Hello friends out there,

first of all I’d like to thank you all for a fantastic 2018. Thank you so much for your support, your comments, your messages, your ideas.

2018 was a big year for me, with lot’s of ups and downs, with lot’s of challenges. I personally would call it “The Year Of Change” as many things have changed for myself.

But – step by step. As my year 2017 ended with a car crash in Canada I had a lot of challenges to face. Challenges that had to do with fear, especially the fear of loosing safety. The fear of ending up with no money, no place to be, no job perspective and so on. All of that came together after the accident there, as I ended up on a different continent, with pretty much no money, no driving vehicle, no place to stay.

Thanks to many great people who helped with my recovery I was able to get a job at Marmot Basin as a snow farmer. That job included skiing every day together with physical labour outside. It was like a dream that came true, my whole life was based on mountains and skiing. That was a big change in my life, the time spent outdoors started healing myself. I started to build up a strong relationship with nature, with being outdoors.

The following summer was filled with fantastic adventures through Canada and Alaska. I can’t even describe all the feelings I had during that time, it was so beautiful spending a summer on the road, filled with campfires, hikes, mountains, new friends. That time really helped me to connect with nature, to get free.

The time in the van brought me back to minimalism. Living out of a van was hard at the beginning, but I got used to live with less. Everything I own follows a purpose, every gear should have a real need. Recently I’ve started to remove one item a day out of my life – what a challenge. But it’s freeing, it feels so good to let go “things”. The outside materialistic minimalism is now leading to a new side effect. I would call it an inside minimalism. It’s something totally new for me, it’s a process of getting to know myself. It’s about letting go old thoughts, old patterns. It’s about becoming happy with myself, with finding my inner luck.

My perception of the world has changed. Old things I used to show big interest in just “disappeared”, conversations that used to excite me are boring nowadays.

New things got important. Creating new art got even more important. A big awakening is happening, new perceptions, new thoughts are arriving.

One thing that got really important for myself is our planet, our mother earth. I am working on becoming plastic free, I’m scaling down my need for fossil fuel products. I’m consuming less and less meat, slowly becoming more and more plant based.

As someone that is traveling a lot with my photography I’m facing new challenges in terms of reducing my carbon dioxide effect. My current need for carbon dioxide is at about 11.7 tons including my lifestyle, food consumption, electronic gear and so on. Calculating my carbon dioxide need for travelling leads to another 9.8 tons for about 54.000km travelled last year.

I did spend the last month with a lot of philosophy, great talks and new ideas together with great humans. Now, at this point with the starting of the new year 2019 I’d like to give something back to this planet.

I would like to offset my carbon footprint of 21.5 tons to the non-profit organization “Trees For The Future“. The exact calculation as well as finding the right organization took me some time, but here’s my New Years solution:

1km driven produces around 115-182grams of carbon dioxide in average.

54.000km travelled -> 9828 kg of carbon dioxide (with 182 gram/km)

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9.8 Tons of carbon dioxide through travels

11.7 Tons carbon dioxide through lifestyle (Carbon Footprint Calculator)

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21.5 Tons of carbon dioxide 

34 pounds of carbon dioxide can be bound per tree = 15.4 kg according to trees.org  

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21.5 tons / 0.0154 tons per tree

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1396 trees

As some of the trees will not make it through their first years, as the organization is also having some administrative costs I’ve decided to go up with my donations. “Trees For The Future” calculates some 10 cents per tree as part of their Forest Gardens. That would lead me to a donation of around 140$, going up with my calculation I’ve ended up with 200$ + the transaction fees of 9$.

It’s only a small donation though, but I have the feeling that it is important to start somewhere. Everyone can start helping our planet by using less plastic, buying more organic food, using public transportation systems and such.

I am looking forward for a great 2019 with meaningful conversations about our environment, about life, about our dreams and our goals. Let’s make it a positive and a great year where we support each other as friends, where we make friends out of strangers, where we disconnect online and connect offline.

Take risks, be brave. Stand up for something. Create your dreams, follow your vision. Be free, be wild. As someone said it once: „The most dangerous risk of all – The risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later“

I wish you all the best for your 2019! ❤️

Take care,

Ingmar