There’s no better place than winter in LA. It’s a dream, being able to come back to this dojo at my parent’s, especially at this time of year. I can come here in transitions — when I need to lie low, be with family, reconnect with myself. I’m so grateful for that.

I set up the space with Christmas lights, things I got in Japan, small mementos that make me happy — a shimekazari — which is an ornament the Japanese hang above their doors for New Year’s to welcome good fortune.

The electric fireplace is dancing; Christmas lights are on; and just like the holidays are for many people, it’s beautiful and also sad.

The lights make me think of Christmas last year in Japan. I was with my girlfriend. Now it’s just me.

I don’t have an ounce of ill will against my ex. I still love her, always will. I think that’s okay. These things bring up happy memories, and it may be sad now because we’re apart, but I welcome in the sadness, I smile, and I embrace the memories we made together; I think by embracing instead of suppressing, we make way for all that is to come.

Life is beautiful and also sad. That’s the essence of melancholy.

“Melancholy is not rage or bitterness,” writes Alain de Botton — a wonderful modern philosopher — in his book The School of Life.

“It is a noble species of sadness that arises when we are properly open to the idea that suffering and disappointment are at the heart of human experience. It is not a disorder that needs to be cured; it is a tender-hearted, calm, dispassionate acknowledgement of how much agony we will inevitably have to travel through.”

Alain has gotten me through these difficult times; I couldn’t recommend his work enough.

I look around the room and at the clear cerulean sky beyond the window where the moon still lingers; that makes me happy. It smells warm in here with candles and the subtle scent of pine; the sound of the electric fire, the calligraphy from my lessons in Japan taped to the wall.

I love this city. I really do. There are other cities where I want to live, but coming to LA is like being held when I need it. And maybe because I am held by my family and friends.

I have so much history here. Every day I see people at the gym that I grew up with. Parents of my friends. Old classmates. It’s a reminder of where I come from, but then I look in the mirror, and I’m somebody new — I’ve charted my own path, and the man in the mirror embodies that.

This city heals me. The ocean, the sky, the cliffs, the people. Been hanging out with best friends, talking to strangers, finding myself in unique situations.

A night out at a friend’s DJ set downtown, followed by tacos at an LA institution, where you glimpse all walks of life coming together at 2 a.m. for some of the best tacos in the world.

An impromptu jazz set at Palisades Park in Santa Monica in the pink light of dusk.

Catching most sunsets, always up before the sun, observing darkness turn to day. Playing tennis and basketball, doing yoga, lifting, running hard. I couldn’t be happier working on me, and especially my primary focus — my book on Japan.

It’s flowing. It truly feels like my purpose to write this book. To write books and really disregard the rest — the shiny objects, the things I could be doing, acquiring. Nope. This is it for me. I’m in it.

Reading and writing, lost in history and fiction, inspiration, not the often negative contemporary zeitgeist. Naw, that ain’t for me.

Been thinking about life, death, family, people, purpose, joy, light, love, sadness, pain, obstacles, connecting, dreams, letting go, and the fact that we’re here, alive, being nothing short of a miracle.

I just wanna give back to this world that’s given me so much.

I went out to dinner with my dad, brother, and grandma Pat the other night. She’s ninety-four and can still go out to dinner at a restaurant; it’s unbelievable. Sure, she asks the waiter over and over if we can order, and she can’t hear across the table, but she’s there, and she laughs, and she’s just an extraordinary woman.

But at dinner she kept asking where my grandpa Dicky is. He passed away years ago. Her asking this stuck with me.

I just wondered what she must be thinking. It’s sad, but does she want to be here anymore? It can’t be easy for her. But we love her, and want her here. She doesn’t seem in pain, but she can’t remember much at all; she misses Dicky.

There are people trying to live forever. Endless supplements that we’re supposed to take to help us live longer.

It makes me question: what’s the point of wanting to live so much longer?

I read a fictional book recently, How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig, about a man who had a condition where he lived hundreds of years. He lived with Shakespeare and experienced wars and plagues and uprisings and innovations.

But life lost meaning when he lost the people he loved. He could do anything he wanted, start new anywhere every eight years because of a certain power. But it meant nothing to him. Life had lost its fundamental urgency, its finite integrity.

Why are we here if not to one day die. It is the greatest mystery and most beautiful thing about being alive that not a single person knows what happens when we finally close our eyes.

Yet all of us die. What we do while we’re alive is just as miraculous as what may happen when we go. This world is a playground of experience. Hopefully, some are good; many will be painful; but it’s all just experience.

I’m watching the Ken Burns documentary on Leonardo da Vinci, one of my heroes of history. Da Vinci called himself a “disciple of experience.”

That’s my intention as well. To experience the full breadth of life on earth. I want to live while I’m alive. To create. Enjoy. Laugh. Feel deeply. Relax. And do it in a way that only I can. We’re all gonna die one day, and that, to me, is a beautiful thing.

Maybe I’ll regret not getting where I thought I’d go. Maybe, although I doubt it, I’ll regret not creating enough; I’ll probably regret a few mistakes; but I don’t think I’ll regret living a life that wasn’t my own.

I really feel like I’m doing that now. So no matter the outcome, no matter where this all leads, I’m satisfied. Truly, I already am. I’m happiest in a small studio apartment, laying bare what rings like a melody throughout my heart and soul.

This is all just a game we’re playing. This whole fucking thing is just a game we’ve all signed up for whether we know it or not.

It’s the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave.

Societal pressures, social insecurities, the things that give us anxiety, the things we worry about. That’s not the truth of reality. It can be fun to play this game, sure, and it should be.

But I know, deep in the recesses of my being, that there’s more to it. There’s life outside of the cave, where none of this shit matters.

Life outside the cave is presence with my grandma.

It’s riding bikes under the stars along the sand, the comforting lights of the pier in the distance. It’s tears at 3 a.m. in bed; it’s vigorously journaling and burning the page to let out what’s stored inside of me; it’s hoops in the driveway with my dad and brother; it’s friendsgivings and ocean dips and music and the simple joy of flowers.

All that matters is whether we were alive. Eyes open. Loving one another. Marveling at this miracle.

I felt it profoundly last night on a beach walk with my best friend in Malibu.

We walked to the end of the point and climbed through a cave and sat on the rocks watching the sunset. The sky melted into an orange flame. Birds flying black in a V; stratus clouds hovering over the islands off the coast.

I thought about Da Vinci, who believed every single thing is connected — the way the birds fly and the way the clouds develop; the veins in our body like rivers, our heart like the sea.

I thought about what it might have been like to be a Native American hundreds, thousands of years ago, doing what we just did — walking on the beach and climbing the rocks. Watching the sunset, and probably thinking about a lover all the while, using the body, contemplating the cosmos, just being. And that surely would be enough.