“Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park… It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself… That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”

- Albert Camus

What I’m Listening To:

Poetry for the Beat Generation — An Album by Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen

Something That’s Got Me Thinking:

The Portal — Julie Lindahl: Shaking the Poisoned Fruit of Shame Out of the Family Tree

Hello!

I’m writing to you tonight, three months into my return to Phoenix, the city in which I was born and raised. As you know if you’ve read one of my recent letters, I came back for a year of flight school with the hope of becoming a professional pilot. Caught in the slow-moving gears of the FAA approval process of complicated medical histories, I’ve still yet to get airborne, so that year of flight still has yet to start, but I’m hopeful it will soon.

After five years largely spent traveling, the transition and wait here hasn’t been easy. I’ve missed the kaleidoscoping external environment of travel, the excitement in the eyes and hearts of other travelers, and the dynamic feeling of being so out there in the world that things are just bound to happen. Coming home has been so different from the half a decade of wandering about the world that it punctuated that I started out resenting this time here in Phoenix.

It’s funny how obvious this sounds written out, but it felt so profound and insightful a realization: life does not need to be like traveling when not traveling. I think that we all get used to the ways we get satisfaction, and when we lose those ways, it takes us time to find new ones, or even realize that we can find new ones. After so long on the road, it’s taken months to occur to me that I have to find some different, new things to love and enjoy while I’m here. Life’s probably not going to feel as dynamic and adventurous in one place, but there are other great ways to be and new routes I’ve yet to find to satisfy old fixes. I’ve been doing my best to expand my awareness and give life a shake lately.

One of those new things to love and enjoy has been the act of self-propulsion. Whether walking at night, running in the middle of the day, or pedaling a finely tuned bike to the gym or a coffee shop, my love for getting around by my own power has never been greater (hence the quote atop this article). You would not believe the variety and depth of what you can notice moving slowly through suburbia. Houses are the stages upon which people live out there lives, and passing through a sea of houses at a slow enough pace to glimpse the set and performance of other people’s lives is so much more interesting and insightful than hurtling by in a car looping the same old thought loops you always loop in your mind. Wherever in the world you are, go for a walk and see what you see. I’m not talking a five-minute stroll, it takes a bit to get into it. Go for an hour or two… three even. Seriously, it is time well spent that you will not regret.

Sunset has becoming my new, almost daily route to wonder. Open desert skies always make for great sunsets, and smog makes them even better. So Phoenix is spectacular in the sunset department. Whether sitting on the roof with a thermos of hot tea and a book, or gazing out over the city from a mountain, I’m learning to get out and bask in the yellows, oranges, pinks, and purples, as my part of the earth spins into the shadow of the sun. Sunsets happen every single day, so we write them off as trite, but I’d argue that sitting out among the daily cascade of colors across one hundred eighty degrees of sky, fading from light to dark is better than any July Fourth firework display I’ve ever set eyes upon. Especially here in the desert.

Mainly, that’s what I’m writing to you about this month — self-propulsion and sunsets — two common, free things that have become the life-affirming cornerstones of my life of late. I also just signed up at a rock climbing gym, have been taking lots of saunas, and have got to spend a good deal of time with my family, all of which have been great as well. But for the purposes of this letter and what I feel of unsung value that I can offer you (which I’ve realized is more or less the subtle subject I’ve been writing about the past four years), we’re sticking to self-propulsion and sunsets tonight.

I encourage you to go out and enjoy one of either soon.

Til’ next month!

With love & stoke,

Ethan

P.S. Want to follow this thread of common, free, life-affirming things further? Give the article below a read (or listen).

This Month’s Articles:

I Strive to Be Cheap, Sensitive, and Naked to the World

The other day, I figured out how to put the way I go about life into a single sentence. It then occurred to me that life was far too expansive. One couldn’t possibly do such a thing! However, it felt like an important sentence, so I thought to share it with you:

I strive to be cheap, sensitive, and naked to the world.

As language is subjective, those words probably mean something different to you than me. Let’s break it into parts and elaborate on each.

Read on >

Or, rather I read it to ya?

If you know someone who might enjoy or benefit from this letter, please do me a solid and forward along! If this letter was forwarded to you and you'd like to subscribe, click here.