Hey all,

Last week, I was in Sequoia with some friends from High School for a little post-graduation celebration. Overall, we had a very wholesome time hiking, hanging out at our Airbnb, and dodging Central California's 100+ degree heat.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip, and I highly recommend visiting Hume Lake or hiking in the mountains as we did. Surprisingly, one of the most rewarding parts of the trip was driving around.

That's because it helped remind me: It's hard to be my parents.

While I was wiped out just driving 3-4 hours every other day, I've seen my dad get behind the wheel for 6+ hours on back-to-back days with little to no fatigue. And while my mom isn't the driver he is, she can find fun things to do instantly when our family plans go awry (which is way better than what I'm capable of.) Among so many other skills, they just have that ability to make our family vacations effortless.

Of course, I've always known this about them, but I think they've made traveling look so easy for so long that I never realized how hard it is. So, without them in Sequoia, every drive, problem, and adjusted plan was just another reminder of how easily my parents could've navigated it all. And in the end:

I found myself feeling very grateful to them.

And I realize that this is a very "well duh" realization on my part. Like, I'm sure many of you have pretty good relationships with your parents and have learned to express gratitude to them, or at the very least, know you are/should be grateful to them. And even those of you without great relationships with your parents/guardians probably have someone you are thankful for. Gratitude is just one of those topics that gets pushed a lot.

So, of course, you can take this as your reminder to be grateful.

But, I think the unique-ish thing this trip taught me is that I should take gratitude outside "gratitude time." Because I think a lot of us know we should practice gratitude but either practice it sparingly, or restrict gratitude to certain times of the day.

But, being a grateful person isn't the same as writing 3 gratitude statements at 10:30 p.m. every night like it's a chore (self-burn 🔥), rather, it entails being grateful at all times of the day. That's why we practice gratitude during certain times: so we start to extend that mindset to the rest of our lives.

But for a while, I think I treated that practice time as proof of being a "grateful person."

However, while in Sequoia, I realized how much more living a grateful life entailed. Just as every drive, problem, and modified plan reminded me of my parents' abilities, it was an opportunity to mentally (and later actually) thank them for taking care of me during our past vacations.

Plus, being grateful to my parents reminded me to imitate their skills to better solve problems and laugh off how much I still needed to learn about trip planning and other life skills.

So, I guess the moral here is to stop thinking of gratitude as a thing you do in specific moments, and be more grateful during more parts of the day. It can give you that warm and fuzzy feeling inside, help you imitate skills you covet in others, and help you understand and laugh off how bad you are at some things.

Anyways, that's all I've got for today. I hope you'll start being more grateful with me or at least learned something new. And if you did, or have any constructive criticism for this blog, reply and let me know!

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Ethan

Things I'm Enjoying:

📚 Books - Both 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Atomic Habits by James Clear were inspirations for this weeks newsletter and I think they've really helped me make permanent improvements in my habits and day-to-day happiness.

💻 Website - Realtime Colors. Color theory is hard so I've made a lot of use from Realtime Colors in creating potential colors for this website's color scheme. Unfortunately, I don't have Ghost's "Creator" plan yet so I've had to settle for this blue and off-white scheme, but I will probably use Realtime Colors again when I upgrade to add more flair and cohesion.