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Fellow Earth People, Happy New Lap Around the Sun! Probably because my birthday’s New Year’s Day and I’ve been trying to keep my awareness wide and open to all that universe out there, I’m pretty into the idea of replacing the word “year” with what a year is: a lap around the sun. Like, I’m not “thirty-three years old” now, I’ve done “33 laps around the sun.” It makes life sound cooler, gives kudos to age, and most importantly, points to the wild thing a year actually is. I’m amidst my fourth December sabbatical from the real estate photography biz, this time a rural surf town on the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua! I’ve been writing every morning, working on the business remote most days, and getting in glorious sunset surf sessions. Surfing the west coast of the Americas, where the sun drops into the ocean, and the sky burns colors that reflect across wavy liquid-metal water is becoming one of my new favorite things. The best sunset was two nights ago. I almost cried floating out there on my board. What I’ve been most excited about this month, though, is finishing the rough draft of a third downloadable guide for the site. It’s about ideas and how they reside between you and your experience, like a lens, and offers the agency to craft your lens on life. This is a kind of inner work I’ve been at for ten laps around the sun now, traveling and reading books to find good ideas and work them into my lens. It’s less a long piece and more like an “idea catalog” filled with ideas that have changed my life. Very photo heavy too. A project I built backwards as an experiment by designing graphically before writing it. It’s shaping up unique. I’m polishing, polishing, polishing now and I hope to have it ready next month. The other big adventure I’ve undertaken down here in Nicaragua is learning to ride a manual motorcycle. It’s something I’d always wanted to do but never made the leap. The rural coast has been the perfect place to learn. I stalled six times in the first five minutes, then things started to click and I got in gear. Over one hour of riding, I went from clueless to competent. It’s amazing how long our hesitation toward the unknown can keep us away from things that draw us in. To start this new lap around the sun off right, relish in my day of birth, and put all my putting around to the test, I rode today from our little coastal surf town to this two-volcanoes-in-the-middle-of-a-giant-lake island. I’d heard of it from friends, spotted it from the window of the plane last year flying home from Ecuador, and felt a particular pull. Going from shirtless and shoeless most of the month to donning jeans, a flannel, and a full helmet at noon I was pouring sweat. Not just from a hot, humid afternoon, but a bit nervous for the unknown and what might happen if anything went wrong. As soon as I got rolling, though, the passing air cooled me and I settled into a smooth cruise from surf town to ferry at the lake. I waited an hour and a half for the ferry and the ferry took an hour and a half to cross the lake. As we approached the island, it started to rain. I rolled off the ferry with low-lying rain clouds colored a light pink for a sunset moment. The road was soaked and it was soon dark. I had at least an hour of riding ahead. It was wild. The two things I aimed not to do while learning to ride here were ride at night and in the rain (as I’ve seen motorcyclists fishtail and fall on multiple rainy occasions with roads wet and slick). And here I was soaking wet riding a motorcycle in the rain at night on a volcano island. Long, wet, laser-focused story of the ride short: I made it! Giddy, I checked in, took a shower, wolfed down a big birthday dinner with this unbelievable chocolate smoothie made with cacao grown at this volcano/lakeside hostel, and wrote this here Late Night Letter. I like the idea of “life art." Where the grandest canvas isn’t canvas, but the universe in which you reside, and making art is not a solo act, but a collaborative effort, an interplay, a kind of dance with with movement of all things. Happy New Lap Around the Sun! Let’s make it a great one, Ethan P.S. I put together an archive of all Late Night Letters from across six years! From start to finish, it’s a wild little read if you’ve ever want to give it a couple hours.
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