Though I've passed by Death Valley on campless family trips to Vegas when I was younger, I finally visited this beautiful, extreme valley -- completely inhospitable to most humans by late April.

At 7:45am, I started my hike at Zabrieski Point to complete the 2.5 mile Badlands Loop. Halfway into the hike, I realized it would have been wiser to have started the hike at 6:30am. Though it was bearable, it was clear that it would only become hotter, sunnier, drier through even that early morning.

After the hike, I decided to paint small studies of Zabriski point and the surrounding landscape from my car's trunk, where I found solace in the minimal shade.

With zero cell reception and a devastating heat that forced me into idle boredom that afternoon, I got to sit with my thoughts and any of the supplies I had in my car to keep me entertained. I painted plein air again for the first time in many months. Everytime I go through long periods of time not painting, I find that restarting is often clumsy, where I'm finding my way again with wieling my brushes, mixing colors that I want.

I used to love blogging in my journals on the internet, but somewhere along the way, I watched myself and everyone move from blogging to sharing our updates on our stories and posts.

There's something I miss about longer-form writing without the commercialization of it - the pressure of turning every poignant, entertaining, wise thought into "content creation." I fell into that trap, thinking that's something I wanted to make, until one day, I realized that thoughts can just be thoughts without any pressure to monetize from them.

I suppose my attempt at writing this here is my attempt to share notes without the need to get any external validation. This is an exercise to expression, without a need for a response, a like, a comment.