Happy Day, Earthlings! 📍Lobuche East, Khumbu Valley, Nepal 2011 Digging back into this zone for a new project and reflecting on a wild season in Nepal with @freddiewilkinson and the late Ueli Steck. Ama Dablam on the left skyline, Cholatse on the right, Chomolungma behind me.

On the evening of my 40th birthday, tucked within the lush, forested hills of Costa Rica, somewhere between the four course meal and Big Lebowski viewing, I laughed until I cried in a puddle of friends, barely containing my gratitude from bursting into a super nova. The people in our lives, and the shared memories we create on wacky adventures, harrowing challenges and everything in between, are the truest form of wealth, and I couldn’t be happier to enter a new decade with all of that currency. ❤️

My new website JimAikman.com marks a shift in my career. A re-centering. Re-invention. Just don’t call it a comeback. Cutting a new reel and creating the portfolios was a vulnerable exercise, examining my past, one pixel at a time, and reflecting on adventures and people and wildlife and places... oh, the places! Jungles, oceans, volcanoes, soaring walls of ice and bottomless archives, chasing scientists, athletes, elders and unexpected heroes that trusted me with their stories; watching the earth breathe through a viewfinder, and communities carrying truths that the world needed to hear. Or, at least I did. Each frame brought back a memory, from the field and the edit bay and finally the movie theaters of beloved film festivals, each edit point a belabored decision about meaning. So many hours and days and months and years spent on these stories that now fit within the modest confines of Squarespace, where I zoomed in to study the details before pulling back to the broad texture of 17 years in this business. It was humbling. I’ll be sharing more soon, but here’s to new chapters. New years. New websites. Same lens.

“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell and broke into pieces. Everyone took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.” -Rumi

This career path has never been straight forward or obvious. There are switchbacks, forks and gnarled roots to trip you up... and it’s not getting any easier. But then I’m reminded of how lucky I am to do this work—and how there’s nothing else I’d rather do. Lately I’ve been thinking of myself as a “professional novice,” someone who shows up ready to learn, then sends an invoice when the education is complete. Making documentaries, we’re often pulled into disparate worlds where we’re trespassing at best—at worst, we are the dreaded interloper. But bringing that “novice” mindset to storytelling reminds me to stay humble outside my comfort zone, where I’m better off listening than imposing my uninvited perspective. I suppose adding the “professional” part is just an accountability measure. May we all continue to learn from each story we encounter with the humility and deference of a lifelong novice. 📸 by #iphone

The first MAGA term was rough. This second one feels even more personal: They’ve attacked the arts and my entire creative community, creating more scarcity and uncertainty than I’ve seen in 20 years; they’ve attacked my friends in the sciences and park service, cutting funding from critical programs and ruining careers; they’ve attacked pretty much every media institution I cherish and respect, replacing them with corrupt sycophants; and now they’re physically attacking my home in Portland. And yet, all of that becomes trivial compared to the attacks on immigrants, minorities and those less privileged than me. I don’t know if these marches accomplish anything tangible. I don’t know if the news that 7 million Americans protested this administration last Saturday even reached folks in the MAGA bubble. But it brought a very needed sense of community at a dark time in this country’s history, with crazier authoritarian headlines and fresh hell every morning. Let’s keep the momentum going. #nokings

Our humble city has taken a lot of grief over the last five years. Maybe our artsy temperament and zero f**ks make us an easy target; maybe our revolutionaries and iconoclasts welcome it; maybe everyone is just jealous of our dank food and vibrant nature. Whatever the reasons for these attacks, they are exactly why I moved here ten years ago, and I stand by PDX as my favorite city in the country ❤️