'll have to tell another day... maybe I'll do a Story Time series to catch y'all up on my lore... Like when I posted on Facebook that I was gonna get a billionaire to donate to my fundraiser to buy my house, then I posted on Twitter about my fundraiser on Friday, March 13, 2020 when the lockdowns really started in the U.S. and Cashapp was throwing money at people, then I got a notification for a Cashapp payment of $1000 from @Jack. Yes, that @Jack. My house only cost $4000, so that was a huge boost.

I live an interesting life for a hermit who spends 95% of her time alone - and for the last two months, in bed with a broken leg.

I also have shared my self-development journey openly through the years. Wrote a book called Bitchslap Journaling based on a series of posts I'd done where I'd share a thought or question that had been like a "psychic bitchslap" to me, forcing me to self-reflect in uncomfortable ways that then led to massive growth. I hashtagged them #drivebybitchslap, and then in August 2017, collected them all, added some more, wrote commentaries, and published the book on Amazon. Then hardly ever promoted it again...

I developed what I call an "Algorithm for Personal Development" that includes what I call the B.E.N.D. Reflection Framework - Boundaries, Expectations, Needs, Desires. Focus on those four things and life gets better. Expectations are particularly tricky. I put them on a four-week repeating cycle so I'm contemplating and journaling about them regularly. Desires week is always fun. Other time cycles get words for reflection and journaling as well - year, season, month, week, day. Mix them up daily for new ways to ponder and see what comes out.

I add value to people's lives by sharing my journey, and sharing the results of my journey. By sharing the tools that I create for myself to cope and survive and thrive in a world that's still not sure who it wants to be. I went from living in a house with a dozen roommates to owning my own home, escaping a toxic abusive marriage, and did it all without a traditional job - I quit my last job as a payroll administrator in 2014 to focus on the first iteration of my business that I'd started in 2013 called Transformational Intuition.

I show my work and share my work with others so they can learn from my work and maybe avoid some of the pitfalls I've found myself rolling around in because I'm sometimes a bit too impulsive and stubborn.

My audience consistently values that, and I give them clear ways to contribute to me so that I can continue doing that.

I'm not rich, but I've mostly hit the limits of what I can do on Facebook. The algorithm loves to hide payment links - people like the links right there to click, but Facebook doesn't like to show posts that have them in it.

Facebook has other limitations - the algorithm favors memetic shitposting, which I'm a big fan of and love doing, but when a random ass screenshot get 13k reacts versus 2 reacts on a thoughtful reflection or snippet of in-progress fiction... well... it's disheartening.

Facebook - and the other platforms - don't really value quality.

They only want virality.

I was sitting in meditation one day and had an experience of a goddess named Juno Moneta. I don't know how to describe those experiences. They're not really "visions" so much as an unfolding series of thoughts paired with a whole body sensation that lets mem know who it is. I'd been pondering what I'm going to do next with my "business" which is really just me creating what I feel like creating, sharing it with people, and hoping they value it enough to send me some funds. I was also thinking about what I'm going to do when I get a chunk of money that will be coming my way in the next year or so. Juno Moneta - the guardian of the treasury of Rome whose images was on the coins and from whom we get the words "money" and "mint" nudged me towards Crypto.

Now... I'm a nun living on donations from a small audience on Facebook. My bills are less than $500 a month, other expenses less than $500, and some months, I barely manage to cover those, but I also have flush months were I can get a bit ahead and make some improvements, and the year-over-year trend is towards growth. But I don't really have the money to spare to play in crypto, so I kinda just tried to ignore the nudge.

Then I got a newsletter email from someone I've followed across platforms for years.

It mentioned Farcaster, and there was the nudge.

I started to explore.

A social network where the quality of your content gets rewarded directly by those who value the content?

SIGN ME UP!

Better yet, I can mint various collections, allowing people to read and view them freely, and collect them to show support in a tangible way.

I once did a series of Midjourney renders that were photorealistic cat parades. Shared them in the Midjourney group on Facebook. And the various cat-related Facebook pages yoinked them and started saying they were photos of a cat parade in Amsterdam. I got no additional traffic, but some of those pages got thousands of views, and if they're in the creator fund, that translates to cash.

Pair that with how reactionary so many of the artists on Facebook and Instagram are about AI images, and I just don't post my images all that often on their own. I think "is it art" is a silly argument given Aesthetic Philosophers still can't even agree on the answer to that. But posting about AI on Facebook is opening a minefield in the comments I don't have the energy to deal with anymore.

What I create onchain doesn't have to cater to the ads-oriented algorithms of the big platform. I can create what I want, and see who is drawn to it, and the ability to easily tip is built right into the system. No need to add links that get hidden or use various code words and phrasings to bypass the algorithm. Like an NFT on Zora? Just mint it to support the creator, and also always have a digital copy of it to remind you - which I'm really gonna lean into with a series of contemplative images, text posts, and audio NFTs on Zora soon.

In my writing and casts on Farcaster, I want to explore the intersections of philosophy, spirituality, and technology. I'm a full-time student - currently taking a semester off because I broke my leg. I returned in January after a two-decade pause, and have two years to go. I'm very excited about the Neuroethics course I'm taking in the fall.

My theology is weird. I don't think gods created humans. I think humans make up gods, tell stories about them, and then shit gets real weird. I frequently say that the deities I work with may or may not be real. I use contemplative techniques that were developed in monasteries - a lot from Christianity, some from Buddhism - but instead of reading the Holy Texts, I read other stuff. Reading about Juno's myths while pondering what to do about growing a platform off of Facebook, doing different stuff from what I'm doing there, but carrying forward my accessible to all, PWYC model, and then getting a breadcrumb trail in the mundane world that leads me right to a digital ecosystem that has the potential to be amazing.

I approach my spirituality experimentally. I get a nudge, a feeling. I choose to follow it, or I don't. If I follow it, I observe what happens. If a particular nudge associated with a particular deity, ancestor, fictional character, made up entity, etc. works out, I do it again. If it keeps working out, I keep doing it. I don't need them to be real. I just know it keeps on working, so now I'm gonna experiment with what the nudge from the goddess of money can lead me to.

So far?

I'm enjoying it very very much. I'm enthralled by the potential that crypto, blockchain, and web3 have for wealth redistribution. I'm also fascinated by the fact that while it has amazing potential for realizing leftist ideals, it's inhabited by a right-wing majority. People with high risk tolerance can make a fuckton of money, and those without that risk tolerance, or that access to funds, can participate in the social economy as readers and consumers, and still receive "dividends". Begin adding more to the social economy by casting, developing, etc, and tips start to show up. Be interesting enough?

Well, we'll see how it goes as I get more and more acclimated to all the various bits of web 3, blockchain, and playing with crypto 😉

❤️ Gwynne