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.

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.

Because language cleaves
difference that matters
Inuit people in the Arctic had
more than fifty words for “snow.”

In a modern world of abundance
where strife has become
more mental than physical
let us cleave “enjoy” and “have fun.”
…

1. If you think about eternity and the time of your life within it you can find freedom in sensing how little what you do actually matters.

2. If you envision time as sand passing through your hands you can relish in the texture and touch of this moment.

3. If you seek novel experiences you can lengthen your experience of time. Novelty creates memory. The more memories you have across a period of time, the longer that time will feel.

What follows is an introduction to hard work not as an act of martyrdom, but a self-aware balancing act between pressing on and renewing our ability to do so. A way of consciously culling the best out of ourselves rather than mindlessly demanding it.

First we’ll consider when to stick with something and when to step away to “press the reset button.” Then we’ll go over a dozen ways to press it.

Let’s get into it.

Nepal and its Himalayas are a place I have long wanted to experience. A poor country rich in culture, the birthplace of Buddha, site of Peter Matthiessen’s excursion in The Snow Leopard, and home to the world's highest mountains, many an aspect might draw one there. Not unlike my aforementioned author/hero, both a cultural pull and a curiosity for the Himalayas themselves drew me in. I wondered what might I find in the Himalayas, in my experience of the mountains and the people who live in the foot of the grandeur.

I also had some questions which required space. Space I knew I would find out there. I’ve struggled with this clash of eastern and western values lately, especially since a ten-day Vipassana meditation course last October.

Perhaps because I'd been working so much, I stumbled upon a personally new form of wonder this summer. It first happened with Henry, the owner of the lodge I manage seasonally, while troubleshooting the satellite internet dish at his place over the phone.

Amid a twelve-hour workday tasked with one of many items on the day's to-do-list, my focus on the details relevant to fixing the satellite dish suddenly broke and just fell away.

It was like I'd spent the last two months in a sunny field with a microscope, moving from blade of grass to blade of grass, agonizing over the smallest fragments of the whole field when I suddenly went, “You know what, I'm gonna lift my head up and look around for a moment.”

A couple weeks ago, I finished converting my Honda Element into the world's tiniest home on wheels. As a dude who travels with little interior design experience, the conversion came out better than I could have imagined.

One of the main features that took my Element from livable to friggin' sweet are its patterned fabric blackout windows. Made with a shiny, insulating material called Reflectix, most projects using this material end up feel like the inside of a low budget spaceship. I wanted a more homey, bright look to my space that didn't feel quite so shoddy or depressing. Patterned fabric, adhesive spray, and black duct tape proved the perfect solution.

In addition to looking great on the inside, these window shades blackout virtually all outside light. They also make it impossible to see into my Element, so I can comfortably sleep, with complete privacy, anywhere I'm allowed to park.

In life, it's often your darkness that defines your light. The binds imposed on an individual's soul become the most satisfying to escape.

My dad's childhood took place in a rotating cast of apartments. Growing up he had to tread lightly, turn the volume down, and find somewhere else to play the drums out of respect for those living around him.

He dreamed of living in a house—a place where he could blast the stereo, where he could wale on his drum set, where he could live without constant filtration of his experience out of concern for others. While working full-time, he attended night school to become a mechanical designer. And after a couple years of work, he and my mom got their very own house.

They bought that house in 1989 and still live their today. He loves it.

We all have goals, ambitions, and dreams we'd like to reach in life. We think about them often. We imagine ourselves as masters of this or creators of that. But how often are we just dreaming instead of doing?

I was paddling around in a kayak the other day and realized kayaking is the perfect metaphor for our ambitions in life. In a kayak, paddling is everything. If you want to go somewhere, you have to paddle to get there. Without consistent strokes of the paddle in the direction you want to go, you're merely drifting at the mercy of your environment. You'll never get to where you intend to.

In a kayak, wishful thoughts of your destination might keep you going, but will not get you any closer. The stroke of the paddle is all that counts. Life works the same way. If you know you want to go in a certain direction, master a skill, or pursue anything, it takes consistent, deliberate action.

The above video is a National Geographic Live! Presentation by Andrew Skurka, a man who left the trail behind to traverse 4,569 miles of Alaskan Wilderness. It's riveting. It's powerful. It's one of the most inspiring talks I've ever seen. I share it not just in the hopes that it moves you, but to illustrate the extreme degree of possibility that comes with being alive.
 

One of the most influential books I've ever encountered is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I knew I would be retracing part of the path of my cross country bike ride as I drove up to my summer job in Montana, which closely parallels the story line of the book, so I picked it up again for a second read on my trip north.

Yesterday, I was hiding out from a thunderstorm in the mountains just east of Jackson, WY. I read a couple chapters as I laid in this remarkably cozy nest of a bed I made with the back seats down in the used SUV I recently bought.

In the book, the main character is riding west on a motorcycle tour and begins recognizing places he can't remember being. His previous self was this philosophical genius of sorts who lost it and had his personality and memories destroyed through shock therapy. As he retraces his old route and returns to places he'd once been, the things he re-encounters drudge up memories and thoughts of that previous self. This previous self haunts him, almost like – as he says – a ghost.

Almost all modern cultures assume that the future lies in front of us and the past lies behind us. From our modern prospective, we're constantly moving forward into the future. However, the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians thought of time in the opposite way – that we back into the future and face the past.

It's a subtle difference, but I think it's implications are of immense importance.

The reason we assume we face the future is obvious – because we're moving towards it. Like walking, driving, or any other form of movement, we face the direction we're going.

Yet this concept applied to time doesn't work. Why do we face the direction we're going when we move? We face the direction we're going to perceive what's ahead, plot our next steps, and navigate what's coming. However, time doesn't work this way. We can't look ahead in time obviously – we can't perceive the future.

If you play your cards right, Hawaii, and anywhere else really, can be extremely affordable. I spend a grand total of $669 while living it up for two and a half months in paradise. I wasn't living with a strict budge or anything either, I just made a couple of the right moves that made the entire cost of my stay, including flight, less than $10 a day. Simple.

Smart Move #1: The Flight

The first hurdle in economically traveling anywhere is transportation, which in many cases is a flight. The cheapest flight I could find from Phoenix, AZ to the Big Island of Hawaii was $676 round trip (which is more than I spent on the entire trip).

Flights can be one of the most expensive parts of traveling. Plane tickets cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Little do most people know, there's a resource to cover the cost of flights – credit card airline mileage bonuses.

For a couple years, I shied away from these bonuses. Credit cards are full of fees if you don't use them right and I prefer not to owe money. Who wants to mess around with a 22.9% interest rate, right?

Then, I ran into a website called The Art of Non-Conformity (now one of my favorite websites). The author, Chris Guillebeau, is a "travel hacking" extraordinare. He's set foot in every country on Earth. After reading about the millions of airline miles he earns each year, I decided to give it a try.

If you're interested in backpacking the John Muir Trail (JMT), here's some valuable knowledge and a few tips from my experience.

Reserving A Permit

Lots of people want to backpack the JMT. In fact, the number of permit applications Yosemite National Park receives has doubled in the last four years. If you want a chance at securing a permit from Happy Isles (the official starting point of the JMT) you have to now apply exactly 182 days (26 weeks) in advance of your start date. Twenty people will be awarded this permit each day, while hundreds of people apply. It took us eight days of faxing in an updated permit application to finally get in. It's even more difficult to secure a permit now, but with a little luck it can be done.

It might seem a bit strange, obscure, or impossible, but its not as outrageous as you might think. At my best guess, I'd say a couple hundreds of people ride their bicycles from sea to shining sea, across the entire United States every year. In the summer of 2013, I did. My brother and I pedaled nearly 4,500 miles over 76 days, from Atlantic to Pacific. We also raised close to $100,000 for a cause I'm very passionate about while doing it. Hands down, best experience of my life to date. You should do it too.

Here's 20 reasons why: