I sit in another rented garden-level unit of a Bellingham home, and I am mere hours away from missing my 2025 resolution.

Normally, I don’t go for these types of things (counter-culturalism has mostly only succeeded in adding to smugness for me, so on this, I’ll let it slide).

The goal? To post something, anything, into the world, once a week. To what end, that is yet to be seen. Of what? Mostly bikes, and energy, and a big curveball in the form of cows impending (lucky you, to the four for whom this lands in your inbox directly, also thank you for subscribing).

I will be facilitating the Western Washington University Energy Speaker Series, and upcoming are some brilliant minds and dear friends, specialists in wind and the grid and people at large. Do tune in for that.

Consistency is key, and I’m looking for locks. For now, the pursuit of perfection is the lock in question.

In homage to last year, I want to highlight a lovely article written about my journey from Bellingham, WA to Greenfield, IN in the Daily Reporter. The rest is excerpted from September 2024, shortly after finishing an intense and deeply impacting experience.

“Along the way, I have experienced what I call a sonder of place, the recognition that each community I pass has its own depth, vibrancy of interconnected lives, and history that makes it what it is today. I feel that very thing with each return to Greenfield, and I am frankly proud of the strides I have seen towards walkable/bikeable infrastructure that connects our green spaces, public places, and arts centers on this particular stretch.

Of course, the work has only begun, but as I had Libby’s Ice Cream Greenfield along the Pennsy Trail this evening with dear friends, I recognized in Depot Street Park a point of congregation for a summer Friday night, reserved for basking and enjoying. A place for feeling the security that comes without fear of half-ton metal boxes, which represents, to me, a special sense of freedom.

These ideas and places don’t happen from a vacuum; it is up to us to push for these things, to make our priorities not just heard, but to actually materialize. We hold the keys to crafting our shared home, and it only happens through compromise and tenacity and openness and kindness. It comes through listening, processing, reflecting, and leveling. I am grateful to be a part of a community that I can almost be guaranteed to run into someone I know on a random outing, chat with happily of the past and future, and come away with the sense that by and large, there are so many big hearts out there. We all want very similar things, so let us continue to strive for this common ground to work forward, not into this spiraling obstinance which only divides us.

Sit under the sycamores along the Riley Creek. Stroll or pedal the Pennsy Trail. Certainly take the new connector to Brandywine Park and count how many types of birds you see (especially in the spring). You care about these places too? Let’s make it known. But more importantly, let’s continue to cherish the gifts that they hold by experiencing them as often as we can.”

Happy New Year, if you’re into that sort of thing, but more importantly, happy Today. Keep living and enjoying them, while you’ve got ’em.