I'm back from my trip. Did you miss me? I spent last week reconnecting with a dear friend, sipping bottled poetry and communing with John Muir's ghost. In case you haven't already guessed, I was in (and around) San Francisco, the city with the lowest ratio of (time I spend there / time I want to spend there). The trip's original purpose was pseudo-business-related (more on that in upcoming posts) but I decided to take off the full week and turn it into mostly a vacation. Like the best vacations, I got three discrete doses of happiness from it: the anticipation beforehand, the being and doing during, and the memory afterwards. Unlike prior vacations, I found that I was able to almost completely avoid thinking about work. I only checked email and voicemail once on the entire trip. The fact that my job existed probably only passed through my head once or twice a day, and only for a few minutes. I don't know if I've gotten better at controlling what I think about, or if I care less about work now than I used to, or if I care just as much but simply worry less, or if my subconscious brain has found that I don't have as many good business-related ideas these days and so intruding upon my consciousness with random business-related thoughts isn't as likely to be productive anymore. I'm still getting caught up at work so I don't have time for a longer post, but I'll post a couple more notes about my trip in the next few weeks.