Happy Mother’s Day from Ohio! ❤️
It’s been beautiful here, and oh so nice to let our brains turn off a bit. When traveling, there’s always something to see, planning to do, and work to get done.
At home in the States, we can rest a bit more guilt-free.
Northern Lights
We saw the northern lights for the 3RD TIME in a year… in Ohio, of all places. First was in Sweden in September, second was in Finland in October, and then on Friday.
Were you lucky enough to see them? Please reply to this email with pictures!
Ohio is Beautiful
My favorite quote about returning home from travel is by T.S. Eliot:
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
In our case, I’m realizing how darn beautiful Ohio is. Particularly in spring and early summer, the sun shines bright on swaying fields of grass and clouds hang low over tall trees. The smell of farms and pollen fill the air and sometimes the rain pounds the earth and houses.
And then the sun comes out again, and everything is alive.
In other words, Ohio (with good weather) is the bomb.
Some Behind-The-Scenes News
- May buy a new camera. We got a starter vlogging camera back in 2021, and looking at some of the videos from this previous South America trip is making us consider an upgrade. Thinking about getting the Sony ZV-E1. If anyone has advice on this, we’d love to hear it.
- We are trying to streamline our video editing process. We have a lot of fun ideas for projects in addition to the YT channel, but editing videos takes so darn much time, it’s hard to consider adding anything to our plate.
- A travel protégé of mine is taking a year long trip around the world! Her and her husband are currently in Madeira, Portugal. We met probably 6 or 7 times for many hour sessions on zoom. I’m proud. 🥹
If you want to chat with me and ask for some travel advice, just reply to this email to set up a call! Cheers to entrepreneurship! 😂
Argentina Videos are Doing Good = Mental High
Being a YouTuber is honestly like a weird quasi-addiction. You have a good video which gives you a bunch of views, which gives you a big burst of dopamine and makes you feel on top of the world.
Then all you want is that feeling again. So you post and you post and then you get it again and feel. So. High. And now you know that process is repeatable and so you crave that “success” feeling even more because you know – it’s just sitting there, right beyond your reach.
I feel like this rush-seeking behavior might be why so many Artists end up mentally ill.
There’s a fantastic TED talk about this from Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. She claims that the cure to the emotional turmoil that comes with riding the waves of success/failure is simple – disassociate from your creativity.
By internalizing the idea that anything we create wasn’t created by us, but actually a ‘genius,’ we free ourselves from what the world thinks of ‘our’ work, as it was never ours in the first place. And when she says ‘genius,’ she means the Ancient Greek ‘genius’ – a ghost-like entity that channels its creativity through us, freeing us from ownership.
Gilbert explains it way better than me, but it’s super thought-provoking and helpful as creatives publishing work on the internet! Highly recommend.
That’s all for this week. Hope you’re enjoying the Behind-The-Scenes content as we recuperate and figure out our next move. Sending love to you and yours on Mother’s Day. ❤️
Love,
Wyatt (and Reyka)