3 Year Leap on the Unaltered Skip of the Stone

A newsletter post

This is a photo I posted while on a beach in El Salvador, Dec. 31, 2019:

Here is the accompanying text of that post:

Last Sunlight of 2019

To be honest, the 2010-2019 decade for me was great, and also was when I realized how nice and comfortable my life really is. I started my career, went all over the world, met a wonderful and significant girl, and generally rocked. The worst thing that happened was that the politics in my country went from broken to FUBAR, and I do really believe beyond repair, and it didn't much affect me personally because I am a cis white middle class male with a profession. Regarding that, my focus politically is to try to enable everyone to have a life as comfortable and nice as mine. I can't really personally complain about much.

I am sitting in a surf resort in El Salvador with a German, a Brazilian, my mother, and my girlfriend waiting for a beach party after we ate a hunk of glazed ham and drank a bottle of Chilean wine. Who the hell am I to worry about myself? I think my energy is much better put toward helping others.

I have goals for next year and next decade but they're not far off course from anything else I have been striving for last year and last decade. I didn't really think this New Year's was too meaningful until I took this very picture. I think this picture is about as meaningful as an arbitrary calendar sales event gets. It is enough for me, for now.

The fact is, the pandemic didn’t really change that trajectory of my life that much. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I would have suffered the same types of burn-outs and the same types of inspirations over the next three years.