Back to normal life after the longest vacation, I've ever taken, just about three full weeks. Even before having a child, I rarely took too much time off. Work is always crazy and could be more if one pours it on. With a child, you try to do it all by pouring it on in many areas of your life. All I want right now is to keep in that flow of how it felt while on vacation. My mind wasn't sharp, but that could have been the Modelo Gold or margaritas. Yet, my mind was expansive and allowed to think about many things beyond what was right in front of me. The goal now, how to keep that same expansiveness the rest of the year.

The expansiveness is a mindset. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits calls it "vacation mind." He writes about it here, even offers some great practice on keeping the vacation mind at work. Mindsets are built over time, by experience after experience hitting us. Some learn to build a precise mindset so as to perform well at work or an athletic endeavor. For over fifteen years I've practiced Buddhist meditation so as to train my mind to be in a Zen mindset most of the time. The benefits have been profound, the practice difficult at times, but it is a path of practice that brings us to a vacation mind at work.

I leave you with a new discovery while on "vacation." This is playing in the background as I write this, I can still feel the warm air across my face as we climb rocks and drink the "champagne air" of Death Valley. ~ Sarah Jarosz - Videos are best played while looking at the first photo in this post....feel it! :)