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Hola mis amigos, Since writing you last month I have been on a grand adventure. A one-month chapter of life brimming with beauty and fun, resonance and meaning. As I sat waiting to board a plane out of Raleigh, North Carolina on New Year’s Day, a newly minted 31-year-old, I found myself teary-eyed and dripping snot, overwhelmed with gratitude for this life. The day before I jetted off to Ecuador to begin this trip of trips, I sent that last Late Night Letter about the immense value of time, and how, “if you don’t spend the money, they can’t tell you what to do.” I have long been enamored with this idea and the incredible freedom with which it has graced my life. If those words have since flown your mind, I encourage you to go back and give it another read, as this letter (and the article below) are a sort of “Part 2” attempting to answer the question that arises once you have a choice in how to spend your time: what to do with it? Now, of course, I am not writing to tell you what you should do with your time and freedom — that is up to you. But how do you know what you want to do with it? How do you really know what you want to do with your time? Deep down, below all your habits, reflexes, and norms, what does the innermost you want to do with it? I believe that finding and living the answer to this question is what life is all about. I also believe that the degree to which you align yourself with your innermost answer is the degree of aliveness, satisfaction, and wonder with which you get to live life. Since my sophomore year of college, I have been quietly, intently, and seriously striving to discover how I want to spend my life. The reason I pedaled a bicycle across the United States at twenty-one years old, the reason I traveled for the majority of five years after college, the reason I’ve been non-stop reading books, the reason I pursue curiosities and cultivate interests (see the article below), is to further understand and live in closer relation to my deepest answer to the question, “how do I want to spend my life?” I’m feeling my way closer and closer to it and in living the question, am gratefully engaging in the lifelong journey of finding out. I think this December was so profound because I lived in accordance with and improved upon my best answers. Ecuador wasn’t just a vacation at the beach. It was wading into the intensity of learning to surf, and over time, discovering surfing is a most satisfying way to connect with the ocean. It was working on a third long form guide about ideas as lenses, and deepening my awareness of the lenses I look at the world through. It was getting off a bus with all my stuff in Montañita, Ecuador, and hoofing it through the unknown straight to my hostel, naively worried about being robbed, and strolling back to that bus stop twenty-eight days later, smiling at people, barefoot, and shirtless with the nostalgia of leaving home. It was living in a hostel where I met travelers hailing from the world round who live fascinating lives, have wildly different experiences and perspectives, and conversing and engaging with them on deeper levels. It was working on a third website for my buddy and I’s real estate photography business, and knowing this year is going to take us to levels we’ve never been. These are things that make me feel alive, viscerally here and now, and stoked for my feet to hit the ground when I wake to the day. Two weeks before the end of the trip, I got a text from my buddy Matthew, who showed up at the first ever WONDER WANDER and has magnificently DJ’d the last night of every one since. In North Carolina, he owns and operates Between2Clouds, “an art project that throws parties and curates visceral content and experiences.” He said he was throwing two events back to back on the 30th and 31st. He said they were going to be really good. I moved some flights around. On December 29th, I left Ecuador and dropped into a rabbit hole of deep house music, lose-yourself dance, and radical art in Raleigh. It was unbelievably rad. I don’t have the word count to explain it all here, so I’ll just cut to the chase. On New Year’s Eve, half an hour before midnight, in this remarkable one-hundred-year-old mansion, Matthew took the mic in front of 275 grooving-party-goers and asked if they would like, for the first time ever, to hear the Between2Clouds origin story. He began the story with, “I was eleven years old when I first tried to kill myself.” Matthew is a one-of-a-kind diamond, born into a dark situation and formed under the kind of pressure that cracks people. But he didn’t crack. He became a diamond instead. Years ago, on a plane flying “Between2Clouds,” he was struck with a vision of sharing music, love, and “making the world a happier and dancier place.” And he gave his life over to it. Sleeping in his car, on friend’s couches, navigating the pandemic as an event company… for years, it didn’t matter, he simply put his energy into creating his vision. Surrounded today by a tremendously talented community of artists, creatives, and musicians it was clear his dream was finally attaining critical mass. I silently sobbed in the back of the crowd, overcome by the most courageous, resilient, and meaningful work of art I have ever seen, and then proceeded to dance my ass off with his people to an incredible set. Crashing on the floor of the apartment of my hero-friend that night, I had the sense that my own life is attaining critical mass. This blog, these Late Night Letters, and WONDER WANDER are magnets for my kind of people. The creative mediums in which I love to work propel my buddy and I’s real estate photography businesses. Wondering, wandering, and reading books have shaped my lens so much — the oneness of it all, the size of the universe, who I am… I see it all so different, more connected, and beautifully these days. I have my own high-flying dreams to pursue too. It’s all sandcastles in the end, but hot damn, we enjoy them while we can! With love and stoke, Ethan P.S. A simple snippet from the article below worth a’ chewing on: “If you spend your life doing things you are interested in, then your life will be interesting to you. If you spend your life doing things you are not interested in, then your life will not be interesting to you.”
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