“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.” — Prince Rogers Nelson

Hello dear friends,

Having been packed into our little San Francisco house for six months together, my family got the chance to escape to Southern California last week. We were grateful for the change and stretched out in our new environment. Heading home yesterday, however, we shifted back into reality.

The drive home was eye-opening. When we first hit the smoky haze on I-5, I thought, “Wow this is bad.” The stress hit. I worried. My brain shut down. I gazed out the window uselessly.

Then things got a lot worse.

Weirdly, the worse the air got, the more I let go. I’ve always been like this. Emergencies clear my head. I get calm. I take action. I overlaid fire maps on our driving map and started tracing our progression, noting the smoke didn’t always correlate with the fire itself. The sky was apocalyptic, but we weren’t in danger.

Finally, we made it home.

I could suddenly appreciate the relative clarity of the sky at home. The drive forced me to accept that smoke doesn’t mean flame and that wind patterns change air quality hourly. I faced my abstract fears and created the concrete framework I needed.

The answer, I think, lies in emotional regulation. I remember reading this Fast Company piece last year, Procrastination is An Emotional Problem, and learning

In other words, my deadened response (staring out the window) is a type of procrastination. When the emergency hits, like a deadline, I’m able to stop procrastinating and get to work.

The next time I feel myself fear flatlining, I will try (no promises, Michael) to take the advice laid out in the article and

I would love to hear if this experience resonates with you, or what you’ve learned about your own response to fear. Reply to this email to reach me, or join the Beautiful Voyager Slack group to talk about these ideas in real time.

Keep sidestepping wildfires, everyone.