By Ethan Maurice | January 9, 2023
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.
As in years past, I sourced most questions from Chris Gulliabeau’s Annual Review and a podcast about Naikan (the Japanese art of self-reflection). I also included a few new questions this year from friends and an intuition about the value of clarifying who I hope to be.
If you’re interested in following the format, here’s the list of questions I asked. I wrote and answered each in a notebook over a few slow, reflective days on the beach in Ecuador this December:
Who is the person I want to become? Describe him.
What did I receive this year?*
What did I give this year?*
What did I put my energy into this year?
When I look back on this time, what will I wish I did more of?
What should I put my energy into next year?
What should I put less energy into next year?
3-5 aims in the following categories: Writing & This Website, Real Estate Photography, Wellness, Relationships, Investing, Learning, Travel, Fear Facing, Lenscrafting, & Fun.
*Think as broadly as possible for these questions (air, love, food, internet, sunsets, etc.)
While I won’t share all my answers to all these questions, I’ll summarize and share a few answers below. Over time, these published yearly reviews are becoming increasingly interesting (for me at least) to look back upon, charting changes in the ways I spend my time, place my awareness, and what I decide is worth sharing. Similar to past published reviews (2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021), here’s what happened, what went well, what didn’t, some loosely held aims for 2023, and a few of my favorite things from the past year.
What Happened:
Looking back, this year was a doubling-down on the projects and aspects of my experience I value the most: creativity, my buddy and I’s real estate photography businesses, WONDER WANDER, relationships with friends who inspire and lift each other higher, a growing sense of spirituality etc. While travel did amount to over two months of my year, the time was far more invested in specifics and spent in ways less exploratory than years past.
I think this is a natural and healthy change in the arch of my life. I spent a great deal of time exploring, discovering, finding through more than half a decade of wandering about the world. I’ve found some truly fantastic things and ways of being that resonant with the depths of me. I seem to be slowly shifting from searching for these resonant things to investing in the best ones I’ve found.
In the grand scheme these days, I recognize and often feel that I am on of the luckiest beings alive on planet Earth. My survival needs are easily met, I have discovered things that make me come alive, I have wonderful friends that inspire me, I get to travel for months every year. Through books and profound experiences in nature, my view on who “I” am also seems to be expanding into a larger sense of “Self” that transcends individual “self” — something my younger self would have never thought possible in his wildest dreams without the suspension of logic and rational belief.
What Went Well?
Desert Lens and Denver Lens. With over a dozen photographers, two account managers, and an even larger editing team, the little real estate photography side-gig my buddy and I started three years ago continues to blossom.
WONDER WANDER 2022. Two years in a row, this gathering has been so wondrous I don’t hesitate to call it one of the top experiences of my life. The power of bringing people together to share their interests and gifts and have the time of their lives with one another out in nature is near nuclear. My fascination with experiences and experiments in intentional community continues to deepen.
My body received near royal treatment. I’m enamored with the mind-body connection and strive to play it like a harp. Building movement in around work (and at minimum every day) seems vital to the wellbeing of mind, body, and giving your best to your endeavors. Most days in Phoenix I get to bicycle to and from the coffee shop and the gym (meaning two to four bicycle rides in a day!). I’ve been bouldering three times a week, jogging, running sprints, and lifting weights. My body feels healthier and more robust than it has in years thanks to my brother and his @kneesovertoesguy style workouts.
Travel totally rocked this year. I’m writing these words on the tail end of a December spent working remote and learning to surf in an Ecuadorian paradise. Ten days writing, wandering, and taking creekside saunas in Silver Gate with some of my favorite humans was a true gift. Two weeks on the Olympic Peninsula with family… WONDER WANDER… multiple trips to the Colorado Rocky Mountains this summer… solo nights out in the desert in my old Honda Element home on wheels… I am so fortunate to be so mobile.
I am stoked about the ways I get to spend my time and have grand intentions with them. In 2019, I set the intention to become “a creative wizard,” meaning, to master and use a variety of creative mediums to put “umph” behind ideas, projects, and pursuits of value. Through mediums such as writing, story, culture, photography, videography, web design, graphic design, and search engine optimization, I continue to hone these creative skills and “build sails” for endeavors.
What Did Not Go Well?
I haven’t given writing the time and energy I could. My efforts are split between two full-time endeavors: real estate photography and writing/the projects surrounding this website. I’ve given the bulk of my efforts to the real estate photography business the past three years, and often have this low-grade gnawing feeling of what could be if I wrote a book or had another project through this site really take off.
A chronic sense of busyness. Quite naturally I suppose, trying to do two full-time things at once leads to an often sense of busyness. It’s easy to feel, “I could do more…” I’m pretty good at letting this feeling go, but it often returns.
The local tribe of inspirational amigos remains elusive. When I travel I’m always running into rad people. WONDER WANDER brims with the interested and interesting. Through both, I have a spectacular group of friends living the world round that breath life into my life. Yet, gathering such a group of inspirational amigos in Phoenix remains challenging.
Last Year’s Loosely Held Aims
Expand the real estate photography business to a third location and get all three pumping. While we didn’t open that third location, our systems, people, and capacity to handle volume matured significantly. Revenue grew about 40% this year.
Write a dozen articles, a dozen Late Night Letters, a third PDF guide, and create three YouTube videos. Ten articles and a dozen Late Night Late Night Letters were written. I’ve been at that third PDF guide here in Ecuador, but it probably won’t be published until spring of 2023.
Host WONDER WANDER 2022. Absolutely nailed it! What a time. What a group of people. A peak life experience, again.
Get into the financial position to buy a Burynian pad. The multi-family property seems more a multi-year endeavor, especially considering timing amid the wildest housing market in Phoenix history.
Give my best to @kneesovertoesguy workouts and get super powerful, flexible, and robust. I had no idea what I was missing! These workouts are about expanding your range of motion and strength throughout the entire range of it. Absolutely brilliant. I suspect this I’ll be doing “knees over toes” workouts for a long time.
Take a month-plus trip abroad — I have long wanted to write and “digital nomad” while learning to surf. I am on the tail end of this exact trip, hanging on the Ecuadorian coast with over twenty days of surfing under my belt now! Surfing is intense and full body, immersive in beauty, a ride of the energy of the spheres. Floating on a surfboard as the sun dips into the ocean is philosophical and transcendent.
Celebrate, expand, and be in love. I’m living through this lens more than ever before. While far from an “enlightened” being, I’m getting and living it more than ever before.
Some Loosely Held Aims for 2023
Launch the TruLens Plugin, grow, and expand the real estate photography business to a couple new locations. We’ve got big plans and are investing in our own game-changing plugin this year. Full send.
Write a dozen articles, dozen Late Night Letters, and put the third PDF guide I’m working on out into the world. I’m planning to keep the blog rolling with an article and a Late Night Letter each month. I’ve more up my sleeve too, but sense it wise to “chest a few cards” too.
Host WONDER WANDER 2023. WONDER WANDER is becoming a “thing.” I don’t know exactly what sort of “thing” it is becoming, but there’s magic, energy, and momentum around it. I also plan to experiment in experiences locally with a creativity-depth-and-dance-based “shindig.”
Get in the financial position to purchase a Burynian pad. This seems a multi-year endeavor. “Burynian” refers to Vagabonding author Ed Buryn’s multi-family residence where he and other rad humans reside on his property and by only using in a sliver himself, living no longer costs him money, but slowly amasses it.
Continue giving my body the royal treatment. I’m trying to build movement and better postured positions into my day wherever possible: daily bicycle rides to coffee shops, various sitting and standing positions for working at home, working out in various ways every day. More “kneesovertoes” workouts, bouldering, jogging, running sprints, and a bit of yoga sprinkled in is the current ideal.
Take a month long trip abroad next December. Surfing has been so rad, maybe another surf trip? I also have a vision of heading to the mountains to mix learning to ride motorcycles with trail running and meditation.
See reality through a more expansive lens. I don’t write about it too much yet, as I’m taking my time and trying to understand more before pushing ideas on the world, but tectonic shifts are occurring in my idea of identity and what is happening here in the grand scheme of life and the universe.
