Woman in St. Petersburg
Michael Hawley
So sad to lose my friend Michael Hawley – he was such an inspiration… and, in fact, still is! This is a little video I made when he and Nina You came here to Queenstown to visit us around the holidays. I loved that dude… I don’t know anyone else remotely like him. You can see in this video how he’s just off the charts when it comes to inspirational stuff.
My son Ethan loves playing the piano and it was incredible to have this genius just do this natural jam. Isn’t that awesome… inspiring people of all ages. That’s kind of the key to life, eh? Just be loving and help other people. People make life too complex… yeah he really has made me a better person.
I first met him about a decade ago when he invited me to speak at his incredible EG Conference in Monterey, CA. He’s the classic Gladwellesque “connector” and I made so many lifelong friends from those conferences. It spawned so many stories and adventures… and all because of Hawley’s vision.
Just as one of the hundreds of examples, it’s because of Michael that I ended up spending a while in Australia with Neal Stephenson to help him research an upcoming novel. Note that I did absolutely nothing to help the actual research, as I was only there because Neal was afraid to drive on the left side of the road. I have all kinds of stories about that, but I’m waiting for the book to come out so I don’t ruin anything.
Anyway, besides that strange anecdote, Michael has been instrumental in vastly affecting the lives of tens of thousands of people… a truly lovable inspiration.
Daily Photo – Woman in St. Petersburg
We stopped at this hipster coffee shop just after our train rolled into the station. It was filled with all sorts of interesting people like this gal. I had on my 35mm F/1.4 lens, so I made as much use of it as possible. There’s not a lot of people that run around with cameras in Russia to take photos of people… so everyone was a little bit more suspicious than I would have liked.
