Matt Mullenweg is not just the founder of WordPress and now Automattic, but he was also my lucky roommate on this week-long 200km hike through Spain. Not only is he warm at night, but he really knows how to work that loofa in the shower.
We share many commonalities including the love of writing, Burning Man, hiking, and experimental and self-exploration use mind-expanding substances. You can see the poor guy has a bit of a limp here, as he had a knee problem that got worse and worse as the days went on. We should have brought more drugs. Anyway…
First time seeing a 360 video? You can grab the screen and move it any way you want! Tired of seeing me and Matt? Spin it around and see where we are going.
What do we talk about?
1:30 His inspiration for WordPress and his mindset
3:30 Comments on Blogs
4:00 What is his main gig now, Automattic?
5:15 Texas boys say hi to their moms
5:55 What did Matt learn that he didn’t expect to learn?
7:20 Meditation and the Stoic philosophers
7:50 Why do we blog?
Below, I’ll share some photos of Matt while we walked along the Camino and some quick thoughts and stories.
Very few people know this, but this is exactly how Matt came out of the womb, beard and all. His mom was like, “Well I’ll be darned!”
One awesome thing about Matt is that when you are talking to him, you’re the only person in the world. Here he is talking with Gia-Miin Fuh, Kevin Kelly’s genius wife that works at 23-And-Me.
No one can rock a scallop shell like Matt. I told him that with those sunglasses that he could be a hardcore pornography director.
A lot like everyone on the trek, Matt seemed to know either a little bit or a lot about everything. On the very first night, we walked across the bridge from Portugal to Spain in the dark. It was quite romantic. We talked all about the different sort of hallucinogens we’ve imbibed and how they have shaped and expanded our minds (for the better).
Here’s Matt Hackett, Hugh Howey, and Matt somewhere in one of the more forested areas of our walk. We would often pair-off or triple-up and have all kinds of interesting discussions, solving all the world’s problems!
Here’s Matt talking to Kevin Kelly at a rest break. By this time, Matt’s knee was really bothering him, and none of us minded having a break. We were in no hurry to get anywhere in particular.
And last, here is Craig Mod giving life to Matt with his noodly appendage.
At first, I didn’t know if I actually liked “The Kominsky Method” but the more I watched, the more I liked it… I like a lot of different comedies, but this is one of the smarter ones.
Daily Photo – Man with Cat in Porto
I entitled this the way an Impressionist painter might entitle their paintings. Their painting titles are often really boring in English, but they sound great in French. For example, Monet’s “Women in the Garden” sounds so much better as “Femmes au jardin.” Renoir’s “Two Sisters on the Terrace” is improved by “Les Deux Sœurs Sur la Terrasse.” The titles sound even better while eating a French pastry, especially when you hear, “S’il vous plaît arrêtez de manger ma pâtisserie.”
Wow, I really don’t like flying with these guys. This is gonna be a little negative, which is strange for me, being a zen positive guy that generally is not bothered by all the things that seem to bother other people.
When I go back and forth to New Zealand, I generally prefer Air New Zealand or Qantas. The planes are great and the service is even better.
I have a great travel agent that I love (hi Hans!) and sometimes I take a more inexpensive option to save money. That usually means I end up on American Airlines. This one was a business class seat, so one would not expect any complaints at all, but I’ll tell you two quick stories.
About halfway through the flight, I got up to use the restroom in the front. I walked past the flight attendant in the galley to go to see if the restroom was open. The pilot was there, and he looked like either he was hanging out or waiting on the restroom. Anyway, this flight attendant JUMPED in front of me very aggressively and said, “You are not allowed to be here while the pilots are swapping out. Use the other one!” My goodness. It was really crazy. Did she think I was about to put the pilot in a headlock and gouge out his eyes or something?
Are Americans now so full of fear that they institute these insane policies into their airlines? We all know airport security is mostly useless (I call it “security theatre”) and it’s mostly a big process to make people “feel” safe but it doesn’t actually do that much. Now I see the same policy happening on planes. Hey, what if I just wanted to talk to the pilot? I’m a great conversationalist. I’m sure he’s bored as hell. Anyway, I found this entire situation to be incredibly stupid,
Here’s the second story, although this one is a rather minor complaint.
I woke up with about 3 hours left in the flight. They were serving breakfast. This time it was another flight attendant that came by. She asked if I wanted coffee. I said yes, and I also wanted a bloody mary. International waters, and stuff, you know.
Anyway, she rolled her eyes and said, “Well, we’ve already locked the liquor cabinet.” I wanted to say, “Listen, lady, who are you? My mom? I’m a little hungover. Get me a bloody mary stat.” Anyway, I didn’t say that, but I gave a sheepish, “Please?” She gave a heavy exhale and went back to the galley to go through what must have been a tremendously exhausting experience to “unlock” this devilish den.
She finally brought it to me with the rather passive-aggressive comment, “I can do it this one time, but now everything is locked.” I was thinking… omg, I have to spend at least 2.5 more hours sober with this bitch.
So yeah, that’s kind of a mean thing to say, but it’s objectively true. I travel a lot internationally, and I’ve noticed many (but not all) flight attendants that fly for US-based airlines have a real attitude. They don’t really want to serve you and they clearly think of it as a “job”. Compared to Air New Zealand or many Asia based airlines, it’s the complete opposite. In those, the flight attendants are obviously enjoying serving people and they consider it a noble and proud thing to make people around them happy. Anyway, rant finished.
Daily Photo – The Airport in Madrid
I know people say a lot of negative things about the economy in Spain, but, for some reason, they have absolutely beautiful airports. They are better than almost any airport in the USA. I spent many many hours walking around and just taking photos. If you plan on traveling internationally, I always recommend putting big gaps between your flights to explore all these airports photographically!
Where do I start with this guy? Maybe here with this 360 video (a reminder that you can grab the video and turn the camera any way you want).
When I was invited on this 150km hike in Spain with 10 people, I didn’t know most of them. But I did a little googling ahead of time so I would get a sense of the sorts of characters I’d be stuck with for a week. One of them was Aaron Lammer, who was easy to get-to-know because he has three podcasts. One of them is on cryptocurrency, one of them is about weed, and one of them is about long-form writing. I only listened to the crypto ones and I was immediately impressed by his approach to the subject matter.
What impressed me the most was his openness in his understated approach of “I don’t know anything about Crypto, but let’s figure this out as we go along by talking with other experts and funny, strange stories from the crypto world.” Note that isn’t an exact quote, but that was basically his pitch for the show.
Aaron Lammer, always ready to ham it up.
I’m not going to talk much about crypto here. I’m a believer that this will be how most humans transact in the future. Actually, even though I love my friend Hugh Howey, he could not disagree more! I’ve met many people that are quite divided on this subject. It’s interesting at a meta-level how an idea can be so divisive. But most people on this walk were really into philosophy, so it made for some great conversations.
I’ll step back a moment and explain why I liked Aaron so much.
He has a lot of deep knowledge in a vast myriad of subjects. I think whatever subject I brought up, he had strong opinions about everything.
Also, during our final dinner with all of us, he had a good old-fashioned cry, as most of us did. That’s a big deal. When you can cry in front of a bunch of other dudes. I won’t say what we all talked about because I’m the best secret-keeper in the world, but it was all wonderfully emotionally stirring.
My armchair psychoanalysis is this: Aaron gives 100% of his energy to things that are interesting to him. The only commonality between producing music to crypto to weed to long-form writing is Aaron himself. I get the feeling that he’s tried hundreds of things, but they just weren’t all that interesting to him, so he focused everything on these items. And, if they don’t serve him in a few years, he’ll be onto something else interesting to him.
All along the path of the Camino, we would see signs like this, showing us how much further we need to walk. By the way, in a lot of the world, people use commas rather than periods to denote a decimal.
Perhaps my favorite part is that he’s unapologetic about his interests and beliefs. It’s a delicate balance to have strong opinions on a myriad of subjects and not be an egoic asshole about it.
I really like this quality in people. Maybe this is a solipsistic thing because I am very similar. I’m easily distracted but when I find something interesting, I put 100% of my energy into it without apology.
One of our foggy mornings, walking on the Camino in Spain.
When the fog cleared, we would often walk by some of the most beautiful plants, trees, and flowers.
There is a funny story along the Camino with Aaron. Well, there are dozens, but I’ll tell you this one in particular.
Just before the final day of our hike, Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress, my roommate, and the subject of a future story) left us because he had to go speak at their annual conference. Also, his knee was really hurt and he was hobbling around in a terrible way that made us all feel bad for him. Anyway, our group was one short, and we made a “friend” at one of the rest breaks that we called “New Matt”. I don’t remember the guy’s actual name, but it doesn’t really matter because he was New Matt.
New Matt totally sucked.
We all hated him, but he walked with us for many hours anyway. Who hated him most? Aaron Lammer. He turned out to be the diametric opposite of Aaron. For example, Aaron knows a lot about music. This New Matt could not have infuriated him more. New Matt says he refuses to listen to music after The Beatles and thinks everything is terrible.
This is Old Matt. He was awesome. When we thought of old Matt, it only reminded us more about how much we hated New Matt.
What really ground Aaron’s gears were the same argument techniques that seem to be used by people raised in the Jewish culture. Aaron is not a practicing Jew, but he definitely has those funny Woody Allen argumentative tendencies. New Matt was a bit more hardcore Jewish, from Israel, and even more opinionated than Aaron. The big difference is that New Matt had his entire ego and “story of self” tied into his opinions and he was completely blind to hearing other viewpoints. This drove Aaron absolutely crazy and, even after New Matt finally left our crew, it was the subject of conversation for countless hours. It was like Aaron ventured off into the forest to have a pee and he got a splinter in his nutsack he couldn’t extract for weeks.
A random scene along the Camino.
I think our experience with New Matt really helped us to get to know Aaron better. Not until one meets their foil does one come to know oneself. And we were all listening in to their heated conversation with reckless delight. You don’t want to get on Aaron’s intellectual bad side. No matter how cunningly Aaron attempted to paint New Matt into a corner of his own logical demise, New Matt would slip away into a straw man argument that was only loosely related. Aaron prepared a riposte with a steel man, only to be deflected in a subtle way with another unconnected point that would increase Aaron’s frustration and re-direct the verbal battle.
We recorded countless hours of our talks, but that is the ONE talk I wish we had recorded.
I knew he was coming on the trip and, of course, I had heard about him previously since I’m kind of a sci-fi and fantasy geek. I had never read his books though! Hugh is most famous for “Wool” the sequel book from his the Silo series. My wife had read them and was begging me for years to do the same. My daughter, Isabella, was also reading the entire Silo series. And then, when Kevin Kelly told me Hugh Howey was going on this trip, I decided it was the perfect time to read them!
So yeah, I was quite intimidated by Hugh Howey before I met him. I have this idea that authors are like these demigod intellectuals who have the motivational superpower to write an actual novel. I can hardly motivate myself to do a single blog post.
I was also intimidated because I met another sci-fi author I really admire, Neal Stephenson, and he made me cry! And not cry in a good way! But that’s a longer story that ends well, because now we are friends. But I was kinda thinking, “Oh god – I hope Hugh Howey doesn’t make me cry.”
And then, after I met him, I could immediately tell he was my kinda guy, the whole notion of being intimidated felt utterly ridiculous! He was one of the warmest and most gentle people I’ve ever met. I noticed his easy way and silky-smooth mannerisms with everyone he encountered.
Here’s a 360 video I took with Hugh one day during the hike where I asked him about World Building, which is the process fiction writers go through to create the fundamentals of the situation in which the story takes place. Unfortunately, this video takes place on a busy neighborhood road. Most of the trail was actually in forested areas on dirt paths. If you haven’t seen a 360 video before, you can grab the screen and look in whatever direction you want.
I can’t figure out exactly why Hugh and I got along so well. I mean, I get along with pretty much everyone, maybe because my mom and dad raised me to be an amiable and affable guy. Who knows? Hehe. Anyway, every now and then you meet a dude you REALLY hit it off with. And I don’t mean like those guys that are instant friends like in gay internet porn, but more like in the Bert and Ernie way.
Hugh has quite an interesting story that is not completely dissimilar to mine. He struggled with his craft forever until he finally found surprising success in an unexpected way. You’ll see in the video above more about how his books struck a nerve with people and he ended up backing into an enormously successful series of books. Now, at 43, he has stopped all writing, bought a yacht, and is sailing around the world by himself! He’s a modern day Nietzsche’s Übermensch!
I noticed how when we talked he would describe all this really manly stuff about building things. He even went into detail about how he built his own outdoor shower on his yacht. Like, he got really detailed. I was thinking, now this is a real manly dude that knows how to use all the tools and stuff. I can barely change a lightbulb, so I’m always impressed by these arts that have completely passed me by, mostly because of my extreme laziness. But then I started thinking about all the detail in his book “Wool,” especially, the craftiness of his female protagonist. And then it all started to make more sense! I’m not saying that Hugh is a female in a man’s body that’s really handy with tools, but maybe there’s a little element of that. He certainly knows how to write cool female characters, and it’s no surprise that a huge portion of his readership is females. He’s in touch with that stuff, you know? Very empathetic.
Also, I found out that most of his books (he has a lot!) have been optioned for TV shows. That’s exciting! One of them, Beacon 23, I think is going to be the first one out of the gate. I hope they don’t mess it up… It’s always a disappointment when an interesting sci-fi book turns into a dull movie or TV series. That happens a lot, for some reason. And that sucks for me, being a giant sci-fi fan. Why are there so many bad sci-fi movies and TV shows and so MANY good sci-fi novels? It doesn’t make sense! I suppose the real reason is that our imaginations are better than most cinematographers + directors + actors + scriptwriters can create.
And hey, Hugh and I have a mutual love of two shows: Rick & Morty and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. One night at the hotel, we drank a bunch of beers, stayed up extra late in Hugh’s room, and watched the latest episode of Sunny. We were laughing like two extremely immature people, which, of course, we are.
Let’s get a little dark.
On one of our morning walks, Hugh told me about how, as a young man in his 20’s, he decided to commit suicide at 40. Whoa. And he was totally serious. This ended up with him cranking out a ton of creative work in his thirties because he was running out of time. It was an incredible strategy to Do Something Meaningful before you die. I think almost everyone gets to this stage, especially when they are quite old and they only have a few years left. But, often, it’s sometimes too late then to create a lot of stuff because people are older and have less energy. Hugh was in his prime then, in his thirties. And, thank goodness he didn’t go through with the suicide, because he’s even more in his prime now in his 40’s!
I made another 360 video with Hugh about this suicide-thing. That’s being edited together right now so subscribe to my Youtube channel. That will complete that story.
So, you know, this was a deep conversation, obviously. And that led to other deep conversations. Naturally, this is another thing we have in common as neither of us can stand small talk. This has always angered my wife, who wonders why I can’t stand by the BBQ and talk to people about small matters of zero import. If I get stuck in dull conversations, I usually just go into the bathroom and read reddit or play on my Switch.
Let’s get to my Dog Trial of the Camino. The long hike is a spiritual journey and everyone has little challenges that crop up, unexpected. One of mine was the Dog Trial of the Camino, a challenge created by Hugh. Let me explain.
Along the way, I was reading another book by Paulo Coelho, whom you may know as the author of one of my favorite books, “The Alchemist” Anyway, Paulo also walked the Camino and he wrote a book called “The Pilgrimage” all about it. It seemed perfect for this trip! The book turned out to be pretty average and I would not necessarily recommend it. But, I did enjoy reading it because I was in the same setting and doing the same hike as Paulo. Anyway, the book has one thing in there that kind of happened to me: Paulo’s Trial of the Dog.
Okay, where am I going with this, and how does it relate to another well-known author, Hugh Howey?
In the book, Paulo is attacked by a dog that is possessed by a demon spirit or some shit. I didn’t really understand. Paulo goes off on these mystical flights of fancy. I think he had (honestly) just read Carlos Castaneda’s “The Teachings of Don Juan” (I do recommend those, but man, what a wild ride – they only make sense if you have experimented with psychedelics) and he was really trying to horseshoe in some similarly apocryphal fantastical stories into his Pilgrimage book. ANYHOO, this dog continued to make surprise appearances in the book in a menacing manner until the protagonist finally dealt with the situation.
One day, Hugh and I were talking about our dogs when we were younger. Let me tell you: when two dudes are talking about dogs they had when they were younger, the shit is gonna get real.
And this was only like day two of our hike! Guys don’t talk about previous dogs until many many years into a relationship. It’s kind of like asking a girl if she’s into extreme bondage on your first date right after the salad arrives. I mean, you can ask her that, and, depending on her answer, you may be skipping the next dish.
In this analogy, Hugh was the one asking me if I was into extreme bondage.
This is because he brought up the “dog topic” first. After he told me about his life-suicide plans, our conversation jumped this way and that. He mentioned his previous girlfriend, who was obviously not a fan of his upcoming death-plans. Relationships have enough tension anyway without the added complexity of a ticking time bomb. Anyway, Hugh and his girlfriend had a dog. Hugh is a very affectionate guy and a helpless romantic. These are often the best dog people.
Hugh named his dog Jolie.
He told me about how he would cuddle with Jolie. It was a perfect little cuddle puddle with two soft puzzle pieces that fit together like held hands. He would slowly pet Jolie and, slightly above a whisper, tell her how much he loved her. Then Hugh would tell her how much he would miss her when she was gone. He would say these things over and over again. His girlfriend found this quite sad and didn’t think it was appropriate to speak of such things.
A few years later, the dog suddenly had some serious trouble. Hugh and his girlfriend jumped in the car to rush to the vet. The dog was slowly dying in Hugh’s arms. He was doing everything he could, but everything was not enough as Jolie passed away.
After a little time passed, Hugh said his girlfriend eventually said she understood why he said those things to Jolie. She wished she had said the same things.
I was not really able to respond for quite a bit, as one might understand.
What happened to his girlfriend, many of you are wondering? Actually, I don’t know because this was a story about the dog. But I know she’s not his girlfriend anymore. Anyway, none of that matters as this is a dog story.
Now, Hugh and I are walking along in a brooding forest in a dark mood. There is a good amount of silence, and, of course, I’m thinking about my own sad dog story. Her name was Maty.
So I brought her up. But I brought her up in the right sort of manner, not in a, “Hey you think YOUR dog story was sad, wait till you hear this one!” Some people compare stories like that, and there is a subtle way to share stories where there is no competition. Most guys that tell stories to one another are dickheads and they are trying to kinda make themselves sound better by outdoing others. But this wasn’t like that if you know what I mean.
Yeah, so I tell Hugh that my wife and I had Maty before we had kids. And then we had Ethan and Isabella, so they were able to grow up with Maty. Maty loved everyone in the family so much. She was adorable. Black and white and soft and silly. Cuddles, lays on your feet so she knows when you get up, made our little kids giggle, all that good stuff. By the time my son Ethan was about 9 years old and Isabella was about 3, our dog Maty was approaching 12 and started having trouble.
She lived a full, spunky life but suddenly, she was having great difficulty breathing. We took her to the vet. I was in there while they were scanning her, trying to figure out the problem. There was a fluid buildup in her heart, and it was growing so big, she could not breathe anymore. There was nothing they could do and Maty passed away. I’d like to think her heart was so big because she loved us so much.
So then, I continued telling Hugh, I figured that I should bury Maty in our backyard. We lived in Austin in a somewhat remote area of the hill country. Our backyard was full of tall trees and shaped in a downward sloping hill that ended in a creek. There were many roots visible above the ground as rain would slowly wash the dirt away down into the creek.
I had Maty in a little cardboard box in one hand and a shovel in the other. I carried her down there with my wife and little kids. I was telling Hugh, after a strange pause, that I had never dug a grave before. And then I couldn’t say anything else and I started to cry. Hugh gave me a sweet hug.
And with that, Hugh Howey did indeed make me cry, but in the best way possible.
Here is the short story of my 150-kilometer trek from Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Over 200,000 people hike each year on this pilgrimage. In the olden days when people were still stoned, this used to be a Christian pilgrimage to visit the grisly bones of Saint James. Nowadays many people make the hike and it’s no longer purely religious, although many people are still stoned.
In terms of religious hikes, it doesn’t really compare in numbers to that of Mecca, where 15 million people walk each year. That walk mostly originates from Jeddah and clocks in at around 70 km. Either way, this epic Santiago hike I did has multiple routes. The full route is over 1200 km from France or a lighter version from Portugal at around 200 km. Mine was just 150 because we started right at the border in Tui, Spain. It’s also shorter because we are all kinda lazy and get the point after 150km.
I’ve decided to tell a multi-part story via conversations I had with my nine other walkers. This event was put together by Kevin Kelly and Craig Mod who have completed a few of these sorts of walks around the world. The idea is a bit of a “Walk n’ Talk” where we mostly philosophize about the world, make jokes, and engage in a stimulating amount of mutual mental masturbation. Everyone on this adventure was from different walks of life. We had everything from tech magnates to authors to photographers to entrepreneurs to DNA researchers, and well, you name it.
It was great, for me personally, to establish deep connections with each and every member of our hiking tribe. At least, I think I did! 🙂
Below is one of many 360 videos (link to subscribe to my YouTube channel) I made while on this hike. I’ll post them a bit out of order. I talked to Kevin about several disparate topics in different videos including AI, an enormous underground clock he is working on that lasts 10,000 years, a series of bottom-up libraries that are being built in a Nevada desert, Burning Man, and last, something that sounds a bit macabre: Death.
You can click the gear to amp it up to 4K. In this 360 video, I am walking with both Kevin Kelly and Hugh Howey. We talk about rituals, in particular, a special ritual he invented for his kids when they turned 21. After that, we talk about death, and our nefarious plans to split up Kevin’s body as a new idea for a death ritual to honor him. It all sounds a bit dour, but it certainly isn’t. NOTE: If you have not seen a 360 video before, you can grab the screen and look in any direction you want!
The overall idea was that we spend most of the day discussing philosophy, science, and other erudite matters. Each night at dinner we had a different discussion. World governance, urbanization, religion, and relationships just to name a few. We would record about three hours of these blatherings and they’re putting together all the transcripts now.
Anyway, that was the texture of the seven-day hike. I’ll get started with an overall paintbrush stroke of the trip then get into Story #1 with Kevin Kelly. In the next one, I’ll talk about my discussions with Hugh Howey, whom you may recognize as the author of Wool and the Silo series of books. I’m starting with those two because I knew a lot about them either in person or via their work before the trip. After, that, I’ll share stories from some of the other ne’er-do-wells that joined us.
We started on the edge of Portugal, and you’ll see a bridge below that links northern Portugal and Spain.
This was a nice little surprise to find this bridge that connected the two countries. Strangely, even though we walked directly north after you touch the Spanish soil, you have to set your clocks back one hour.
This mini-bridge walk was technically before the whole hike even started after our motley crew assembled for an introductory dinner.
After dinner, I walked across this bridge around midnight with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and current CEO of Automattic. In a short time, we talked about a bit of everything from him changing my life by founding WordPress (my blog at www.StuckInCustoms.com) to doing recreational drugs at Burning Man. But I’ll save more of that for the Matt Mullenweg story day!
It was sort of unusual being thrown into a group of ten people who you don’t really know. I remember one of our fellow walkers, Chris Barclay said on the final night that he felt a bit intimidated in the beginning. You know, trying to figure out who the cool kids were and trying not to make a fool of one’s self. That’s a universal feeling everyone has when entering a new group. As we paired off in organic one-on-one situations, as I did on this first night with Matt, everyone could see there was nothing to worry about and this was a very cool, non-judgmental group. In a very short time, all that self-doubt disappeared like fog in the morning.
Many mornings laid a cool moist blanket of fog on us. Each day was usually 8-11 hours of hiking, and we wanted to get the bulk of it done before that brutal 2-4PM Spanish sun started to drill into us. Now I know why all Spaniards take a siesta between 2 and 4!
Above you see one of our typical mornings. We would often pair-up, but not always, and talk about a wide myriad of subjects. It made the countless hours of walking go by extremely quickly. I was so busy listening to other people that I barely even realized that 20km had already flown by.
And here was our final destination at the mighty cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
Not to skip ahead to the END of the story, but the photo above is where the journey ended 150km later, in Santiago de Compostela. The town itself was beautiful and the energy was palpable. I think, because so many people reach here every year in such a euphoric state, that it suffuses the town with positivity.
And here’s our awesome hiking group!
I’ll talk more about little things along the adventure here and there as I talk about each individual person… but, first, let’s start with the guy that invited me, and one of my only intellectual heroes: Kevin Kelly!
Part One: Walking & Talking with Kevin Kelly
I was glad to see that Kevin didn’t have ALL the answers to the universe. But he seemed to have most of them.
I only have a handful of heroes, and not many are alive! You all may have already read my story about another living hero, Hans Zimmer, but now this is my story of Kevin Kelly.
Kevin is best described (if possible) as a philosopher that ties together technology, history, and futurism into a central theme of optimism.
When I saw his first TED talk (now he has about four), it had a tremendous impact on how I approached life, the blog, my work, photography, and more. Even though Kevin himself is an accomplished photographer with countless crazy stories about traveling all around the east, most of the information he synthesizes is from a plethora of other subjects.
All pilgrims on the trail wear one of these special scallop shells. It indicates to everyone in the region that you are on the Camino walk. People will go out of their way to help you when they see this special symbol.
What exactly did Kevin affect during my “formative blog years”? Even though he didn’t specifically speak to this, it confirmed my instincts to make almost everything free. I would upload full-rez photos every day to the blog. I would not use watermarks. I used Creative Commons Noncommercial as a means to drive traffic back to the site. I gave 110% to the very few early fans that seemed to enjoy the work. Kevin has a great essay called 1,000 true fans that really resonated with me very early in my arc.
I went on to read his books and watch more tech talks. He has a wonderful take on “What Technology Wants” and he sort of frames it in the way that tech, itself, grows in a not dissimilar path to other genus/species. Here is one of his TED talks about what technology wants.
While passing by some vineyards near Portugal, a very nice lady came out and gave us more of the sweetest grapes than we could ever eat.
I first met Kevin about seven years ago when Thomas Hawk and I did that mammoth ~500 person photo walk in San Francisco. Kevin came up to introduce himself to me. I was like, “WHHAAAAAT! Kevin you don’t need to introduce yourself! I’m a mega fan!” And I was. I was just about as close as one can get to being a stalker without crossing the creepy line.
Since that time, we’ve been together on many occasions. We met in San Francisco and he even invited me over to his home in Pacifica, a Valhalla of sorts for me. That is when I first met his wife Gia-Miin, who also joined us on this walk.
Hugh Howey and Kevin Kelly taking a break on the walk
Last year he invited me to go eagle hunting in Mongolia with Tim Ferriss. I wanted to go, but it was right after Burning Man, and my wife would have killed me for being gone so long. So this year, when he invited me on the Santiago hike, I agreed! I had no idea what I was getting into, but I generally say yes to adventures then figure everything out later.
On occasion, we would go on ancient stone pathways and you could still see where the wagon wheels had carved a rut.
The whole week was such a treat for me and I was honored to hang out with Kevin. I felt like a little kid around him, asking 1,000 questions. I was trying not to be annoying… well, at least that was my goal. By the way, I am not really an “interviewer” or anything. I’m just a curious guy.
I came up with this plan to ask Kevin a different question every day and record it. I wrote down six questions beforehand, but I changed most of them as the week went on. For example, I never thought about talking to him about death until I was having a one-on-one with Hugh Howey and we came up with an idea on how to divvy up Kelly upon his exit from the mortal coil. It was of course influenced by this stimulating walk he encouraged all of us to undertake. All that talk began as a side-conversation after Hugh told me he planned on killing himself at 40. That’s another video I’ll post. I mean, the video of the discussion, not the actual suicide.
After I got to know the other walkers, I decided to take this idea to many of them too. So now I have many of these 360 videos with most of the walkers. Time and data didn’t allow me to record all 100+ hours of our time together, so I kind of picked randomly. Once again, Kevin inspires me intentionally or unintentionally to try new things and just be authentic in your awkwardness. I mean that in the nicest way, of course. I can tell that Kevin is an introvert, like so many of us. This comes across in his speaking style, a style that is uniquely his own. He’s so authentic and real that he both believable and endearing. I am sure this comes with something else he encompasses, being comfortable in his own skin. So many people aren’t, and he also got me started on that path about ten years ago.
One thing we share in common is that we have spent a tremendous amount of time in the east (China, SE Asia, Japan etc) with local cultures and taking photos. It’s made us both very attentive and present, I believe. When you’re talking to him and vice-versa, it’s like you’re the only two people in the world. I’m lucky I didn’t fall into a river or fall off a cliff while we were talking because it was so engrossing. He’s adopted somewhat of an eastern philosophy that seems to inform all of his thoughts and actions.
It’s impossible to summarize our 20+ hours of one-on-one conversations. Impossible. But you’ll see a few highlights as we release videos.
After a while, Kevin and I finally found the Internet.
I think his books and TED talks have influenced me so much that sometimes I don’t know where he begins and my brain ends. We were making obscure references to books, authors, tech, etc… at some point, I mentioned one of my favorite quotes. I asked him if it was Feynman that said it, and Kevin said, “Wait a minute, I said that!” I was laughing so much and apologized… I’m getting old.
Along the way, after we stopped in a town for the afternoon, Kevin and I went off on our own little adventure to record an episode of his “Cool Tools” podcast. He interviewed me then we walked around the park a bit after the recording. He turned to me and said something nice. “Trey, you surprise me!” I didn’t know what to say.
Here is one of the beautiful places we stayed along the walk. It was a family’s old farmhouse and our group was pretty much the only people in there!
One thing that I’ve noticed about Kevin that is not initially expected is how silly he is. He laughs a lot and says funny things. He is also very quick to laugh at jokes the rest of us make. It’s a wonderful thing because so many intellectuals can be so boring and self-serious.
My degree was in Computer Science and Math, so I’ve always been interested in tech and the future. This is a very strange time with the acceleration of everything from AI to Robots. I try to figure out where it’s going, but I get a lot of guidance (and optimism) from Kevin’s bullish outlook on these matters. See more about what he thinks about the future of AI in his TED Talk on AI or his latest book The Inevitable.
Of course, another typical question that comes up among geeks is: “Are we living in a simulation?” This question has been officially banned from Elon Musk’s hot tub conversations (for real) because Musk sees it as a “circular argument”. Kevin is a bit more practical with it, indicating it doesn’t really matter. He says the important thing is that we have a tangible effect on everything and everyone around us. That’s a pretty cool stance and helps get the mind out of that circular argument.
Kevin holds an umbrella over Gia-Miin to protect her from the hot Spanish sun.
Kevin’s super-IQ wife joined us on the walk too, Gia-Miin. She was the only female on the walk, so she was able to keep things fairly classy. You don’t want 10 guys together for a long period of time or else it can spiral down to nonstop tales of ribaldry. Anyway, Gia-Miin works at 23 and Me as a genetics researcher in the cancer area. She told me all about it one afternoon. I could immediately tell I was out of my depth when we started comparing the progress of genetic therapy and whether that would outpace tech innovation when it actually comes to helping humans get better. But they’re doing all sorts of amazing things over there, and it looks like they are going to figure out a lot of the “bad code” that makes humans have bugs.
Kevin and Gia-Miin have a really interesting origin story to their relationship. I won’t tell the long version, but it really seems to work and they are best friends. How wonderful! I know their daughter Ting from a few times when we have been at the E.G. Conference together. I need to send her a note that says, “Hey, Ting, you know… your parents are kinda weird.” I can’t wait to see her response. But, of course, I mean weird in the best possible way.
I’ll end the story of Kevin on the final night’s dinner after we all finally arrived in Santiago de Compostela. We again had a round-table discussion. At the end of dinner, everyone was a little bit teary. Kevin turned his chair to me as we were all getting up to leave. He put his hand on my knee and said, again, smiling “Trey, you know, you really surprise me.” Even getting more teary-eyed, I playfully pushed at his shoulder. “Hey man, that’s what friends do. They surprise each other.”
Here’s a photo that was taken by Craig Mod on the final hiking day of around 30 kilometers as we approached our goal.
Today’s video just for Passport Members shows a slightly improved workflow for RAW photos. I’m always tweaking my workflow this way and that, and this seems to work out pretty well!
I used to just take the RAW file and drag it into Aurora. I still sometimes do that, but I find that I like making just a few tweaks in Lightroom first. You can see how in the video below!
The first time I came to the Sagrada Familia here in Barcelona, I didn’t go inside. There is a ton of construction going on, and I didn’t even realize you could pay to get inside. And I would not have thought it would look so bright and colorful on the inside because the outside is very dark and gothic. It’s too bad Gaudi didn’t stay alive long enough to see it completed!
We had such a great time there during our European tour. We stayed there at the fab Barcelona Arts Hotel and that’s also where I gave my little art talk on the top floor after the photo walk. Speaking of that photo walk, here is the highlight video from the event!
Daily Photo – Selling Cars in the Barcelona Airport
I think this might be the most reflective airport in the world! I took a lot of photos when I was there, but now I wish I had taken a lot more. I don’t know much about flooring, but the effect was so amazing that I wish there were more floors like this in other airports, shopping malls, etc. It might even be cool in a few rooms in your home. I assume it’s quite durable; I think it might have been a white marble. If you ever find yourself here, to maximize the reflection in your photo, be sure to get as close to the ground as possible.
Here’s a new video I made that shows how I used the new sunrays filter in Luminar to make the sun look so awesome. It’s a really fun trick. I used to do this sometimes in Photoshop, but that is very time consuming. One of my favorite things about this filter is how you can make so many adjustments and even randomize the sun rays.
Today I’m showing two photos of the same place near Barcelona. It’s a beautiful cathedral called Tibidabo.
Daily Photo – A Cathedral in the Clouds Surrounded by an Amusement Park
So I like this second photo better. I obviously heavily processed it with one of my Lightroom Presets. I believe it was one of my “Sandstorm” ones from Burning Man. I think this place is beautiful, but I can’t figure out why they put an amusement park up there. It makes it all a bit garish, I think. Even in this photo, you can see part of a rollercoaster in the lower right. Oh, this second photo was taken with a DJI Phantom 4 Pro.
A Cathedral in the Clouds Surrounded by an Amusement Park
