Tomorrow, I’m checking out of my gorgeous A-frame Airbnb outside of Yosemite, and I don’t know where I’m going to sleep at the end of the day. And I feel fine about that.

Instead, I’m going to reminisce about how cool driving through Yosemite Valley was, seeing waterfalls and ice-covered rocks and towering cliffs and post-fire trees.

I hope this trip can continue to help me embrace the undefined time. The trip is bringing me joy and discovery and connection, and I’ve let go of much of my natural organizing drive. May that serve as a model for life writ large. Undefined and evolving is where I need to be right now.

Today was a good reminder to myself that it’s OK not to treat this trip like a predetermined vacation experience. I don’t have to keep on squeezing in sightseeing just because I’m near these places.

Today was a real basic bitch day, and I have zero regrets.

We hopped into some kayaks, and we paddled around Elkhorn Slough with seals and sea lions and sea otters, and their pups. [please read that last bit of italics in a high-pitched squeal]

It was a beautiful (HOT) day to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway, including a spontaneous stop at Zuma Beach to sit and watch the waves for a while in the morning. Definitely a day of “detoxing” from the city with a return to solo nature time, which felt really nice.

I’ve done so much that I feel like I’ve been here a long time, even though it’s only been a week, and I’m very satisfied by the eclectic combination of sightseeing and eating and wandering and people-visiting and museum-going I’ve done here.

I’m also feeling the pull to get out of the city again.

My museum visits on this trip have been reminders that I do still love these places, and that they make me think. Think critically and disappointedly and aspirationally and fondly and many more adverbs besides. But I’m not done with them, in either a personal or a professional sense.

My social energy just is not what it used to be. Even in the Before Times (aka pre-pandemic aka BCE… Before Covid Era), I’d been steadily leaning more and more into my introverted side. But now, after over two years of majorly curtailed social behavior, I felt like I needed (at least) an entire day of rest to recover.

41 was a birthday that fit the year. I started it with pastry and latte treats, proceed on through the Time Travel Mart and funky hipster Echo Park, LA, meandered through the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, chilled at the swank and luxurious Prospect Hollywood hotel, ate delicious mozzarella and dinner with Kim Gouveia.