It’s just after midnight on January 1, 2017. I look out my window and I can see fireworks over the whole city of Santander and the towns across the bay. As I watch them, I literally cry with happiness, alternating with startled jumping at each loud bang of the upstairs neighbor’s firecrackers. I cannot believe I live here. And suddenly it doesn’t matter that I live alone at the moment, that I don’t know enough people to go out partying, I’m content.

I’m working on some things: for example, mindfulness. Letting go of the past and future and being in the present. I just finished reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and it is intense and puzzling but somehow very clear.

Every morning I wake up to this view and spend a quiet moment being grateful for this place.