3rd August 2026

Newsletter Monday

Hello Reader,

One of the things I hadn’t expected to spend so much of my holiday thinking about was… buying food.

Not the actual food itself. I mean the buying of it.

Before anyone starts, yes, America has some stereotypes for a reason. Bacon appears to be considered an acceptable side dish for absolutely everything, and I lost count of the number of products that tasted noticeably sweeter than their UK equivalent.

But that’s not what fascinated me.

What fascinated me was how much work buying food seemed to involve.

At home, if we run out of milk, or fancy something different for dinner, I’ll wander to the village Co-op.

I’ll moan about the prices, but within five minutes I’m home again.

In Colorado and Utah, buying groceries became an expedition.

For our first week, we had no car.

The supermarket (the size of an aircraft hangar) was geographically quite close, a ten-minute walk at most, but it meant carrying whatever we bought across six-lane roads and back to the Airbnb in temperatures nudging 38°C. That’s after standing in front of a choice of 25 types of peanut butter, everything being massive, and trying to compare prices on products you’ve never even seen before.

By the third supermarket, I was fed up.

Not with America, but with the sheer mental effort involved in buying food.

By the second week (hooray for collecting the rental car) I’d realised why those enormous American fridges we’ve seen in films and on TV for decades exist.

They shop completely differently to us.

And it makes perfect sense.

When your whole environment is built around driving, you buy in bulk. When shops are further away, you think further ahead. The environment shapes your behaviour without you really noticing.

It also made me realise that, outside the city centres, life is designed around having a car. Without one, even buying groceries suddenly becomes a logistical exercise.

It made me wonder how many things we think are “choices” are actually just responses to the world around us.

Health is a perfect example.

We like to think it’s all about motivation, but the environment quietly nudges us all day long.

We often tell ourselves we just need more willpower. More discipline. Better habits.

Sometimes that’s true.

But sometimes the environment is doing far more of the heavy lifting than we give it credit for.

The biggest gift of travelling isn’t always the scenery.

It’s perspective.

You suddenly notice the things you’ve stopped seeing because they’ve become normal.

The ease of popping to the shops.

Your own kitchen.

Your own bed.

Your local walks.

Even your morning routine.

It’s tempting to come home and add up what a holiday cost. In fact, I need to attend to that later today.

Flights.

Taxi fares.

Train tickets.

Ice creams roughly the size of a baby’s head.

And, in my case, a frankly embarrassing number of Owala bottles.

But that only tells half the story.

What did those two weeks buy?

For me, they bought perspective.

They reminded me that missing a few workouts doesn’t undo years of looking after yourself. A year ago I’d probably have let that become another source of stress. This time I didn’t.

That learning to draw badly is still time well spent.

That spending uninterrupted time with my family isn’t an indulgence to be squeezed in around work.

And perhaps the biggest one of all…

I came home with the realisation that my business has reached the point where trying to do everything myself simply isn’t sustainable.

That’s not a failure. It’s probably a sign it’s time to let other people help.

Money comes and goes.

Time only goes.

The invoices will get paid. The emails will be answered. I’ll eventually finish unpacking and stop thinking about Owala bottles.

But I don’t think I’ll ever regret taking two weeks away with the people I love.

Some investments don’t appear on a bank statement.