03/01/2026
I am back!
And I have so many thoughts. I took 3 weeks completely off from my business. I didn’t look at social media once, I didn’t check my email, and for the most part I didn’t really think about it. And honestly I think I need to do this every year because now I’m excited to dive back in.
I spend the last 3 weeks traveling in Asia with my dad who turns 70 this month. We managed to go to one of the least developed countries in the world and also one of the most. And while I have a lot of thoughts about the ethics of tourism in developing countries (mostly just a lot of - it’s fu***ng complicated), and also the ethics of taking photos of people while traveling without their consent (mostly a lot of I don’t think it’s ethical at all/feels extremely exploitative especially in developing countries). But I think that the biggest thing I took away from it was the beauty and the weirdness of humans. The sameness and the incredible diversity. I like people watching, and regardless of where I am in the world and what language people are speaking and what religion people are practicing there so some things that are beautifully the same. The way kids laugh and play. The way people smile at their phones when they’re texting someone they like. The way moms hold their babies. And the way people sit down for dinner with friends at the end of a day. And I think while I was continually smiling at the beautify of it all, I was also incredibly sad. Because my brain simply can’t comprehend why people keep going to war with the each other. We drove a reasonable portion of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos- probably one the most heavily bombed parts of the world, and the bomb craters still mark people’s yards, the water buffalo wallow in the ones that have been filled with water, gardens sit right next to them, and cows meander around them. And unexploded ordinances from 50 years ago still kill between 28-50 people (mostly kids) per year in Laos. And we did that. And we continue to do s**t like that. And other countries keep doing s**t like this. And I simply cannot understand why. I cannot understand how someone can decide that a border or a religion or power or money is worth the sacrifice of humanity is such catastrophic ways. I get so sad. But I also get so angry. And so confused. Because how can people not look at the silliness and beauty of humanity and not want to protect it? How can we look at nature and want to control it and exploit it instead of be in awe of it?
So no this isn’t a post about bo***ir or being naked in nature. It’s just a post about humanity. Which is really at the core of being naked in nature for me. So I’ll take my sadness and my anger and put it into making art that continues to celebrate all of the weirdness of being human.
