2021, she gone! Where is your path leading you?
What marks the second year of the global pandemic coming to a close?
With the free time granted from a lifetime of saving, relative frugality, and investment, I set my sights this year on making a bigger impact. I see two major challenges to the world, a safe and orderly global transition to Bitcoin as a superior form of money and improving the physical world in our environment.
Last year
In January, spurred on by the rapid increase in price, I started writing a book about Bitcoin. The working title of the book is Understanding the Philosophy of Bitcoin Rhetoric, but it’s short on both philosophy and rhetoric. I’m sure we can come up with a more manageable title for when it goes to print.
February, in partnership with two powerful co-founders, Lisa Gray and Melissa Matthews, we created The Ecodemy. The Ecodemy is an education technology startup focused on our mission of impacting the zero waste journeys of everyone on this planet. We rolled out a first version of the website and shortly after, a second iteration. We’ve launched over 15 courses that anyone can access as well as a number of resources for school-aged children on a membership or subscription basis. Before the 4th(?) Wave, we were able to deliver programming, live and in-person for schools in our community. Check out everything we’re doing at ecodemy.ca.
This Spring, I had the great opportunity to be a regular guest on Matt McKeever’s YouTube channel as a Bitcoin Correspondent. Matt is Canada’s best Real Estate Investment YouTuber with over 80,000 Subscribers. He built his portfolio of multiple 7 figure businesses on a foundation of financial independence. He’s a great mentor and I urge you to check out his channel, especially my guest appearances. Check them out here on Matt McKeever’s YouTube Channel. In June, Matt Had me back to participate in SOS BTC Stack or Sink, where I contributed to the planning phases and a breakdown on some Bitcoin Vocabulary.
In terms of losses, with the pace of development for the other projects, Excessive Play took a back seat for the year. The commitment to my other clients and my partners at Ecodemy meant something had to give. I was, however, able to attend the Berlin Klassik, the Sarnia Street Cruisers Walk About, a Lapping Day, the North Stage Round 2 drift event, and for the first time, a fly-in, in support of Sarnia’s Chris Hadfield Airport. See all of the galleries from this year’s events at excessiveplay.com
I took to the air for an introductory flight in a Cessna 172. The plane is like a riding lawn mower with a cockpit, but less advanced. I had prepared by learning some of the basics on YouTube and the instructor deemed me competent enough to taxi and take off on my own. Climbing out the first time was thrilling but quickly gets scary. I found I had no intuition at all about how much force to put into the controls. We circled for about 30 minutes before it was time to fly back and debrief. The instructor took over and we touched down safely. The full training required to obtain a license in Canada might cost nearly $20,000 and then the planes I have my eye on are in the $500,000 range. No rush on this project!
Fall 2021 saw my return to Lambton College in a part-time role. Last term, I was teaching Application of Marketing Concepts and a section of Social Media Marketing. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, courses were delivered exclusively online and this will continue until the Winter 2022 term. I’ll return to an upgraded “Partial Load” role at Lambton College for 2022, teaching Social Media Marketing.
Travel this year is again hampered by the global pandemic. As soon as the travel ban was lifted, I ventured back to Cancun with a friend. This was for a short break from the cooking and dishes, but the work didn’t stop. Covid protocol by the resort staff was quite good and we felt as safe as we would have in Canada.
I launched my first Bitcoin Course on a trial run and then was invited by Facebook, now Meta, to deliver it over 6 weeks using their new Facebook Classes education platform. There was enough demand to bring it back again in January 2022 and I’d be happy to make it a regular thing if people are interested. If you’re interested in making 2022 the year to take a serious look at Bitcoin, sign up at fiwithbitcoin.com.
Reading list
I must admit, between finding so many great podcasts and getting logged out of Overdrive, this year was much lighter than 2019 or 2020. A friend also recommended Hoopla, late this year, for on-demand Audiobooks without needing to place a hold on each title. That’s a big help!
