The Lexi Thompson “Retirement” That Wasn’t

I’ve been watching the reaction to Lexi Thompson’s “retirement” headlines that still show up sometimes and shaking my head a little. They usually show up when she commits to a tournament. The reaction is often, “I thought she retired or was retiring.” “For someone who retired, she sure plays a lot.”

And, let’s face it, people love a good retirement story and a good comeback story.

What they don’t seem to like very much is the messy space in between, where real life usually happens. That’s the space Lexi Thompson currently occupies – and judging by the reaction in a few columns, comment sections, and on social media, it’s apparently driving some people crazy.

Two years ago, headlines flew everywhere declaring that Thompson was retiring. The implication was clear: one of the most recognizable players in women’s golf was walking away from the game. But if you actually read what she said, the story was far less dramatic.

She talked about stepping away from a full-time schedule and taking things day by day.
She also talked about not knowing how many tournaments she might still play.

That’s not retirement – it’s adjusting your workload, which is something many of us would like to be in a position to do. 

In fact, during the first year (2025) of this supposed “retirement,” Thompson still played 13 tournaments. That hardly sounds like someone who disappeared from the game, or wanted to.

It sounds more like someone who decided to step off the treadmill. And honestly, who could blame her?

Thompson turned professional at 15. By the time most people are figuring out what they want to do with their lives, she had already spent years traveling the world, grinding through tournaments, dealing with cameras, expectations, and the constant scrutiny that comes with being a high-profile athlete. That lifestyle can wear on anyone.

She also got married earlier this year, which tends to shift priorities for a lot of people. Maybe she wants a little more stability and to build a life outside the endless airport-hotel-golf course cycle. She likely wants to decide week by week whether she feels like playing. That’s not controversial. It’s normal. 

She’s played one tournament this year, thus far, an MC, and may or may not play 10 or 12 more this season. Who wouldn’t want to work 12 weeks a year while already being set for life with over $15 million in career earnings, plus endorsements? And she’s hardly the first LPGA player to rethink how golf fits into the rest of her life.

Jessica Korda stepped away from the tour for a period of time and has recently returned after starting a family. Lorena Ochoa took a different path altogether. After dominating the game in the second half of the 2000s and reaching No. 1 in the world, she walked away at the height of her career. She had accomplished everything she wanted to in golf and chose to focus on family life and charity instead. Today, she’s married with children and happily living a different chapter. Nobody questions that decision.

Athletes, just like everyone else, eventually reach a point where they start asking a simple question: What do I actually want my life to look like now? For some players, the answer is to keep grinding week after week for as long as possible. For others, the answer is to step away completely. And for players like Thompson, the answer might be somewhere in the middle.

Play a few tournaments and still be connected to the game. But stop letting the schedule run your life. 

The funny thing is, if an accountant or college professor cut their workload from five days a week to three, nobody would accuse them of lying about retirement. People would just say they found a schedule that works better for them. 

Professional athletes deserve that same flexibility. So when people complain that Lexi Thompson “retired but keeps playing,” they’re really misunderstanding what she said in the first place. She didn’t retire from golf. She retired from letting golf control every week of her life.

I get what Lexi Thompson is doing. She’s trying to build a life where golf fits into her world instead of the other way around.

A lot of people eventually reach that same realization. Work is important. Purpose is important. But at some point, many of us start asking whether the schedule we’ve been living is really the one we want to keep forever.

Lexi is doing something I’d like to do myself. Work part-time — or at least work differently. Spend more of the day doing things that matter: spiritual pursuits, writing, pitching articles, blogging, traveling more again, maybe even writing a book or two…or seven.

That kind of life isn’t about retiring. It’s about designing a schedule that leaves room for the things that make life meaningful.

For Lexi Thompson, that might mean playing a handful of tournaments instead of chasing a full LPGA schedule.

For the rest of us, it might mean fewer hours at the office, more time for family, faith, creativity, or simply breathing a little easier. Different professions, but the same idea.

And if someone has the courage and the means to step off the treadmill and build that kind of life, the right response is respect and admiration, not criticism.

The Relationship Between Idleness and Overthinking

When The Beatles stopped touring in the mid-1960s, John Lennon reportedly said something that has always stuck with me. After years of constant travel, concerts, interviews, recording sessions, and screaming crowds, the band suddenly found themselves with something they hadn’t experienced in years: free time. Lots of free time. And Lennon allegedly remarked, half joking and half serious: “What the hell am I supposed to do with myself all day?”

It’s funny when you think about it. Here was someone who had just escaped the exhausting treadmill of global fame, full of flights, shows, hotel rooms, and relentless schedules, and suddenly the problem wasn’t too much to do. It was the opposite. Too little.

We tend to think of downtime as something purely positive. And in many ways, it is. Rest matters. Quiet time matters. The mind needs space to recharge. Except for the rare assignment, I took two years off to recover from burnout, recalibrate my life, move from a big city to a small town, and deal with a host of personal issues that nearly broke me. 

But there’s a strange tipping point with idleness, or in my case, a lot of downtime for an extended period. Downtime is refreshing. However, too much of it, and something else begins to happen.

The mind starts wandering into places that aren’t always helpful. Anyone who has experienced long stretches without structure – whether between projects, between jobs, or even just during a slow week – knows how this works.

At first, it feels good. You sleep in a little later. You take things slowly. You tell yourself it’s nice not to be rushing around for a change. But then the brain starts filling the empty space.

Small worries begin to grow larger. Minor uncertainties become full-blown questions. The mind starts replaying things that already happened or imagining things that haven’t happened yet.

Psychologists sometimes call this rumination – the mental habit of going over the same thoughts again and again without actually solving anything.

The strange thing is that the mind often does this most when it has nothing concrete to focus on.

Give the brain a task – writing something, fixing something, building something – and it usually settles down. It shifts into problem-solving mode. It has a direction.

But leave it idle for too long and it starts scanning for problems. It’s almost like a radar system looking for signals. And when there aren’t any real signals, it begins inventing them.

This doesn’t mean downtime is bad. Quite the opposite. Rest is essential. Nobody can run at full speed forever without burning out, as I mentioned earlier. The key seems to be balance. There’s a big difference between restful downtime and empty idleness.

Restful downtime might include things like walking, reading, listening to music, spending time outdoors, or simply letting your mind drift in a relaxed way.

Empty idleness, on the other hand, often looks like sitting around waiting for something to happen. Checking email repeatedly. Refreshing notifications. Thinking about things you can’t control.

That kind of idleness rarely refreshes the mind. More often than not, it leaves you feeling more restless than when you started.

It’s interesting that many people report feeling calmer after doing something simple and productive – even something small. The task itself may not be life-changing, but it gives the mind a place to go. It replaces speculation with action.

Maybe that’s what John Lennon was bumping into in those early post-touring days. After years of constant motion, the sudden quiet probably felt strange and awkward. 

Humans seem to be wired not just for rest, but for purposeful activity. Too much pressure exhausts us. But too little direction can leave the mind wandering in circles.

The sweet spot seems to be somewhere in between – a rhythm of work, rest, and meaningful engagement that keeps both the body and the mind moving forward.

When Work Crowds Out Worry

Something happens when I’m busy. I’m not talking about pull-your-hair-out busy or overwhelmed busy, just steady, productive busy. 

When the work is flowing – articles being written, edits being made, ideas being shaped, outreach  – something else quietly disappears from the background of my mind.

Worry.

It doesn’t vanish entirely, of course. Life doesn’t work that way even though I wish it did.  But it gets pushed aside, like music playing softly in another room. You know it’s there, but you’re not really listening to it.

I noticed this again recently during a productive stretch of writing. I had several assignments to finish. They required digging through many sources, curating the narrative, tightening the language, and making sure the tone was balanced. The other was a quicker trade publication piece, but still needed the usual trimming and restructuring. 

As the work progressed, I realized something afterward: I hadn’t spent the day worrying about anything.

Normally, there are the usual background thoughts that drift in and out: When will that payment arrive, and how come they always pay, but pay late? Did I forget to follow up with someone? Is that invoice going to get processed this week or next? I hope it’s this week. 

But when I was fully engaged in the work, those thoughts never really showed up. Yeah, they are there in a way but they got crowded out.

It’s not that the concerns magically disappeared. Freelance life still comes with uncertainty. Payments arrive when they arrive – often past the 30-day due date (don’t ask me why). Assignments come in waves. Editors and accountants have their own timelines and priorities – and I know I’m not the only thing on their mind, and least of all is usually getting paid. 

But when the mind is busy solving real problems – banging together a story, editing sentences, cutting unnecessary paragraphs – it simply doesn’t have as much room left for speculation and worry. 

The brain has only so much bandwidth; give it something meaningful to do, and it tends to focus on that. There’s another interesting side effect of this productive rhythm. When I’m working steadily, other parts of life tend to run more smoothly, too.

I’m less likely to forget things. I stay on top of small tasks. Even everyday decisions seem easier. It’s as if being engaged in purposeful work creates a kind of structure that spills over into everything else. On the flip side, when there’s too much idle time, the mind starts looking for something to do – and often what it finds is worry.

The brain starts replaying small concerns. It speculates about problems that haven’t happened. It drifts into unnecessary what-ifs that take on a life of their own. Anyone who has ever spent an afternoon refreshing their email waiting for a payment notification knows exactly how that feels.

Oddly enough, the solution isn’t usually to sit around trying to stop worrying. The better solution is often much simpler: start working on something.

Not busywork. Not endless scrolling or distraction. Real work. Something that requires attention, thought, and engagement. For writers, that might mean creating something from scratch (like this blog entry), tightening language, or cutting down a messy draft until it finally flows.

There’s something satisfying about that process of editing and trimming. Taking a bulky piece of writing and removing everything that doesn’t belong. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, until only the essential parts remain.

It’s a little like sculpting. You start with a rough block of material and slowly carve away everything that isn’t the statue. And while you’re doing it, something else is quietly happening. Worry gets crowded out.

The mind is too busy building something useful to spend much time imagining problems. It’s probably why so many people feel calmer after a productive day. Sure, they might be tired, but it’s a good kind of tired, not an “I wasted the afternoon ruminating over many things I can’t control” tired. That calm is not because the world suddenly became simpler, but because for several hours their attention was directed toward something constructive.

Work, when it’s the right kind of work, has a way of doing that. It gives the mind somewhere better to go.

When an Old Foot Injury Decides to Make a Comeback

One of the less glamorous parts of getting older is discovering that old injuries never really leave. They just wait. Quietly. Patiently. And then, out of nowhere, they remind you they’re still there.

That happened to me yesterday.

Years ago, I hurt my left foot. I don’t even remember every detail now, only that I did enough jogging back then that maybe all that pounding had something to do with it, as did landing half on and half off the curb a few times over the years and twisting it. Whatever the ultimate cause, the injury, or injuries, never completely vanished the way I hoped. I did get it checked out from time to time and was ordered to take it easy for a bit, but in those days, when it came to taking it easy on the jogging, that meant taking two days off, and then running two or three miles every day for three weeks, instead of my regular six or more. I was young and in great shape and thought I was invincible. 

Most of the time my foot behaves itself. I can walk normally and barely think about it, almost like the old injury has finally decided to leave me alone. But every now and then, it reminds me that it hasn’t actually gone anywhere.

Yesterday was one of those days. I had walked about a kilometer to the local convenience store. Just a simple walk, stretch the legs, get a little fresh air, and buy some cream for my coffee. 

The clerk there is friendly, and we ended up talking for a few minutes. You do that a lot in small towns. The topic drifted to one that seems to come up more often these days – getting older and the little aches and pains that show up whether you invite them or not.

I mentioned that in many ways, I actually feel younger than my dad did at the same age. And honestly, I still believe that. Then I started walking home. About halfway back, I stepped down off the curb, left foot first, just slightly wrong. Nothing dramatic. Just one of those ordinary steps that suddenly isn’t so ordinary.

Bang. The old injury lit up like a warning flare. Not a dull ache. Real pain. The kind that makes you stop for a minute and immediately change the way you walk. And just like that, I was limping.

I made it home, checked things out, and there was no swelling or anything obvious. No bruising. Nothing dramatic to see. Just that deep reminder somewhere inside the foot that something in there isn’t quite the way it used to be.

The timing, though, was almost funny. Five minutes earlier, I had been explaining how I felt younger than my dad did at this age. Apparently, my left foot heard the conversation and decided to weigh in.

The pain eventually settled down, like it always does. After sitting and doing some random foot exercises for a while, the pain gradually faded until everything felt normal again.

Which is often how these things go. Old injuries are like that. They behave themselves for long stretches of time, and then, when you least expect it, they decide to remind you they’re still around. 

Lately I’ve also been doing squats and toe raises to try to stay a little stronger as the years pile up. That might be aggravating it a bit, too. Sometimes I forget that while exercise is good, my body is no longer the same one I had decades ago. I also think the hardwood floors in my place contribute to it. They look nice, but they have absolutely no give. I’d rather walk on asphalt than hardwood. At least asphalt seems to absorb something. Hardwood just sends the message straight back up your leg. However, I did get an area rug for my bedroom and it does help.

I’ve known basketball players who deal with foot and leg problems for exactly that reason. They don’t call a basketball court the hardwood for nothing. And I still remember gym class in high school when we had to run laps around the gym on rainy days. Even in the great shape I was in back then, my feet and shins would start hurting during the first few laps. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one.

I suppose that’s the real adjustment. Somewhere in your mind, you still feel like you’re the same person you were years ago. You walk and move the same way. But the body occasionally sends a reminder that it has a longer memory than you do.

So I semi-limped for a while, then gradually resumed my normal walking style the rest of the way home, and the pain faded away as if it had never happened. Which of course, means everything is fine again.

Right up until the next time I step wrong and my left foot decides it has another opinion about getting older.

The Unwritten Rules of Waiting Rooms

Doctor’s offices, dentists, hospital clinics, service departments, government buildings – they all have their own purpose, but the atmosphere is almost always the same. A quiet, slightly awkward space where a group of strangers sits together, waiting for their turn for something.

And even though nobody ever explains them, waiting rooms seem to operate under a set of unwritten social rules. The first rule is silence. Not complete silence, but a kind of careful quiet. Someone flips through a magazine or laughs at a text. Someone coughs. A chair shifts across the floor. Occasionally, a receptionist speaks softly with someone at the desk.

But for the most part, people instinctively keep their voices down, as if everyone has silently agreed that this isn’t a place for loud conversation.

The second rule is avoiding eye contact.

When you first walk in, it’s normal to glance around briefly to see how many people are waiting ahead of you. But once you’ve found a seat, most people suddenly develop a deep interest in their phone, an old magazine, or whatever happens to be on the wall. It’s not that people are unfriendly. It’s just that nobody wants to accidentally start a conversation with a stranger in a waiting room.

Part of that hesitation comes from the fact that no one really knows why anyone else is there. You might be waiting for a routine appointment, while the person across from you could be dealing with something far more serious. In a situation like that, polite silence feels like the safest approach.

Then there’s the unspoken rule about where to sit. If there are ten empty chairs and only two people in the room, everyone instinctively leaves at least one seat between themselves and the next person. No one sits directly beside someone else unless the room is completely full.

It’s the waiting-room version of personal space. 

And of course, there’s the phone rule.

Phones are perfectly acceptable in a waiting room, but only if they’re used quietly. Scrolling, reading, and texting are all part of the silent routine. But the moment someone starts a loud phone conversation or plays a loud video, the entire room becomes aware of it. Suddenly, everyone learns about someone’s cousin, their workplace problem, or their dinner plans for the evening. 

Heads tilt slightly while a few eyes glance up. The quiet understanding of the room has been interrupted and everyone has the look of, “Turn your phone down!”

What makes waiting rooms interesting is that they’re one of the few places left where strangers sit together without feeling any pressure to interact. Everyone is sharing the same space for a short time, yet each person remains in their own small bubble.

Eventually a name is called. Someone stands up, disappears through a door, and the room quietly returns to its rhythm. Another person walks in, takes a seat, and the unspoken rules begin all over again.

The Secret Relief of Cancelled Plans (Introverts Know This Feeling)

Second entry in the Introvert series.

You check your phone and see a message pop up.

“Hey, sorry… something came up tonight. Can we reschedule?”

Before you even finish reading it, something unexpected happens. A small wave of relief washes over you. You type back a polite reply, of course – something like, “No problem at all! Another time.” But somewhere in the back of your mind another voice quietly says what you probably wouldn’t admit out loud: Ahhh… tonight just got a lot easier.

If you’ve ever had that reaction, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s a feeling many introverts recognize immediately.

Now, that relief doesn’t mean you didn’t want to see the person. Most of the time you genuinely did. You like them, you enjoy their company, and you probably would have had a perfectly nice evening. But at the same time, there’s often another part of your brain quietly calculating the effort involved in the plan. You have to get ready, drive somewhere, be “on” socially for a few hours, keep conversations moving, and possibly stay longer than you might naturally want to.

None of that is terrible. In fact, those evenings can turn out to be very enjoyable. But introverts tend to think about the energy cost of social plans in a way that extroverts often don’t. Social interaction draws on a limited battery, and sometimes that battery is already half empty before the evening even begins.

That’s why when plans cancel themselves, it can feel like a small, unexpected gift from the universe.

Suddenly the evening opens up in front of you. There’s no schedule to follow, no clock quietly reminding you how long you’ve been out, and no expectation that you’ll stay until a socially acceptable time to leave. Maybe you stay home and cook something simple. Maybe you finally watch that movie you’ve been meaning to see, or sit down with a book you’ve been putting off. Or maybe you just enjoy the quiet.

And quite often, that quiet evening ends up feeling exactly like what you needed all along.

The funny thing about introverts is that we often like the idea of plans. When someone invites us to dinner or a gathering, the invitation itself feels good. It means someone enjoys your company and wants to spend time with you. In that moment, saying yes feels completely genuine.

But as the day of the event gets closer, another thought sometimes begins to creep in. Work has been busy, the week has been long, and your battery might already be running low. The couch, a quiet room, and maybe a cup of tea start looking very appealing.

That’s when the cancellation message can feel strangely liberating. The decision you were quietly wrestling with has already been made. You don’t have to debate whether you should go or come up with a polite excuse. The evening has simply rearranged itself.

It’s important to say that this doesn’t mean introverts don’t enjoy people. In many cases, we value friendships and meaningful conversations very deeply. But we also value quiet time just as much. It’s during those quiet moments that the brain settles down, the noise of the day fades away, and we recharge.

Without that space, social interaction can eventually start to feel draining. With it, social interaction can actually feel enjoyable again.

That balance between connection and quiet is something introverts spend most of their lives figuring out and never quite do. 

There’s also a small truth most introverts won’t say out loud. The best social plans often include a kind of built-in exit ramp. A clear ending time, a smaller group, or the possibility that the evening might naturally wrap up earlier than expected. When that happens, everyone leaves feeling good rather than exhausted.

So if you ever feel that tiny sense of relief when someone cancels plans, there’s no reason to feel guilty about it. It doesn’t mean you’re antisocial or rude. It just means you understand something about yourself that many people take a long time to recognize.

The Two-Hour Social Window Is An Introvert’s Secret Clock

Most introverts (like me) know something about themselves that they rarely say out loud. If they attend a social gathering, they’ll probably enjoy it. But after about two hours – three, max, they’ll likely be ready to go home.

Not because the evening was bad or because the people weren’t pleasant. But because somewhere inside, an invisible meter has quietly reached its limit. I’ve come to think of it as the 2-3 hour social window.

When someone invites you somewhere, like a dinner, an anniversary gathering, or a casual evening with friends, the invitation itself often sounds appealing. You like the people involved, and you may even be looking forward to seeing them. Yet somewhere in the back of your mind, another thought appears. This will probably be good… for about two hours. Three is pushing it, and I may make it that long. 

If you lean toward the introverted side of the personality spectrum, that thought may feel familiar. Introverts don’t necessarily dislike socializing. In fact, many of us genuinely enjoy good conversations, laughter, and time spent with people we like. But we also tend to have a social battery that drains more quickly than it does for others.

For me, the window tends to be about two hours, and then I start using up my battery power more rapidly. Sometimes it stretches a little longer if the conversation is engaging and the group is small. Sometimes it’s shorter if the room is loud or crowded. But somewhere around that two-hour mark, something subtle begins to change.

At first it’s barely noticeable. The evening has been pleasant, the conversations have been enjoyable, and nothing in particular has gone wrong. But slowly, the energy that felt natural earlier in the evening begins to fade.

You find yourself glancing at the clock without really meaning to. A conversation that once felt lively starts circling around familiar territory. Someone launches into a story that stretches a little longer than it probably needs to.

And eventually a quiet thought appears: Okay… I think I’m about ready to go home.

The interesting thing is that this feeling doesn’t come from frustration or boredom. Most of the time, the evening itself has been perfectly enjoyable. The internal meter has simply reached its limit. It’s like watching your car’s fuel gauge go below a quarter tank and you’d better fill up soon or you’ll feel out of sorts and uncomfortable. 

Over time, many introverts become aware of this pattern and learn to work with it rather than against it. One approach is the polite early exit. You show up, spend time talking with people, enjoy the evening, and then after a couple of hours you thank the host, say your goodbyes, and head out while the atmosphere still feels good.

Leaving early often means leaving while you’re still enjoying yourself. It’s like the band that doesn’t overstay its welcome on stage and knows when it’s time for the last song. Usually, about two hours in. 

Another strategy is declining invitations when you know the timing won’t work. An event that begins later in the evening or is likely to stretch long into the night can feel daunting before it even starts. In those cases, it’s sometimes easier to say, “I can’t make it this time,” rather than commit and feel pressured to stay longer than you’re comfortable.

And then there’s a third strategy that many introverts quietly admit to. You accept the invitation, but when the day arrives, you realize your social battery is already running low. The week has been busy, work has been demanding, and the thought of another long evening of conversation suddenly feels exhausting. 

The couch looks comfortable. A quiet room and reading a book sounds appealing. So a text goes out explaining that something came up and you won’t be able to make it after all.

Is it ideal? Probably not. But it’s also part of learning to recognize your own limits.

What’s interesting is that this internal clock often becomes more noticeable with age. When we’re younger, it’s easier to stay out later and stretch social energy longer. As time goes on, many people simply become more aware of how their energy works.

For some of us, two hours turns out to be the sweet spot; long enough to enjoy people but short enough to leave while the evening still feels good.

Introverts don’t dislike people. In many cases, we value meaningful conversations and genuine connections more than anything else in social settings.

We just tend to experience them in smaller doses. And when that invisible meter begins to run low, the most appealing place in the world suddenly becomes something very simple. Home and quiet.

Finding Warmth in Gulf Shores

The next entry in my occasional travel series of places I’ve been to. 

If you grow up in northern latitudes, winter vacations usually point in a few directions: the Caribbean, Florida, Arizona, maybe Texas, or Hawaii. 

But twice now, I’ve flown toward a different stretch of coastline – Gulf Shores, Alabama – and both times I came away surprised, refreshed, and quietly grateful.

Gulf Shores isn’t the first place that comes up when snow is still piled along the roads back home. It’s not tropical in the way South Florida feels tropical. Late winter temperatures can be mild rather than hot. You might need a light jacket in the morning and at night and the Gulf breeze can have an edge to it. 

The beaches stretch wide and pale along the Gulf of Mexico. The sand is fine, almost powdery in places, and the water carries that familiar emerald tint the region is known for. It isn’t crowded in late winter. You can walk long distances without weaving through umbrellas or beach chairs. The rhythm and the conversations are slower and easier. 

And the people? That’s what stays with me. On both trips, I found myself in unhurried exchanges. Restaurant staff who took the time to ask where I was from, and, at times, when the restaurant wasn’t busy, the conversation lasted minutes instead of seconds.  Locals who offered recommendations without sounding rehearsed. Fellow travelers who seemed genuinely relaxed, not performing relaxation.

There’s a friendliness along that Alabama coast that feels rooted rather than commercial. And then there’s the seafood. Oh, man, the seafood. 

I’ve eaten seafood in many places. But some of the meals I had along the Gulf Shores and Orange Beach area still rank near the top. Fresh shrimp that tasted as if they’d come off the boat hours earlier. Oysters are briny and clean. Grouper that flaked perfectly under a fork. Nothing overly complicated. Just well-prepared food that respected the water it came from. It’s one thing to visit a beach town. It’s another to taste it.

What made those trips even more memorable, though, was the drives I went on.

On one of them, I kept heading west along Interstate 10, crossing state lines, watching the landscape subtly shift as I moved through Mississippi and Louisiana, eventually reaching Beaumont, Texas.  Long bridges. Low marshlands. Billboards advertising boiled crawfish or roadside pecans. Water appearing and disappearing beside the highway. You stop for gas, stretch your legs, and realize you’re moving through a corridor of American geography that doesn’t always get romanticized, even though it should.

I spent the night in Beaumont before turning around and retracing my route east. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t planned down to the minute. It was simply movement and the kind of spontaneous extension that road trips allow.

And here’s the part that surprised me most: I wasn’t tired.

After hours of driving, stopping, sightseeing, and absorbing new places, I expected that drained feeling that sometimes follows long travel days. Instead, I felt energized and invigorated. I kept reminding myself, “I’m in the Deep South on the Gulf Coast. This is awesome!”

There’s a difference between being busy and being alive. On that stretch of road, with the Gulf air still lingering in my clothes and the memory of good meals fresh in my mind, I felt awake in a way that routine doesn’t always allow. Maybe it was the contrast to winter back home or the openness of the landscape. Gulf Shores may not compete with South Florida’s late-winter temperatures. It doesn’t try to be Sarasota or Miami Beach. It feels more understated and less polished in some ways – and better for it.

It offers warmth, but not always heat. It offers beauty, but without pretense.

When I eventually flew north again, back toward colder air and familiar streets, I carried more than just the memory of beaches and seafood. I carried the reminder that sometimes the best travel isn’t about chasing the obvious destination.

Sometimes it’s about turning west on I-10, driving a little farther than planned, and discovering that the road itself gives back more than it takes.

The Madness of March Weather

If you live in Canada, the northern half of the United States, or large parts of Europe and northern Asia, you know exactly what I’m talking about. March, like May, is the month that simply refuses to make up its mind.

One day the sun comes out, half the snowbanks melt, and you start thinking, Maybe this is it. Maybe winter is finally over. The sidewalks start to appear dry again, the days are noticeably longer, and you can feel a little warmth from the sun that hasn’t been there for months. You even hear the occasional bird that sounds optimistic about the season ahead.

Then the next day the temperature drops again, the sky turns gray, you’re experiencing yet another six inches of snow, and you’re putting away the hoodie again and putting on the heavy winter jacket, wondering why you ever trusted the calendar in the first place. After all, why should you trust March when any type of weather can happen and always does?

March is nature’s version of a practical joke. It teases you just enough to make you believe spring is right around the corner, only to remind you that winter still has a few tricks left. And if that cold snap happens on a Saturday and Sunday, it somehow feels worse.

Weekends are supposed to be when we recharge. Instead, we look out the window at gray skies, cold wind, and that lingering pile of dirty snow that seems determined to survive until May. The optimism from those earlier sunny days disappears quickly, replaced by the familiar feeling that winter is dragging on just a little longer than it should. By the time mid-March arrives, most of us in the northern part of the world are simply tired of winter.

Not angry. Just tired. Well, maybe we are a bit angry because a few days ago a lot of snow melted, but then the skies opened up, and we got another dumping of the white stuff – enough to make the roads slick again and the plows come out. 

After months of cold weather, shorter days, and endless gray skies, even people who normally enjoy winter sports are ready for something different. Boots, bulky coats, icy lakes, and shovels have lost whatever charm they once had back in December.

But here’s the strange thing about March: as frustrating as it can be, it’s also the turning point. The daylight is increasing quickly now, and the sun is climbing higher in the sky every day. Even on colder days, there’s a subtle difference in the air that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. The light looks different. The afternoons feel longer. Somewhere beneath all the lingering winter weather, spring is slowly pushing its way back.

You can feel it. Winter is losing its grip, even if it refuses to admit defeat.

So for now we deal with the strange mood swings of March. One day, the sunshine lifts our spirits and makes us believe the worst of winter is behind us. The next day another blast of cold air reminds us that the season isn’t quite finished yet.

We complain about it. We joke about it. We check the forecast far more often than we should. And then one day it happens.

You wake up in the morning and something feels different. The sun is brighter. The air is softer. When you step outside, you realize you don’t need the heavy winter coat anymore. What was once a snowbank is now a giant puddle. People notice it immediately and are in a better mood. 

Suddenly the sidewalks are busy again. Neighbors who have barely seen each other all winter stop to talk. Dogs that have spent months walking quickly through the cold are suddenly taking long, happy strolls again. Someone opens the first patio table outside a café or restaurant, even if it’s still a little early in the season.

It’s the first truly warm day of the year, and everyone seems to feel it at the same time. After months of winter, it feels like the whole northern half of the world collectively exhales.

Until that day arrives, though, we’re still stuck in the strange in-between season that is March – the month of teasing sunshine, stubborn cold snaps, and weather forecasts that seem to change by the hour. But we know something winter doesn’t seem to realize yet. Its time is almost up. Just hurry up, damn it. 

Walking Gettysburg: Where the Ground Still Feels Heavy

The next entry in my occasional travel series of places I’ve been to.

Visiting Gettysburg National Military Park isn’t like touring a museum. There are no glass cases separating you from the past. You walk on it. You stand where it happened. You feel the scale of it under an open sky that looks far too peaceful for what unfolded there.

The fields are wide now. Almost serene. But in July of 1863, they were chaos.

More than 150,000 soldiers converged on the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War. For three days, Union and Confederate forces fought what would become the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.

Roughly 51,000 men were killed, wounded, or went missing. That number is easy to read but hard to comprehend. 

When you walk through the park, you begin to understand why people say the ground feels heavy. You climb Little Round Top and look down across the rolling landscape. You stand at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. You walk the long, open stretch of field where Pickett’s Charge unfolded – a mile of exposed ground that thousands of Confederate soldiers crossed under relentless artillery and rifle fire. You wonder how many times you stepped on exactly where someone was shot and killed.

It’s quiet now – almost too quiet. You try to imagine the noise, the thunder of cannon fire, the crack of rifles, the smoke hanging thick in the July heat. Men shouting and dying. Horses panicking. Officers trying to maintain order while lines collapsed around them. But what settles deepest isn’t the strategy. It’s the human cost.

These weren’t anonymous figures in sepia photographs. They were young men. Farmers. Clerks. Teachers. Sons. Brothers. Many were barely older than teenagers. Most had never traveled far from home before the war carried them into Pennsylvania.

And there, on farmland and rocky hills, thousands never returned.

You see the monuments erected by states and regiments trying to honor their dead. You read names carved into stone. You notice how many markers simply say “Unknown.” Whenever I see “Unknown” at any battle site, I shudder inside. They may have been unknown in the record, but they were real people. The scale of loss becomes personal when you realize how many families waited for letters that never came.

There’s a sobering shift that happens when you move from reading about history to physically inhabiting its geography.

At many points during my visit, I stood in an open field, wind moving through the grass, and tried to picture what it would have looked like in 1863. No paved roads. No tour buses. Just churned earth, smoke, blood, and confusion.

The beauty of the landscape feels almost unsettling. Because it reminds you that tragedy doesn’t require dramatic scenery. It can unfold in places that look peaceful both before and after.

Three days of fighting reshaped the war. Historians often describe Gettysburg as the turning point, the moment when momentum shifted. Shortly after the battle, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his now-immortal Gettysburg Address, reframing the conflict as a struggle not just for union, but for the very meaning of equality and democracy.

But standing there, the political implications feel secondary to something more immediate: the cost. 

More than 7,000 men died during the battle itself. Thousands more would succumb to wounds later. Entire communities back home were hollowed out. Farms were left without sons and children without fathers.

It’s impossible not to think about the randomness of survival. Two men standing side by side. One lives. One doesn’t. A step left or right determining an entire family’s future.

The trip itself was memorable for many reasons – good food, open roads, and conversations along the way. But Gettysburg was the emotional anchor. It grounded the journey in something deeper. It reminded me that travel isn’t only about scenery or novelty. Sometimes it’s about confrontation – standing in a place that forces you to reckon with sacrifice.

When you leave, the fields remain calm. But the weight doesn’t entirely lift. Once you’ve walked that ground – or any historical ground for that matter – you understand that history isn’t distant. It’s layered into the soil beneath your feet.