What Some Don’t Notice

In most cities, people move with purpose. Toward work, toward obligations, toward deadlines, toward survival itself.

Cars stack bumper to bumper in traffic, people weave through sidewalks with phones pressed to their ears, and entire days disappear into maintaining the complicated machinery of modern life. Bills, relationships, careers, health, ambition. The cycle repeats so consistently that seasons themselves can begin to feel like little more than decorations passing outside a window.

Somewhere along the way, many of us stop noticing the ecosystems that exist within our own lives.

Winter snaps to spring. Spring snaps to summer. Summer folds into fall. Every year feels shorter than the last. As I have grown older, time itself seems to move faster, slipping through my hands as quietly as the second hand on a clock. But over the last few months, I have started to realize something strange. When the objective is no longer simply to keep up, but instead to observe, learn, and create, time begins to stretch again.

We have now been in Tirana for almost four months. Like any major city, it pulses with movement and ambition. From Los Angeles to New York City to Tirana, some things remain universal. Traffic. Noise. Construction. People chasing the next task waiting for them tomorrow morning.

For the first time in a long time, Jess and I exist slightly outside of that rhythm.

Most people here do not know our names. We do not have many friends yet. Our lives have become incredibly simple. We go to the grocery store. We walk around the lake. Some days we wander through the city with absolutely no purpose at all, something many people are simply too busy to experience anymore.

At first, that feeling was unsettling.

For years, my life revolved around urgency and responsibility. The decisions I made carried weight. Sometimes very serious weight. Whether someone received help in time, whether a situation escalated, whether something went wrong, those outcomes often depended on people showing up ready to act. Even at night, there was always the lingering question waiting quietly in the back of my mind.

Could I have done more?
What did I miss?
How do I prevent that from happening again?

That kind of thinking changes you. Even after the moment passes, your mind does not always stop searching for the next emergency.

But now spring days are simple.

Spring days are for baby goslings crossing walking paths at Tirana Lake. They are for grebe chicks riding on the backs of their parents across still water. They are for a street dog that becomes overwhelmingly excited when someone finally stops long enough to give it attention.

And then there is the bird living inside our wall.

When I first realized it was there, my immediate thought was how to get rid of it. Now I look forward to morning and evening feeding time. We hear the mother return with food, followed by a chorus of tiny chirps echoing through the wall as the chicks beg to be fed. At this point, it almost feels as though they are living in the room with us.

The lions and tigers at the nearby zoo roar throughout the day, and when they suddenly go quiet during hours they are usually active, Jess and I find ourselves asking, “Where are our friends?”

Even the rooster next door, which once felt impossibly loud, has become comforting background noise. Some nights I genuinely consider recording the sounds around our apartment just so we can continue sleeping beside them one day. The zoo animals, the birds, the dogs barking in the distance, the rooster greeting sunrise before anyone else is awake. Somewhere along the way, the chaos became familiar.

In my last story, I wrote about our adventures in the mountains north of Tirana. The landscapes were incredible, and yet while we were there, Jess and I kept finding ourselves talking about the animals back in the city as though we missed neighbors we had known for years.

That realization stayed with me.

Our lives now move at a pace that would probably seem incredibly boring to some people. Many days are spent sitting on the couch watching comfortable shows together. Other days involve searching the Albanian Alps for one of Europe’s most critically endangered predators. Some days revolve entirely around photographing a turtle sunbathing on a log or a cat eating pieces of chicken given to him by a local shop owner.

But every day is slow.

Every day is built around observation without conditions. Around spending time together, even if that simply means sharing TikToks back and forth from opposite ends of the couch. Around learning a new language and successfully speaking with a taxi driver on the way to the bank. Around walking through the same places over and over until the smallest details begin to reveal themselves.

In many of my stories, I have tried to show the extraordinary. Ancient ruins, dramatic landscapes, wildlife encounters, distant places.

This story is different.

This is the story of the in-between moments. The quiet spaces most people move through too quickly to notice. Because the truth is, this is what most of life actually is. Not the peaks, but everything surrounding them.

We observe.
We walk.
We drink coffee.
We listen to the animals outside our window.
We exist inside an ecosystem overflowing with life that many people no longer have time to see.

And lately, I think there is something beautiful about that.

These days, I feel as free as a Tirana street dog stretching in the forest beside the lake, and I would not have it any other way.