After years of work behind the scenes, I’m excited to share a meaningful turning point in this project. What started as an effort to document stories from modern Buddhist practitioners has now become something much larger—and more defined.

The past six months have been unusually busy, with transitions and learning curves. While my main project made progress, I spent much of my time and energy on a quietly brewing new venture.

I guess it's a good thing that I've been pretty steadily busy in 2023, not having too much time to reflect and write about it. To be frank, it's a daunting task to reflect on all that has transpired in a year, given all the various 'projects' that I am committed to. As it relates to this project, I intentionally didn't interview as many people as in the years past, as the backlog of raw material was becoming unmanageable. Even though I have 'processed' many of the interviews, the real work of digesting the content and building a narrative around it hadn't really begun.

Although I experimented with this idea during a trip to upstate NY last year, I anticipate more interesting results this time around while exploring national parks. Weaving dharma into these epic hiking adventures feels appropriate  , and incorporating dharma into daily activities has gradually become a regular part of my mind training beyond meditation. 

About this time last year, I was the road for about a month and half and little did I know how different it would be from the pandemic days. I suspected that it would be my 'last' significant roadtrip given that my day job was finally returning with the pandemic subsiding. I felt pretty good on how much progress I made on the road trip in terms of interviews but I was pleasantly surprised how the rest of 2022 finished up.