Bears to the Left of Me, Gators to the Right...

Pretty great Sunday in the Big Easy. Went to the Zoo, and then an authentic poboy joint, and eventually a random small-room rock show at the Circle bar.

I’m starting to slip back into normality, and the process of recompression is a little bit bumpy. Wrong-number phonecall at 6:45am woke me up and I had a big stress moment, thinking it meant something went horribly wrong at work. Recompression. Baby’s got the bends.

Still, it’s a good intermediary chamber between my waking life and the pan-American paradise of my vacation, New Orleans. It’s warm and still somewhat culturally foreign. It’s friendly. It’s got 24-hour bloody marys.

The immersion experience in Uruguay was really positive. It activates different parts of your brain, having to figure everything out all the time. Clears out some cobwebs for sure. I want to actually work on my espanol now. Seems muy importante to start getting global.

Returning, I found myself having a hard time speaking normally, or even understanding people. CNN in the Miami airport gave me The Fear. I found the latent, omnipresent wealth to be disorienting; the size of my hotel room, the casually conspicuous consumption that typifies a large swath of US culture, etc.

Our financial system can completely collapse and we’ll still be largely fine. Not gonna run out of food, and thanks to the bubble there are plenty of places to sleep. In fact it might not even be such a bad thing, getting back to first principles.

Much more to write and think and do. I have 544 emails waiting for me, which I will need to start in on sooner or later. But I want to write more travelogue too, and do some other things for myself before crossing the threshold of doing things for work.

It was a successful strategy, leaving my laptop and razor at home. I’m scruffy and well-adjusted. The next step is seeing what new habits of action can be laid down. This vacation wasn’t quite “how Koenig got his groove back,” but it’s in the right ballpark. Definitely a solid hit on the old reset button. I want to make the most of that.