It’s been a quiet week or so here on Better Places. After many weeks of posting twice a week, I’ve taken a small pause — partly because life has been full, and partly because I’ve needed to listen to it.
We’ve had visitors from Norway: my wonderful sister-in-law, who just turned 50. She’s the baby of our group — my wife, her husband, and I are all in our mid-50s — and we’ve spent the past three weeks celebrating her milestone. Today, as I write this, we’re somewhere off the Mexican Riviera, sailing slowly back toward San Diego. The sea has a way of making you reflective, doesn’t it?
In a few days, I’ll turn 55. In a few months, I’ll retire. These transitions feel both exciting and unsettling — a mix of gratitude and fear that I think many of us feel when we start to sense the next chapter unfolding. I’m proud to be a “big brother” in the group, but I’ll admit: I’m also a little scared of getting old.
As the waves roll beneath us and our time together winds down, I find myself thinking about the future of this blog. I’ve been writing here for a few years now. There are a few hundred of you who read along — quietly, faithfully — and I’m grateful for every single one of you. But feedback is rare, and sometimes I wonder: does this matter to anyone else? Or maybe the better question is, does it still matter to me?
Lately, I’ve been drawn to a new theme: “leisure aptitude.” Learning how to be, not just do. How to shed a little more ego, and grow a little more presence — in my family, my hobbies, my life. Maybe that’s what this next season is asking of me: not another goal, but a gentler rhythm.
So I’ll turn this question to you, my small but loyal community:
How do you balance ambition and rest? How do you make peace with slowing down — or do you?
If you’ve been reading these posts quietly for a while, I’d love to hear from you. Your reflections, encouragement, or even your silence — all of it helps me understand where this journey might go next.
Until then, I hope you find a moment this week to step away from the grind. Put down your phone. Take a walk. Watch the sea, if you can find one. Let it remind you that life, like the tide, has its seasons — and that sometimes, the most meaningful work we can do is simply to drift for a while.
🌊 A Closing Thought
Abraham Maslow once wrote that “the story of the human race is the story of people selling themselves short.” Maybe the art of growing older — and growing freer — is learning to stop selling ourselves short of being.
We are not just what we produce, or post, or achieve.
We are also what we notice.
The sound of laughter on a ship deck. The shared toast to a 50th birthday. The hush of the sea as we sail home.
If Better Places continues, I hope it will keep being a place for that kind of noticing — for remembering that the world becomes better not through speed, but through presence.
Better Places 