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Hey, Wanna know something crazy? This letter was written across 850 miles of sky today — the words began climbing out of Phoenix, Arizona and ended underground in the basement of a friend’s parent’s place in Bozeman, Montana. In that basement, I pushed this “send” button I have and the words and images and formatting and links to all the internet jazz you see here that I put together across this short swath of time and huge swath of space were beamed to you and a few thousand others the would round in but an instant. That’s crazy. It’s also totally normal for the twenty-first century. And that is crazy too. As you will surely deduce from the imagery in this letter, my past month was again brimming with real estate photography. Many photographs were taken, but mainly my weekdays and weekends were devoted to building lighter, faster, more capable versions of websites for my buddy and I’s budding businesses in Phoenix and Denver. We enlisted the help of a happy, bumbling, capable web designer from Northern Macedonia (a country just northwest of Greece) and have come quite a long way with our websites since I last wrote you. While I penned a couple rough pieces this month, most of my waking hours went to web design, and don’t have anything ready to share with this letter. So I thought I’d attach the two websites (which are like 95% done) just to illustrate that I haven’t been neglecting this fantastic endeavor, but have been working hard to make tools to send the business forth and buy me some time to get back to it. It’s been interesting, this intense pursuit of business. We only have a certain amount of energy to give in a day and how we prioritize and stack our values tends to dictate where that energy goes. For me lately, real estate photography and writing often wrestle for the top of that priority stack. Lately, the urgency of business has often topped the importance I feel of the writing. But the business feels like a good bet and surely shouldn’t be neglected. If it works out as well as it might, it could be a tremendously sweet investment of energy. But what if the business doesn’t work out as well as it might? I’ve had a fair share of anxiety around that question this past year. However, climbing a mountain in Phoenix with the wisest stripper I ever did meet last week, I was reminded of something I once knew but completely forgot during the pandemic: that uncertainty doesn’t just make life interesting —no — uncertainty makes life worth living. Imagine if you knew how everything was going to play out beforehand: if you went out on a first date and knew exactly how the whole relationship was all going to go. If you could flawlessly anticipate how anything and everything is going to be before seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching it. If right now you could see all the successes and failures, ups and downs, beginnings and ends, in all the years ahead… In truth, uncertainty is the thrill of living. Suspense keeps us glued to the present. And surprise gets us when we least expect it. And yet, here I’ve often been this past year— here we all often are — cursing the fact that we don’t yet know. Wishing we knew how this was going to play out. Thinking that if we only knew the outcome we could make the right choices and not the mistakes. The truth is that life is a million times more fun and captivating because we don’t know how it’s going to play out. From time to time, we all think or say, “the suspense is killing me.” But the suspense doesn’t kill us — it keeps us alive. Til next month! With love & stoke, Ethan P.S. I’m gonna be getting back to writing and some much needed rest and relaxation at the Range Rider’s Lodge in Silver Gate, Montana for the next ten days! If by some random act of chance you’re in the Yellowstone area, reply to this email and let’s grab a beer or climb a mountain!
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