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Hello and Happy New Year, As is often noted when someone checks my license or passport, I’m “a New Year’s baby!” And perhaps it’s this sync of my personal calendar with the world calendar that doubly primed me for appreciating years as laps around the sun, but I want to start by saying I find this a most wondrous perspective. There is limitless mystery and awe to be found in casting our awareness across the stars. Perhaps fueled by a need for escape from the repetitive days of this pandemic, I’ve really gotten into the act of projecting my consciousness as far and wide as possible this past year. Between these zoom out of the known universe videos, a book that found it’s way into my hands this fall detailing Albert Einstein’s “cosmic religion,” and blasting the Iya Terra song linked to atop this letter in the sauna, considering space has been a great means of finding it this past year. I hope with the beginning of 2021 that you’ve had the privilege of time and space to stop and reflect a bit. To think about where you’ve been, where you’re going, and what you would like to do with the next lap around the sun. After half a decade spent wandering, I don’t really believe in “planning” the future, but I definitely believe in aiming intention and examining the places I place my energy. Among a fantastic few hours with my brother rehashing this year we’ve so closely shared atop a mountain this New Year’s Eve while the setting sun painted the Phoenix skyline in purples and oranges and some intensive journaling to examine the year past and consider the year ahead, I have found myself with renewed vigor, yearning when I wake up to greet the day in a way I haven’t since time pre-dating the pandemic. Between being able to write again and my buddy and I’s real estate photography business really starting to hit its stride, the relief found in this past December combined with some homey holidays probably made it my favorite month of the pandemic yet. With the promise of vaccines on their way, I’m also getting real excited about the prospect of sharing space with strangers and going places again, while still intending to try and milk these last months of “social distancing” for all their worth. I was out on my Sunday long run this afternoon and the thought crossed my mind that I really hope someone puts on a music festival to rival 1969’s Woodstock, harnessing the great energy of the return to being with one another once again. I would do crazy things be a part of a something of that magnitude and lore. I feel the probably of renewed possibility already at work in me, thawing my long wintered spirit these days. Perhaps we will finally around to a second WONDER WANDER gathering this fall as well? Now, I’ve had quite a prolific month for the pandemic and have dozens upon dozens upon dozens of life-changing things attached to this letter! The thing is, just about all of them were made by someone else. I am merely the middleman whose life was changed by them and is pointing them out with a new, experimental type of page I have been tinkering with the past year and am finally releasing tonight! I call it a Needlestack. To put it simply, it’s a list of links to what I consider personally to be the best pages on the entire internet. I ask you—please—check it out! Take a dive down a few of the most promising rabbit holes on the internet I know. And if you or someone you know has a website—I ask you (or you to ask them) to join me in making one. Below my Needlestack, you will find a list of other’s Needlestacks. The ultimate goal here is an ambitious one: to convince a bunch of other people to make Needlestacks all over the internet, connect them via hyperlinks, and weave a web of what’s best across the web thus making the internet browsable by best. Here’s a further introduction. I appreciate any and all help in getting the ball rolling here! I suspect I may have also coined a new concept this December of “surfing time” in the article 15 Ways to Surf Time. It’s a quick, listicle-like, perspective stretching read. I have also included a link to a wide-ranging conversion I recorded with musician and artist-lifting podcast host, JJ Shafe. JJ’s project CEDAR is a project of tremendous intention. If you’re looking for resources or help promoting your art I suggest giving his site a browse and perhaps even dropping him a line. Lastly, thank you for sharing in this ride round the sun on spaceship Earth with me. I know there are no shortage of things competing for your attention in our modern day world and I deeply appreciate your participation in this monthly mind-melding via late night letter with me. Til next month! With love & stoke, Ethan P.S. Check out my Needlestack (it is full of profound, life-altering, internet gold)!
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