By Ethan Maurice | January 20, 2020

On my end, 2019 was a year of re-centering, transition, and adventure.

Reeling from the realizations of a ten-day meditation retreat at the end of 2018, I spent the beginning of the year splitting rent and a bedroom with my brother in Flagstaff, AZ attempting to ensure my values—not some image I have of myself—were at the helm of my life. Then, called by curiosity, excitement, and what I could confidently call “inner-pull,” I began again: ventured about to Nepal and Cambodia, built the backbone of a book, and made a most life-directing decision to attend flight school.

At the end of three of the past four years (2015, 2016, and 2018), I’ve taken the time to step back, reflect, and attempt to see the big picture. While a year is just a human construct pinned to an arbitrarily chosen point in a lap of the Earth around the sun, that point makes us want to pause and reflect. I believe that an urge worth using.

As I wrote at the end of 2015, the point of such a review is “not to chart a path and blindly follow it, rather more of a stopping for a few minutes to study the map, make sure we’re heading in the right direction, and boldly continue on our journey of life.”

Here’s my 2019 in review: what happened, what went well, what didn’t, some hopes for 2020, and my favorite things (book, album, movie, quote, and object) of the past year.

What Happened?

Close Quarters with my brother in Flagstaff, AZ

Towards the end of a perspective-quaking ten-day Vipassana meditation course, I went through a regressive, fretful day of worrying. “What the hell am I doing after this, I just left an incredible seasonal job running a lodge next to Yellowstone for the last time and have no idea how to continue being successful, swashbuckling Ethan,” was the narrative on loop in my mind. Tossing and turning that night, I realized that somewhere along the line the curiosity and excitement which pulled me out into the world evolved into a push to do those things to maintain an image of myself.

I don’t want my ego to be at the helm of my life. When my brother, a senior in college in Flagstaff, AZ, invited me to toss a twin bed in the corner of his room and split rent with him at the beginning of the year, I took him up on the offer, largely as a means of shoot my ego in the foot. I worked a minimum wage job at the front desk of a cheap hotel from January to mid-March. There were astonishing moments and I spent a lot of time writing in downtown coffee shops, but it was largely a dingy, dark, winter of existence for both of us. However, when we both got serious about attending flight school in the fall, something wonderful happened: I was again struck with that pull of curiosity, excitement, and urgency to live that originally sent me out into the world. Before trading my freedom for wings, I had to experience the Himalayas.

A Wander about Nepal

Most of my time in Nepal was spent walking up a Himalayan mountain valley, over an otherworldly 17,600ft pass, and out another valley on the Annapurna Circuit. It was a remarkable, spiritual experience. I met and hiked with a fascinating, diverse group of humans. I had one of the most memorable, eye-opening conversations of my life with a reader of this website from Kathmandu. Of every place I’ve been, Nepal is the one I most want to return.

An unanticipated time in Cambodia

I flew from Nepal to Cambodia to see a friend from college in the Peace Corps. I felt she and I connected on a way-deeper-than-friends sort of level, but our time together didn’t go as I imagined (it was very diarrhetic and complicated). Five days into our two-week Cambodian exploration, she left me on the island of Koh Rong Sanloem. Shocked, confused, and deflated, I found myself alone in a place I knew nothing about, with no plans other than to fly home in nine days. It took a day or two, but realized being left at a hostel with a bunch of backpackers on a tropical island wasn’t such a bad thing. I quickly became “three amigos” with a well-read, philosophical French girl and the most adventurous German guy I’d ever met and we shared the lightest, deeply memorable week. I boarded the flight home with a fire, long and silently tended in the depths of me, roaring. It was time to write a book.

The Backbone of a Book

Upon returning to the States, there was an idea in me that wanted out unlike any idea before. I set about looking for a place to build the backbone of a book. The kind family of an artist friend of mine offered a space to do so on the banks of the Ohio River. A few days before I was to make the drive, my brother discovered he wasn’t going to live in Flagstaff for the summer. Too late to find somebody to sublet his room, we worked out a sweet deal.

Flagstaff in the summer is mountain-town heaven. I found a part-time job sitting next to a country club pool where I read books for most of my shift and proceeded to go nuts with note cards, covering the entirety of a bedroom in thousands of them, capturing, culling, and organizing ideas into something welling with potential. Weekend nights were outings by bicycle, spent with great friends drinking and dancing to live music in bars. Two and a half months later, the lease ran out. I left Flagstaff with a shoebox of note cards organized into the backbone of a book I was tremendously excited about.

My favorite mountain town on Earth

With airline miles from a travel credit card bonus and the kindness of favorite former employer, I spent the majority of August in Silver Gate, Montana. I was generously allowed an unused room in The Range Rider’s Lodge, the lodge I brought back to life and ran the past three summers, and had a transcendent time taking mountain bike rides, saunas, and alpine scrambles about my favorite mountains in the world.

If you’re ever in the Yellowstone area, stay in Silver Gate. You will not regret it.

Clipped Wings for Other Wings

In September, I clipped the wings of the free-roaming, ultra-cheap life I’ve led the past five years. My brother, one of his college best friends, and I leased a house and we took out loans out to attend a small flight school at the Glendale Airport in Phoenix.

We began ground school. Less than a week in, I learned a long, complicated medical clearance process awaited me to be medically cleared to fly because of the medical trials of my youth. I finished ground school in September. It took until mid-December, but I after a few expensive, out of insurance coverage appointments and scans, and a whole lot of unknown waiting, I was cleared.

The transition back to more structured life, the waiting, and suburban days, hasn’t been easy for me. Rarely was I able to enter the sort of headspace the book I so passionately put together this summer requires. The three of us had trouble finding joy among the sea of sameness houses and strip malls of Glendale. So we broke our lease. My brother and I moved back in with our parents for a while. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was a trying time for my spirit. However, I’ve become much better at coping. As the decade turned, I found myself in gratitude for all that’s been and with thirst for all that is to come.

What Went Well?

• I left for Nepal and Cambodia guided by curiosity and excitement, not to maintain some image of myself.

• My late night letters grew to over 2,800 subscribers this year. What was a “monthly newsletter” evolved into the heartfelt practice of “late night letters” written in the depth of the last night of each month — a fulfilling, spiritual act with which I love to wrestle.

• Though I had to wait three months to medically clear to begin flying, I started flight school. I believe this a route to sustained wonder for life and guaranteed downtime in which to read and write throughout the future.

• Lost in a world and act my own, I felt as if I was putting lightning in a bottle this summer building the backbone of a book. Wow. I have never been that obsessed and entranced with anything before.

• I had many life-affirming moments of wonder and human connection—with close friends, family, and many readers of this website.

• For the majority of the year, I felt incredibly alive and connected to my work, others, and the world at large. I have a strong sense that I’m living the life I’m supposed to be living and I am endlessly happy about this.

• The traffic to my website increased from 72,000 page views in 2018 to 87,000 in 2019. A modest increase, but in the right direction. This website might draw ten times the amount of traffic if I chased and measured it by such metrics, but they’re secondary. I write about what matters to me, which means my work attracts my kind of people. We get to examine and share things that matter to us. I consider this an infinitely better route.

What Did Not Go Well?

• I was unable to write the book that so moved me this summer when I moved back to Phoenix. I showed up to write this fall but was unable to reach the sort of headspace to channel whatever I was connecting with this summer to the page. I believe this was largely an environmental thing, as I spiritually struggled with my suburban surroundings this fall.

• The start of flight school was rough. Leasing a house in Glendale was expensive. It pinned me in a place where I was unable to figure out how to thrive. I had to wait three months to medically clear to begin flying. I felt trapped in a sort of purgatory during this time, not flying and unable to effectively create.

• I invested a hundred-ish hours and over a thousand dollars into Narrative.org, a website that aimed to be “the world’s journal” that totally crashed and burned. It was fundamentally flawed in that the money flowing in didn’t match the money flowing out — a great concept, and worth the shot, but surely a bummer.

• I could have better connected my online endeavors with others, and earned Man Bites Dog! more publicity. This includes not following up on meeting up with someone with a big internet presence who took an interest in me this fall. At the time, I felt stuck and uninspired and felt it would have been phony to get philosophical with him at the time. Will do this in 2020.

What Do I Want to Replicate From Last Year?

• Keep doing things for the right reasons (curiosity, excitement, love, inner pull, etc.). Life is not about maintaining images of ourselves or satisfying the expectations of others.

• Keep connecting with wonderful, open people that see the beauty and opportunity in life. As Bill Murray once so simply put it, “I try to be available for life to happen to me.” I’m striving to foster connections to the places and people with which I might most enjoy life’s unanticipated happenings.

• Keep writing. The blog, book, and late night letters are baring so many gifts that reach deep into my being.

• Keep growing spiritual buoyancy. Feeling stuck in Phoenix in the situations I have felt stuck sucks much less now than it did three months ago. Can I get so light, so buoyant, and handle myself well enough here that I can achieve the headspace of this summer?

• Keep using my body. I’ve become so habituated to running, working out, and lately, rock climbing, that I usually do one of the three twice a day. I love moving. The act, coupled with the mental reset that results is the oil of my work and well-being.

What Can I Do Better This Year?

• Work on setting my spirit right before I sit down to write.

• Take more photographs of people and experiences, not just the places of my life. I’d also like to start a daily journal this year.

• Collaborate with and help others more — in the form of guest posts, aid in projects, growing other’s audiences, and other creative opportunities that align with my values.

• Follow my fear, using it as a compass. I write this every year. I’m never quite satisfied, nor disappointed, with my follow-through. I’m really into constantly encountered symbols as reminders and designed a “fear as a compass” lock screen for my phone yesterday. We’ll see how it works.

Specific Goals for 2020

• Become an instrument-rated pilot.

• Find someone to advise me on expanding the reach of my work. I’m very independent, but I know there are many blind spots in my understanding and should ask for guidance more often.

• Continue writing the book. With flight school, a real estate photography business, and writing somewhat regular posts here, I have no intention of finishing the book in 2020, but I hope to revive it and keep it alive.

• Find a cool ass girl to share this experience with. There’s a large gap in values between me and most people. I’m looking for an atypical someone who cares less about status and stuff and would rather spend their days as lavishly as I want to.

• Host a surreal, insightful WONDER WANDER 2020. I rented a cabin among the red rocks of southern Utah from April 24th-28th, 2020 to host a gathering of a dozen creative and adventurous souls. You should totally come.

My Favorite Things of 2019

Book: Collected Poems By Jack Gilbert
Album: Ever Since I Lost My Mind
Movie: 3 Idiots
Quote:

Object: Moleskin’s Weekly Planner

*I believe stuff distracts from more than enhances our lives. However, straining one’s brain to remember what could be outsourced to a to-do-list is an absolutely unnecessary burden. I’ve been using this week-on-the-left-space-for-my to-do-list-on-the-right planner for ten years now. I highly recommend it.

Happy new decade,

Ethan