I hole up in my room for work. I have the option to work outside, but “More efficient this way," I tell myself.
8 am signals autopilot. I drift from bathroom to dresser to kitchen. Fill the kettle. Light the burner. Sift through cabinets for coffee grounds. Open screen to a blank file. A podcast conversation drones in the distance while I pour my coffee. I check my messages.
I am still amateur level when it comes to productivity. There’s so much more to optimize for: buy a hundred bags of grounds. Upgrade to a standing desk. Construct a tri-monitor setup. Stuff my freezer full of pre-frozen meals and racks of Huel (Deliciously quick, nutritionally complete!). Groceries delivered, clothes shipped, dinner dropped to a higher floor of a taller building.
One byproduct of progressing in the career race is removing externalities from your life. That's the strangest part about becoming more settled, a member of yuppie society in an urban sprawl: you slowly work to cut away the pieces that don't serve your future. Efficiency entails separation — that's what we want, right? To do more in less time. To minimize drag. An aerodynamic, hermetically sealed life. Goal done now. Done faster.
We can fill an entire grocery list full of substitutes and omissions. The apartment minus the roommate. Uber, rather than the bus. No need to walk to the restaurant — your lunch was just constructed on an assembly line, selected on an app, transported seamlessly. A mirage of the suburbs materializing. You’re getting closer.
It seems logical to immediately adopt time-saving habits, but there's an unseen tradeoff: what we gain in temporal preservation we lose in experience. These disturbances in the otherwise uninterrupted flow of our schedule, are what comprise our days. And what forms our days, becomes our lives.
The tragic part of computer work becoming the norm is that the days dissipate in front of us. You look up from the screen, out the window, and there's the world unfurling without you: a child scrawling sidewalk chalk flowers by the garage sale, a flock of birds darting above a jazz trio at the park, a parade of costumed bicyclists heading out for a ride. And while close in physical proximity, your existence is entirely separate from them, an invisible fence barricading you from reality.
Suddenly, dusk has fallen. Another day is over.
—
It requires artful inefficiency to become an active participant in your life. We have to be intentional in seeking the real world. This often begins with small choices.
One I frequently make is to walk, rather than take any form of practical transport. I’m typically given responses of Why? when I tell people I crossed town an hour on foot to their apartment. Couldn't you have taken the bus? And I laugh a little and say I just like walking, I wanted to walk.
Because on the street, life unfolds in front of you. I run into a couple hosting a wine night in their yard and pet their dog. My landlord honks at me from her van and jokingly yells at me to get out of the road. A gray-haired woman drops her groceries and I hesitate a little too long to pick them up and keep walking (I felt bad), so when I see a construction worker struggling with his tools I ask if he needs a hand. I pretend I'm racing some people on the street and speedwalk at a comically fast pace. I stop at a sandwich shop and get a turkey pesto. The owner comes by asking how the sandwich is while my mouth is full, I give him a thumbs up. I don't know. I'm a pretty reserved guy; I still meet people anyways by parading around the city.
It’s usually mundane stuff like this, but there are occasional highlights. A few weekends ago I walked around Chinatown intending to go to one bar (which ended up being full) and on the way to find another got caught in the ensuing firework celebration. Light crackled in small blooms around our feet and high up on metal balconies, coiling like gardens of snakes tasting the night air. An invisible hand painted clouds in broad green and red strokes. Sharp echoes rebounded across buildings, graceful and menacing and unbearable.
I barely recall the bar; I only remember the walk. The most essential moments are often the unintentional ones.
From Vonnegut:
"The moral of the story is — we’re here on Earth to fart around ... we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around."
Turn down a street you haven't gone to. Pick a restaurant on it. Have an early dinner. Don't check the reviews. Eat slowly. Ask the 67 year-old owner behind the counter how long they’ve been open, and where he likes to grab a drink. Text your friends to do something. Stay out later than usual. Do it again next week.
Are you doing something after dinner? Why? No reason. Let’s just head down that way. We’ll run into something. No, I don’t know where we’re going. Yes, I know we have work tomorrow. Yes, I’m cold too. But look — is that skating rink open? And isn’t that a funny looking dog?