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A Quiet Place


Wish we were here

The city is quiet now. Half of the furloughed federal workers appear to have left town; the other half were at the post office Tuesday afternoon when I had a package to mail. We were, I’m sure, all dreaming of being somewhere else. Snow is in the forecast. It’s undisputedly January.

And perhaps not coincidentally, as I sit down to write this blog … I got nothin’.

No funny stories about past trips, no deep insights about travel. My brain has adopted the pose of one on vacation (or, perhaps, on furlough): best suited for staring into the distance and thinking about nothing in particular. We indulge this kind of brain activity when we have an ocean or a mountain vista in front of us; it’s less appreciated when your vista is a picture of mountains on a computer screen.

Perhaps it’s best, at times like this, just to lean into the inertia. Let your mind enjoy a little hiatus, where its most challenging task will be pretending the view out the window is a beach instead of a sidewalk, and wait for the synapses to start firing again.

Have a great weekend, everybody.


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