…and just like that, I’m in paradise, replete with swaying palm trees, rustling critters, and a profound sense of the universe inhaling and exhaling in unbroken, steady rhythm around my life’s playful chaos.

At this time every year, I’m no longer a touring musician - I wipe the slate clean, content to meander along secluded beaches and allow my mind gradually to unknot. It’s going to take a while this time around, and I have a lot of questions to answer.

But if there was ever a place to sink into a warm bath of introspection, it’s here. I mean, I’ve already almost stepped on a sea turtle, a large male, probably 50 years old, and as the senior member of the beach he gave me an appropriate “get off my lawn” sorta side eye, as if to say “I’m not in a hurry, and you shouldn’t be either.”

And the anthropomorphized sea turtle for whom I’ve imagined dialogue is spot on. Time, I think, to dust off the ukulele, channel my inner Jack Johnson, and get down to the serious business of doing nothing.