Greetings readers. It’s a sunny Saturday morning here in Southern California. Early April and the tall maple outside of my second story window has suddenly sprouted bushy tufts of fresh green leaves and is swaying in the wind, slow dancing to the song of early Spring. My belly is full of coffee and pancakes and I’ve been up since about 2:15am, a slave to uneven circadian rhythms as I rise once again to another day of latent jetlag that Just. Won’t. Die.

I touched back down on home soil on Wednesday from another two-week, one-two tour of Taipei and Tokyo. Taipei for no other reason than because it has taken on all the coziness of second home to me at this point, and Tokyo to visit my kid, who moved there last year.

This isn’t a trip recap. I’ll toss a few photos up here, however that’s not the point of today’s scrawl (but damn, those cherry blossoms tho). I wanted to riff a bit on the growing disconnect I’m beginning to feel every time I whisk myself away for a spell and then cold plunge myself back here in the states. I’ve been to both Taiwan and Japan enough times now that I no longer feel as if I’m traveling when I launch myself over the Pacific to these places. I see them more in the same way that the wealthy likely look at their lakeside vacation homes. It’s less about sightseeing and more about breaking up the stifling dreariness of everyday life through deliberate escape to a place with some familiarity, but far removed from the crushing weight and miserable people you must deal with back home.

Now, when I touch down in Taoyuan or Narita I hit the ground running. I know lay of the land in these places. I understand the code. Grab luggage, boom. Airport express MRT to Taipei main station, boom. Red line transfer to hotel in Dongmen, boom. Beef noodle soup on Yongkang St.

Boom.

You get the point.

It’s less about visiting famous temples or tourist-funneled shopping streets and more about visiting my favorite coffee shops or libraries at this point. I’d much rather spend the evening snapping photos around the nature pond in Daan Forest Park than I would on the Taipei 101 observation deck. It’s less about stimuli and more about creative energy and restoration. It’s snuggling up to a warm fireplace. It’s drawing quiet inspiration by sitting under your favorite tree.

Yes, these are busy cities. But oh so much more bearable when you know the drill and can slide right into a packed car on the Yamanote Line, backpack turned around perched upon your chest, rubbing shoulders with strangers during the morning rush with all the proper expectations involved with that.

Despite the busyness, after a few days, a very special kind of quiet stillness always begins to emit from inside of me. I believe it’s the natural response to your mind and spirit acclimating itself to an environment where violence, aggressive entitlement, and rage-induced division aren’t lurking around every corner, during every waking moment of the day. You feel a release, of being allowed to let your guard down and seeing that it’s OK. A peace that I feel we rarely experience in the states, begins to fill in and take its place.

That’s how it goes while you’re away in these places, that while far from perfect, seem to get so much more right than we’ve been able to manage.

And so, when it was all drawing to a close and I made my final sando run at the 7-11 in Narita, beginning to board that plane back to Los Angeles, I could feel the old life, that I had managed to push away for two weeks, begin to wash right over me again. I hadn’t even left Japanese soil, but within minutes of boarding that plane with my fellow homebound Americans, white people fatigue was already settling in. The pushy whining of entitled passengers demanding seat changes from the stewardesses were already ringing in my ears. The pilot announced the expected flight time of over nine hours, which was met with collective sighs, and at least one woman firing back incredulously, “Nine hours? I didn’t think it would take that long.” As if the pilot could somehow bend the scientific laws of modern aviation and cut that time in half, but insisted on being a dick to us all instead by choosing to take the long way home.

Take it up with Mother Nature’s manager if you’re not happy, lady.

And there I sat, for yes, nine hours, next to quite possibly the most fidgety man in the known universe. He would rummage though his giant, black hole of a travel satchel, fiddling with a giant iPad, his phone, a pair of earbuds, an eyemask, 3 water bottles of varying volumes, a bag of shrimp crackers, and a neck pillow. Cycling through them with wild ADHD energy every 2-3 minutes, sometimes pairing them up in combinations that made no sense to me. Doomscrolling on the phone while the giant iPad blazed on in full brightness, aimed directly into my tired eyes, his attention completely diverted from it.

Kept awake by this buzzy bumblebee of a man, I was forced into some heavy thinking, buoyed a little by the weakened emotional defenses that pair well with the mild delirium that comes with a lack of sleep. I began asking myself what I was doing, abandoning tranquility and returning to this big, broken, ball of misery that is the United States in the year 2026, still working a job that I should have left at least 2 years ago?

How hard is it going to be, after two weeks, a literal half a world away, to march back into those grey slabbed corridors leading to my office? Questioning all my life’s decisions as I return to those tired-ass people whose entire worldviews don’t extend more than 15 miles in any given direction? I think of the deep sadness that operates 24/7 in the background of nearly all of my coworkers, a uniquely modern, American sadness. These poor people locked into a cycle of sedated anodyne complacency, gleaning sustenance off of a dull parade of buffalo wings and double-decker cheeseburgers floated their way.

Was it no coincidence that the first thing I saw getting off the airport shuttle on my way back home was a literal garbage truck on fire? I had to do a double take… the man fighting a losing battle with this tiny fire extinguisher as the trash raged on in flames around him. Could there have been a more apropos symbol of the current state of my mind and the country as I return here? It was powerful, Greek omen-like imagery. The modern equivalent of the dead dove in the hawk’s beak flying due east, heralding the bellowing dissatisfaction of the Gods with man.

I love Los Angeles. I have it running through my DNA. When I was a boy it was all Dodger Blue and Lakers Showtime. I grew up and lost the sports gene, but it was replaced with a powerful appetite for al pastor and mulitas, which I think is a fair trade. But over the past decade I’ve felt the shaky angst of the greater country creeping into my city. I felt like we were shielded from most of that insecure energy out here in the west, on the last fringe of land before the Great Pacific. I genuinely felt like even if it all went sideways, the state and the vast grey belly of the sea would protect us. But I feel it seeping in. It’s that deep, unspoken sadness that I feel in the people around me here. There’s a growing fatigue that’s been collectively wearing us all down. We’ve lost the fight, not in some oddball culture war, but we’ve lost the drive to fight for ourselves.

If the definition of home is a place of sanctuary and safety, a place where your soul can truly rest and recover, then maybe the tide is shifting. Perhaps fate is grabbing me by the hand and telling me that the place of your becoming has served its purpose and has been emptied of its utility and spiritual nourishment. Resources have been drained. Forward progress and growth have been halted. Maybe I’m being led elsewhere to unlock long dormant, vital and exciting aspects of my character that simply can’t exist in this environment.

The question now is, are you ready to take that leap towards your best self?