I suddenly woke up at 5:00 am this morning—quite possibly because it feels like 8 billion degrees here in Barcelona. My friend Keira and I talked about how cool it’d be to see the sunrise at the beach in the Mediterranean. She’s back in France now, but I thought I could go walk down to the beach.

It was interesting walking through the city so early in the morning. There was a mix of people hailing cabs to go home (Last call is around 5am here) and shop owners opening up to bake their bread and other pastries. I must say the oddest thing I witnessed was this drunk girl approaching me. She talked to me for about twenty minutes asking me where I’m going or if I knew of any parties. The weird thing…she was not wearing pants. She was standing there in her underwear. I did not even want to ask her where her pants went. Maybe she’s Spanish Lady Gaga?

It took me some time to walk down to the beach, but by the time I got there the sun was just rising. It was such a spectacular view. I sat there for about an hour to watch the sun rise until it was hidden by the clouds. When I checked Instagram, it was so cool to see my friends 5,000 miles away in Seattle post photos of the sun going down. Really magically (scientific, rather) if you think about it.

I was in the midst of couples and lovers sitting there, enjoying it together. I think Old David would have been bitter, as I was enjoying this alone, but New David seemed okay with it. Old David would have said something like “man, I wish I had someone to enjoy this with” whereas New David says something like “it’d be cool to share this with someone, but this is still spectacular—a big difference between alone and lonely.”

My new mentality is that I will control what I can and not let anything stop me from what I want to do and see. Like the sunrise, it happens every day, but each time is a different one. We don’t know how much time we have.

New goal: To see the sun rise and set in as many countries as possible.