Hi friends! First of all, if you missed reading my first Alta Journal newsletter piece you can now read it on their website. Second of all, my wife and I just had a 5-day vacation about an hour and a half up the California coast. I, being the person I am, had a lot of big plans. I was going to read. I was going to write. I was going to play my ukulele. I was going to do jigsaw puzzles and make Nicole play Scrabble with me. We were going to do yoga every day.

I did none of that. Well, I read a little. But mostly, I stared at the water. In my defense, here is a photo of the sunset, taken off the back deck of the place we stayed in:

Turning off my brain was hard, partially because of my OCD but also because it is not something I ever really do. I’m always thinking of a million things and planning a million things and doing a million things so I forced myself to just… sit.