Considering a 7th consecutive year of watching every* sunrise...

TL;DR:

Introducing BugsyLand™. For just 28¢ per sunrise we can put a whole lot more sunny (and cloudy) content into the world. Think of it as Bugsy+ or BugsyPrime, or my personal Patreon. This membership model offsets the growing financial cost of sunrise travel, server costs, and helps justify an enormous amount of work.

You can subscribe Monthly ($10 USD), Yearly ($100 USD), or Lifetime ($1,000 USD) if you really want to shock me. New membership perks coming soon.

A simple coffee also goes a long way. Find me at $BugsySailor on the Cash App.

The truth is, after 2,308 consecutive* sunrises I’m not ready to be done sunrising. It is also true that justifying the time, energy, and cost of Year of the Sunrise has proven difficult, though I’m making progress.

For the first two years years I chased the sunrise for myself, seeking presence in the world and reconnecting with nature. For the last four years, after hearing so many of your stories of what these sunrises mean, it’s time to do it for for you.

It’s things like this, and this that keep me going, which is what I hope to inspire more of.

To support more sunrises, the best option is to subscribe to BugsyLand™, my own little Patreon-style subscription service. It keeps the lights on around here.

New Challenges for 2025

Data, data, data!
Hard drives are filling up and iCloud storage is maxed out. With the addition of 4k footage each morning, digital storage is becoming highly critical. I now produce up to 50gb of data in a single sunrise outing, 20gb for a “light” sunrise. At minimum, that’s 1 terabyte every 50 days. I am currently researching different NAS solutions.

Now with more YouTube
With the aforementioned 4k video, it marked the introduction of YouTube. Over the past year I’ve done a deep dive into learning Adobe Premiere and basic video production. It has been a fun and challenging addition to the project. I’ve only begun what my vision of the video content can be. Follow along on YouTube.

This very website
With 3+ years fully published the build time of this site (Go Hugo) has slowed significantly. It’s not fault of Hugo. Rather, there are hundreds and hundreds of API requests for weather data, location data, and internal tools I’ve built. As the archive grows, I’ll need to find some better solutions for cashing these requests.

Let’s talk time, energy, & commitment

An inspired sunrise is easily a one hour commitment, if not more. Followed by 1-2 hours of social media management, journaling, and photo editing, a sunrise morning can easily consume 3-4 hours. That alone is equivalent to a half-time job.

Add in time for photo and video editing, print production, products, web development, correspondence, all while never having more than 24 hours to do it all over again. YOTS quickly ballooned into the equivalent of a full-time job, without the direct income to match.

I hope to lean into sunrise further, creating the largest collection of sunrise data and photos ever compiled. It’s going to take more than me to make it happen.

What’s next?

Short-term goals

• Continue editing a backlog of 25,000+ photos
• Produce the first iteration of a book, which I will call the Sunrise Almanac for now.
• Send out thank you notes and pay acknowledgements to what’s gotten me here so far
• Write more sunrise musings

Long-term goals

• Publish a series of photo books (that’s right, the goal is to do more than one)
• Launch SunriseTV
• Expand the Watch More Sunrises campaign
• Build the Sunrise Library, a dedicate physical space to server as a permanent legacy for Year of the Sunrise, imagine four Sunrise Galleries

Introducing BugsyLand™

The sun will rise, regardless of me being there to document it. But subscribing to BugsyLand™ is the best assurance to see that this sunrise content continues to enter the world.

BugsyLand™ is my membership model for all things Bugsy. Think of it as Bugsy+ or BugsyPrime, or my personal Patreon, where many artists, podcasters, etc. are moving to a membership model to sustain their content. Turns out, I create a lot of content.

This goes well beyond Year of the Sunrise and helps me to investe more time into other community efforts such as 906 Day, Plaidurday, Fresh Coast Film Festival, and of course, encouraging others to watch more sunrises.

The goal, is to continue to inspire more moments like this, this, this, this, this, and more. And if you read the comments here, I would love to inspire more of this in the world while setting out to document sunrise in a way that’s never been done.

For as low as 28¢ per day we can put a lot more sunny (and cloudy) content into the world.

What do you say? Let’s create more, together.

Looking to make a simpler contribution? Consider a monthly coffee to fuel more sunrise content. You can also find me on the Cash app at $BugsySailor.

Not ready to commit? I understand. Considering subscribing to my very occasional YOTS newsletter or making a one time contribution with a publication request.

It’s not perfect, but I hope to bring you along on this process of what it means to be a full-time artist (err, “creator” if you insist. ugh) in this day and age.

BugsyLand™ Membership Perks

• 10% discount on all Upper Peninsula Supply Co. purchases
• 20% discount on all Year of the Sunrise purchases
• First dibs and discount on any future YOTS books
• Access to exclusive content including sunrise outtakes
• Downloadable mobile and desktop backgrounds
• An small annual token of appreciation
• And much more to come

Most importantly, your membership directly puts more sunrise into the world.

In conclusion…

I’m not ready to be done sunrising, and as your stories of inspiration come in, my motivation continues to grow. But as things stand, my time needs to be accounted for, as my landlords do not accept sunrise photos as payment. But most importantly, more joy and sunrise need to put put into the world.

Let’s keep creating, together.