On a sunny afternoon last summer, I met Sundance award-winning documentarian Ondi Timoner at the VICE offices on Brooklyns waterfront.

She pinned a microphone to my blue dress and positioned me beside a ledge in their rooftop garden that overlooked Manhattan. Cars careened down Kent Avenue behind me and my hair flapped around in the breeze. I pushed it away, trying not to get it in my mouth. After a brief sound check, Ondi began our interview.

How long have you dealt with depression? she asked, her eyes lasering into mine, her voice both serious and sympathetic.

I thought for a minute. Pretty much my entire life.

Even in Panama?

No, I told her. Panama was the exception. Until it wasnt.

Eight months earlier, Id moved to Kalu Yala, an eco-village in the middle of the Panamanian jungle, to launch a media lab as part of their research institute.

I was euphoric. Kalu Yala seemed like it had everything I could possibly want. The ideal adventure for a quit-her-job-to-travel-but-still-wants-a-career woman like me to stumble upon.

During the day, we swam in a turquoise river and tended to a permaculture farm and busied our brains with the writings of sustainability experts like Paul Hawken and Bill Mollison. At night, we sipped boxed wine out of oversized mugs and contemplated the universe. Social media was an afterthought in fact, so was the entire internet.

I vowed to use these tropical building blocks to create the media school of the future, one where students from all over the world could come and tell cutting-edge stories about sustainability and win awards. From beneath my palm leaf thatched roof, I would become a media mogul who would completely disrupt both the journalism and education fields.