Back in March in the midst of a near-magic trip cruising around on scooters, watching sunsets, and exploring Mexico’s Pacific Coast, I sat up on the roof of this Mexican mansion one night to connect with my friend Peter for a podcast-style interview on his wellness cross-training platform Empowermend.

One of the coolest things about writing about my interests on the internet and hosting an annual WONDER WANDER is a spectacular increase in my luck surface area, or as I like to call it: surface area for serendipity.

Back in November, fellow camera-wielding friend and wonderwanderer Kevin sent me an out-of-the-blue text message. Could Richard, a legally-blind-totally-tapped-into-it sound healer we met capturing Festival of Yes, crash at my place for a weekend, and would I want to help film some sound baths?

I'd felt a particular resonance with Richard — college baseball player turned Peace Corps volunteer turned federal investigator, and longtime yogi that had an ocular stroke tragically taking a good deal of his vision, but also prompting a deep dive into vibration and sound — his life and energy inspired mine.

And now, six months and a thousand miles away, with one text from a friend, Richard was coming to crash and hang at my place for the weekend.

Once a year, I host ‘WONDER WANDER,’ a multi-day gathering of creatives, adventurers, and all other sorts of fascinated-fascinating humans out in nature. We share, we laugh, we hike, we stargaze, we philosophize, we dive deep, and relish in this crazy experience of being with one another.

WONDER WANDER 2024, was the 5th go at throwing this grand "experiential potluck," built around a dozen or so humans all offering an experience for the group. And it was surreal and loving and interesting and learned and rad.

I cut the video from this year’s wonderwanderers spontaneously filming with an old vintage digital camera I brought this year — and love the feeling conveyed through this beautiful sliver of moments we captured.

I just released YESMAN INTERVIEW — a live interview I did with the Yesman himself at this year’s (utterly magnificent) Festival of Yes.

Alex, the Yesman, is a great friend and easily one of the most rad, vibrant, ringing-with-life humans I have ever met. It was a grand pleasure to discuss and share the power, usefulness, and philosophy of “yes” with him, a central pillar to the dude’s infectiously inspirational way of being. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

As a creative, if you ask me, one of the best things that happened last year was a book. The book is a collection of observations on creativity from music producer Rick Rubin. Rick has made brilliant albums with the widest range of the biggest musicians for nearly half a century.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being offers Rick Rubin’s remarkable view on creativity and reads not unlike the Tao Te Ching. Open to a random page in either and you will find an idea as simple as it is profound.

Yet somehow, the podcast interviews Rick has done since releasing the book hit me even harder. There are dozens, and it is possible that I have listened to every one of them.

A haiku about living now.

This past year was a year of hard work at home peppered with experiences beautiful, eye-opening, and totally transcendent.

While the bulk of my year was spent running a real estate photography business — work I find flowy, creative, and interesting — it was largely ventures away from it that shaped me. Some of the most profound internal shifts included a deeper interest in creative collaboration, increasing palatability of responsibility, and more mystic experience of the everyday.

The things that shape us matter most. In sharing what shaped me in 2023, it’s my hope this might connect you with something that resonates in a similar and significant way.

To be a mystic one need not add anything to their experience, but subtract. A mystic simply sticks with and perceives the basics of reality, because the basic of reality are wildly miraculous.

A few examples:

• We live on a tiny planet floating in the endless void of space.

• Time is an illusion made by measuring spins of the earth and laps around the sun. The past is a memory, the future a dream, and both are mental projections from the present. All is one ever-changing, eternal present moment.

• A single cell organism speciated into all forms of life on Earth. All life on our planet traces appears to trace back to one source, an unbroken chain of life branching out from a single trunk. To say we are “related” to all of life on Earth may be the grandest understatement.