Day One

I don’t understand how people with jobs get anything done. Everyone wants to know what I’m doing with my first day of freedom, so I’ll go into a bit of detail. My last week and a half at Yahoo! required me to document and train various people on the past three years of my working life. And this was in addition to meeting all of my normal deadlines. I was working right up until the minute I turned in my computer. Oh, and I happened to move into a brand new apartment last week. In consequence, errands related to my personal life have achieved critical mass.

So today, I finally made it down to the mechanic. He can’t take my car today, can I come back Wednesday? Well, actually, I can…but I won’t. He already told me today was good, and I don’t feel like driving to his shop every day this week on the off chance that it will be my lucky day that day. So on the way home, I happened to pass by a Shell station and dropped my car off. Some people wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving their Mercedes at a random Shell station for service, but I’m just getting a glorified oil change. On an unrelated note, the mechanic looked remarkably like Christian Bale’s unkempt twin brother. The whole ugly brother thing was strangely hot in a way that I don’t plan to pry into too much. I left my car at the station and walked home. It was an unseasonably hot day in the city, and despite the fact that I was walking through the less than charming parts of SOMA and Portrero (lots of auto body shops and construction), it was one of those moments when life feels indescribably beautiful. Like you are the first person on earth and are seeing everything for the very first time.

I made it back to my house to discover that UPS had failed to deliver my package for the second time in a row. My apartment has no buzzer, so I’d left a note for them to call my cell, and they scribbled back “no phone.” I work from home. If I can’t receive packages, who on earth can? Then I walked over to Atlas to grab a sandwich and do a bit of work. The wireless in there costs money…yes, cash money, in S.F. no less. So I just ate a very meat-y sandwich and fine-tuned my resume.

My NYC friend, Albie calls to meet up for lunch. I’m a bit lunched out from meat-tastic sandwich, but I tell him I’ll meet up at Ritual for coffee & some work. He’s a veteran of the 4-hour workweek, so I’m sure he’s got some helpful tips for maximum slackitude. I meet him at Ritual and minutes later my friend Steve calls to see if I want to hang out at Dolores Park. Reader, I do not lie, I was just in the middle of convincing Albie to hang out at Dolores Park. It was simply too gorgeous out not to. So we grabbed a football, ran out to Dolores Park and threw it around.

So to recap: taking time off was supposed to equal all the time in the world to get cars fixed and accept packages. And yet, those items remain just as much of a pain as they were when I was working. On the bright side, I spent most of my day in cafes and laying out in the sun. All in all, a positive result.