Holy moly, am I happy to make the introduction: 17 Ideas That Changed My Life is out, live, and available printed for purchase (and free to download).

A sort of “philosophical coffee table book,” it’s a photo-heavy homage and collection of the most useful and profound ideas I’ve found and integrated into my lens on life over a decade of exploring ideas (traveling, reading hundreds of books, deep soaks in diverse cultures etc.).

There are times in life where things are so beautiful and electrically good you can’t even believe they’re happening.

My friends Matthew and Nicolette, brilliant humans, DJs, and the creators and curators of Between2Clouds, are better at manifesting such moments than any humans I have ever met.

Back in March in the midst of a near-magic trip cruising around on scooters, watching sunsets, and exploring Mexico’s Pacific Coast, I sat up on the roof of this Mexican mansion one night to connect with my friend Peter for a podcast-style interview on his wellness cross-training platform Empowermend.

One of the coolest things about writing about my interests on the internet and hosting an annual WONDER WANDER is a spectacular increase in my luck surface area, or as I like to call it: surface area for serendipity.

Back in November, fellow camera-wielding friend and wonderwanderer Kevin sent me an out-of-the-blue text message. Could Richard, a legally-blind-totally-tapped-into-it sound healer we met capturing Festival of Yes, crash at my place for a weekend, and would I want to help film some sound baths?

Once a year, I host ‘WONDER WANDER,’ a multi-day gathering of creatives, adventurers, and all other sorts of fascinated-fascinating humans out in nature. We share, we laugh, we hike, we stargaze, we philosophize, we dive deep, and relish in this crazy experience of being with one another.

WONDER WANDER 2024, was the 5th go at throwing this grand "experiential potluck," built around a dozen or so humans all offering an experience for the group. And it was surreal and loving and interesting and learned and rad.

I cut the video from this year’s wonderwanderers spontaneously filming with an old vintage digital camera I brought this year — and love the feeling conveyed through this beautiful sliver of moments we captured.

I just released YESMAN INTERVIEW — a live interview I did with the Yesman himself at this year’s (utterly magnificent) Festival of Yes.

Alex, the Yesman, is a great friend and easily one of the most rad, vibrant, ringing-with-life humans I have ever met. It was a grand pleasure to discuss and share the power, usefulness, and philosophy of “yes” with him, a central pillar to the dude’s infectiously inspirational way of being. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

As a creative, if you ask me, one of the best things that happened last year was a book. The book is a collection of observations on creativity from music producer Rick Rubin. Rick has made brilliant albums with the widest range of the biggest musicians for nearly half a century.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being offers Rick Rubin’s remarkable view on creativity and reads not unlike the Tao Te Ching. Open to a random page in either and you will find an idea as simple as it is profound.

Yet somehow, the podcast interviews Rick has done since releasing the book hit me even harder. There are dozens, and it is possible that I have listened to every one of them.

A haiku about living now.

This past year was a year of hard work at home peppered with experiences beautiful, eye-opening, and totally transcendent.

While the bulk of my year was spent running a real estate photography business — work I find flowy, creative, and interesting — it was largely ventures away from it that shaped me. Some of the most profound internal shifts included a deeper interest in creative collaboration, increasing palatability of responsibility, and more mystic experience of the everyday.

The things that shape us matter most. In sharing what shaped me in 2023, it’s my hope this might connect you with something that resonates in a similar and significant way.

To be a mystic one need not add anything to their experience, but subtract. A mystic simply sticks with and perceives the basics of reality, because the basic of reality are wildly miraculous.

A few examples:

• We live on a tiny planet floating in the endless void of space.

• Time is an illusion made by measuring spins of the earth and laps around the sun. The past is a memory, the future a dream, and both are mental projections from the present. All is one ever-changing, eternal present moment.

• A single cell organism speciated into all forms of life on Earth. All life on our planet traces appears to trace back to one source, an unbroken chain of life branching out from a single trunk. To say we are “related” to all of life on Earth may be the grandest understatement.

The Sunday after WONDER WANDER 2023, magic happened at sunset on the shores of a river running the sonoran desert.

A merry band of creatives ran four hundred feet of extension cord from the hybrid battery of a Prius to a secluded cove to record my buddy Matthew (also known as 2dreamagain and the brilliant groove man behind Between2Clouds) DJing a dreamy house music set as we captured the scene on camera.

A short documentary of WONDER WANDER 2023 by Kevin Ufnal.

Once a year, I host ‘WONDER WANDER,’ an experiential potluck with creatives, adventurers, and all other sorts of fascinated-fascinating humans out in nature. We share, we laugh, we hike, we stargaze, we philosophize, we dive deep, and relish in this crazy experience of being with one another.

WONDER WANDER 2023 took place September 15th - 20th, 2023 in a hilltop hacienda among New Mexico's Rocky Mountains.

I recently had the grand privilege of speaking on Cosmic Consciousness and the inherent oneness of all things through an astronomical lens at the Festival of Yes.

Wandering through my near-death experience at sixteen, insights into the psychological growth process from Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, the formation of the universe, wise words from Ed Abbey, Alan Watts, Carl Sagan, and John Frusciante, and ultimately offering contemplating the cosmos as a means of transcending our repression of “the primary miraculousness of creation,” it felt wildly out of the blue and well received.

A true legend — while running the festival — the Yesman managed to record the speech on his phone! I polished and uploaded the audio to YouTube for your listening pleasure.

Fellow riders on spaceship Earth,

May I introduce to you the ‘In This Together’ Bumper Sticker — a symbolic reminder that we are literally in this together, residing on a tiny blue-green ball of life miraculously afloat in the void of space.

One night, in a flash of inspiration, the whole thing: idea, phrase, and image, just struck me.

In 2021, I created the “Needlestack”, a simple grassroots solution to making the browse the web by best.

Playing on the metaphor of “finding a needle in a haystack,” the Needlestack was a list of links to what I personally felt were the best pages on the entire internet. The idea was to make my Needlestack, encourage others to make their own, and to link them together — weaving a navigable web of links to the best pages on the web.

Here to remember
he sits at the sun worn table
among rock and shrub and sky.
The matters and stories back home
dry and crack in the afternoon kiln
of ceaseless alabaster sunlight.

We are dreamers.

We dream not just when we’re asleep, but when we’re awake. We dream not just as individuals, but as a group. We’re so good at dreaming that we can hardly distinguish between dreams and the ground on which we dream.

Yet, one can wake up in the middle of a dream.

With the turn of each year, I find great benefit and orientation in reflecting on the year past and envisioning the one to come.

While a new year is but an arbitrarily chosen point in Earth’s lap around the sun, it is also a regular reminder of transition. And as transitions tend to cause us to pause and reflect, a new year seems a sweet, cosmically-tuned reminder to pause, ”pull your head out of the water,” and look around.

I don’t really believe in resolutions or fixating on specific goals. Rather, I liken the process to “stopping to glance at the map, check that we’re heading in the right direction, and boldly continue with the journey of life.” Goals help us to achieve our aims, but are also blinders to opportunities that arise in the present. I attempt to walk a middle path, priming my awareness for particular things, while not fixating on them.