I haven't been back to New York in about 10 years, so I can't say how much it's changed because I'll mostly be cooped up at the venue where I'm working for an event. I'll only manage to do a bit of exploring next Monday and Tuesday when I take a couple of days off.

But these days, I'm reflecting on how I don't miss this kind of metropolitan vibe at all. The traffic is wild and totally out of control—both the cars and the pedestrians. The city is insanely noisy, and at any hour of the night, something shatters the silence: an open construction site, a cop's whistle, car horns blaring.

From that perspective, I can't say if it's just a Midtown thing where I'm staying, but the stark contrast to where we live in California is unbelievable.

That said, what hit me right away is how much I miss a setup where you can do pretty much anything on foot or by public transit, no car required. Grabbing a decent bite to eat at any hour of the day or night without stressing if this spot or that one's closed for a shift. Just the capital of the world, as it's been for the past few decades.

I'm sitting here staring at all the unread blog posts piling up from the last few weeks. My RSS feed is bursting with stories and content I'd love to dive into, but I just don't have the patience right now. I'm laser-focused on these final weeks of work before the Christmas break, when I'll be hopping coast-to-coast on planes multiple times.

I've reset my phone's home screen. Just one active page now, and I've ditched all the apps I don't need—X is my only social, nothing else. Life feels so much lighter without that phone addiction... And that's where I've been thinking about how my RSS feed doesn't demand constant attention to keep going; the stuff I'm into will just sit there, waiting for me to check it out when I'm ready. The social world, on the other hand? It keeps spinning even if I'm not in it, but to really engage with it fully, I'd have to live and breathe it every single minute. Not worth the trade-off.

Hoping to snag a few more killer shots of New York—fingers crossed I avoid the clichés and nail something truly iconic.