I’d rewind to a field day from my residency sabbatical—before things got complicated. Dawn came up pink over the Gulf, and the skiff engine purred like a finely tuned V12. For once, my hands felt perfectly steady on the hydrophone rig as we listened to dolphin clicks that sounded almost musical, like someone had slipped cosmic sheet music into the water. Lunch was gas-station poboys on the dock, with a borrowed watch ticking softly in my pocket while the pelicans staged a heist. A quick summer squall rolled through, raindrops tracing perfect concentric circles across the flat water—little orange sparks dancing at the edges of my vision, though nobody else seemed to notice. No headlines, no grand destiny—just good data, sunburn, and that rare peace when the universe hits pause for an afternoon. I’d loop that day to bottle the simplicity: teammates who felt like family within hours, work that bordered on the mystical without anyone calling it that, and the kind of earned exhaustion that lets you sleep dreamless—if only for a night.