“What’s seven plus seven plus seven plus seven?” the boy asked his father.

“Can you figure it out yourself?” came the reply.

The boy thought for a minute. “Twenty-seven?” he asked.

“Close!” said the dad, “But you’re one off.”

“Twenty-eight!” said the boy, triumphantly.

I wonder if the lesson will stick. Not the math lesson, though that one is particularly useful as well. No, I mean the one of frugality. It’s how I was raised, to be sure, but there’s a part of me that always expects, living in Manhattan, that the notion of not spending the extra seven dollars to skip the line would seem far more out there than the cheapo option. Then again, the reality of raising two children in New York City is probably such that every dollar does, in fact, count. But for that to come across to the children as a “this is the way we do things” was a delight to see.

By now we’d reached the front of the line, and after opting out of having a photo of me taken in a “skating” pose, I donned my skates, stashed my belongings in a locker and got onto the ice.

I hadn’t been skating since last year when I’d unfortunately chosen the warmest day of the winter to hit the ice, meaning that what I was doing far more resembled swimming than skating. This time, however, it was pleasantly chilly, and I was able to get away with just a sweater and a light jacket, gloves and no scarf. As I stepped onto the ice, I immediately had to scurry away from the pile of children and parents gathering at the entrance to the rink. As this was a solo adventure, the lack of a skating companion meant that I was free to actually take in my surroundings. The dance that we do while skating in a crowded rink is really quite fascinating, both for the groups of people that appear on the ice, and for the interactions between them. I found myself skating in fits and starts around as I kept getting stuck behind a group of five holding hands (against the rules!) or a first-timer splayed out at my feet. It was then that I noticed a handful of skaters who were effortlessly gliding through the crowd, never changing pace, never slowing for a group of girls, holding hands, shuffling along, nor speeding up to move around the child who was suddenly hurtling along the ice on his butt as his legs kicked out from beneath him.

What I noticed about these skaters was that were always looking ahead, not merely in the space directly in front of them but rather at the entire landscape before them. They were looking for the openings that were about to appear, not the ones that were already there. They were looking for the child who was about to fall, or the couple, steps apart, who were about to link hands. By constantly monitoring their entire surroundings, they were never put in a position where they had to drastically change course; they’d already steered clear of that situation before it ever happened.

I started doing the same. As I began looking for the openings that were about to appear, I became aware of all of the calculations that I was doing, subconsciously, to try to determine the landscape. I first made note of everyone around me and their relative speeds. I then started looking at each person’s individual behavior, looking for clues as to how they were about to behave. A single arm out meant that the skater was looking for her companion and that they were about to link arms. A child, legs bent, arms out, was slowing down rapidly. The couple holding hands with neither party actually moving their feet were slowing down, and were most likely about to fall. The young man in a sweater and loosely tied hockey skates was about to cut across the ice. Hundreds and hundreds of these observations were being made in seconds, and as I remained conscious of it, I was able to dart in and out of the crowds easily. I knew what the collective rink was going to look like a few seconds before it actually did, and was able to avoid the constant blocks and tumbles that were happening all around me.

But the moment I stopped thinking about the rink, the moment I started looking around me, or started thinking about writing, or started thinking about work, the entire blueprint fell apart. I continued to be aware of the problems as they fell ahead of me, but I was more likely than not to have to step over the fallen child, or to stop in the middle of the ice as I got caught behind a wall of beginners.

As I get older, I am learning more and more that I am not able to multi-task. I can’t even task-switch effectively. When I was a child, I did not have a television in my room, I was not allowed to watch tv while doing my homework, and ultimately, the television was rarely on in my house. I know plenty of people who like having the tv on as “background noise,” and I will admit to coming home after a long day and turning on the television, simply because a quiet apartment can tend to be a lonely apartment. But the pictures on the screen, the constant droning from a glowing box is always enough to take at least 50% of my attention away from my task at hand to the point that if there is something on tv that I actually care about, I will just give up on my work, watch the program, and then turn it off, rather than try to do two things at once. There is nothing like silence and concentration to truly provide clarity.

Back at the park, the first drops of the afternoon rain that had been reported earlier were starting to fall. I took one more turn around the rink and hopped off the ice. I packed up my skates, threw my backpack on my back and headed out to the street where my bike was waiting for me.

I clipped in to my pedals and as I looked out at a sea of taxis and pedestrians I looked not for the traffic that was already there, but rather for the spaces that had yet to to appear.

P.S. Hey you – get off your damn cell phone when you’re driving.

One.

Friday nights around one in the morning, the streets of the Village are filled with groups of men and women drifting from bar to bar. The men and women are rarely together at this time of night. The couples have all gone home already, having taken in a movie and a drink, and are now at home, asleep, comfortable knowing that they are together. The couples who have formed at a bar that evening, “coupled” only in that there are two of them, and they are together, have gone home for the evening, awkwardly pushing at each other in doorways, discovering each other in bed. At one in the morning, the groups that are left on the street are the men and the women who do not belong to either of these two categories. They have left their first bar, having found nobody suitable (or perhaps they weren’t even looking) and they have moved on to their second. They are with their friends, and they are talking about women, or men, or perhaps art, or love, but those things are all kind of the same, anyway. A taxi full of men idles next to a taxi containing one of the aforementioned couples, and the man at the window leans out of the taxi to shout “show us your tits,” to the woman in the cab next to him. “Don’t worry about him,” he say, gesturing to the man sitting next to her, “show us your tits.” And the light turns green and the traffic starts moving again and the man in the taxi with his friends is still leaning out of the window making obscene gestures with his hand, his tongue, and his cheek.

Two.

I stand on a street corner giving directions to a friend of mine. As he walks away, a well-dressed couple walks up to me and asks if I can help them with directions. They are looking for a movie theatre. Someone has told them to walk down the avenue until they find one. I name two independent theaters that I know in the neighborhood and they hold out a flyer for a third. “Oh,” I say, “is that the theater you’re looking for?” “No, no,” the woman says, folding up the green sheet of paper. “We want to go see ‘The Hangover.’” Remember to always clarify the question before giving an answer. Later, a man calls out to me “hey buddy, hey buddy,” and I walk right past him.

Three.

New Yorkers have, at their disposal, an almost infinite number of activities to do on any given day. This weekend alone I had on my calendar a talent show, two concerts, a documentary screening, a potluck dinner, dim sum, dinner with a friend and a BBQ event. This is not including the outdoor art festival or the weekend-long music festival. I woke up on Saturday in a state of panic. I woke up not wanting to do anything, but was overwhelmed by the number of things that I would not be doing if I chose to not do any of it. I padded around my apartment for about an hour, worrying about all of the things that I did not want to do and thinking about how I might go about doing them, until I realized that I was under no obligation to do any of it. Instead, I went out for a bike ride and did laundry. As I scrubbed soap into the stains on my shirt collar, I decided that there are worse things in life than having too many options.

Four.

Riding a bicycle is one of the most exciting and efficient ways of getting around this city. In the past several years I have become one of those people who would prefer to hop on a bike than get on the subway in order to get from point A to point B. And in that time I have also discovered that there are two distinct classes of people in this town: those who share this philosophy with me, and those who wish us dead. While pedestrians in this town have no particular respect for automobiles, they do not, in general hate the car drivers themselves. One may dislike traffic, or one may dislike SUVs, or one may dislike the fact that, on occasion, someone will blow through your neighborhood without a muffler, but on a car-by-car basis, people rarely get angry at the driver. Pedestrians hate cyclists, however. People will actively go out of their way to tell you how much they dislike the fact that you ride a bicycle. The other day, as I weaved through a crosswalk that was full of people crossing against a light, someone shouted after me “why don’t you ride on the sidewalk?” And followed this with an expletive. A friend had a man crossing the street walk out of his way to kick her back tire. And when I am forced into a sea of taxis and garbage trucks because a delivery guy decides he’s going to come barreling down the bike line against traffic, I know exactly where these people are coming from. Fucking cyclists.

Five.

I called the city the other day to file a noise complaint about the screeching noise coming from the rooftop next to my apartment. It keeps me up at night and I have considered that if this noise does not stop, I may have to move. I called the city to file a noise complaint and realized that I have become that guy. I am perfectly ok with this.

Six.

I have never felt more at home than I have living here. Well, ok. Maybe one other time.

Just like that. No punctuation, first letter capitalized as my mobile messaging device does for me, automatically.

“Seeing people logged in and idle for days at a time over holidays.”

I wrote this to myself two days before Christmas last year. I often write notes¹ like this to remind myself of thoughts I may have had, ideas I wanted to commit to paper, things that just made me feel good. This particular thought made me feel good.

I had just logged in to an instant messaging service. I live close to my family, so the holidays are never a time for travel for me. Two days before Christmas, I was most likely blocks from my house, wandering around the city, enjoying the energy that inevitably comes at that time of year. Not since college has the holiday season brought the stress of travel, of waiting at airports and bus terminals, of being with family and not with friends. I’ve never really lived far enough away that the house where I grew up no longer felt like home. In fact, the most holiday travel I have ever done was to pile into the family car (a station wagon, natch) and visit cousins, aunts, uncles or grandparents a couple of hours away.

But so many people do travel for the holidays. It is inevitably the week of December 25th that finds many of my friends taking off from work, packing up presents and a week’s worth of clothing and heading out of town on a train upstate, a plane to California, a bus to Pennsylvania, and all points in between. And much of the time, with the excitement of the holidays, they will rush out of work, computers still on, cursors still blinking, and messaging programs still marking their presence at their terminals. And so it is, days later, that I will turn on my computer and see those names, greyed out, idling on the side of my screen. They will have been like this for days – “38 hours idle, 72 hours idle” – and I will know that these friends are heading home for the holidays, to family and friends, or off on a holiday adventure, away from work, away from their everyday lives.

They will stay like that for days, silently sitting on the edge of my screen until, without fail, on Christmas day, the buddy list lights up again. A few pop on first thing in the morning, before running downstairs to open presents. The rest of the family is asleep, and they are transformed into five year-olds again, waiting, waiting until they can rush under the tree to see what Santa left for them. Or it is mid-morning, the coffee is on, the house is starting to wake up, waffles cooking in the kitchen. Or it is afternoon, and my screen is alive with announcements of gifts given and received, of plans for the rest of the day. Or it is evening, and it is stories of movies watched under blankets with fires in the fireplace, or dinners at Chinese restaurants, because there is nothing else open on Christmas day. And then the day is over, and the final few messages trickle in with greetings and goodbyes and promises to catch up in the New Year.

I love technology and how connected we all feel these days. But in this age of the always-on, it’s nice to be reminded that, at least once a year, everyone isn’t².

I ask myself that often. I walk up those stairs, my backpack strapped to my back, my laptop and my camera weighing me down. They do weigh me down. The camera is a weight that I welcome; the laptop a weight that I accept as a continued reminder of my independence. It is my laptop, it is my camera. The laptop belongs to me, and when I leave at the end of the day, the laptop comes with me. If I never wanted to walk up those stairs again, I could. I leave nothing behind when I walk out that door. I learned that a long time ago. The camera, the camera reminds me that I am more than what is contained in this computer, more than what I churn out, day in and day out.

I walk up those stairs, with my life on my back. Walking is just falling forward and catching yourself, over and over again. I think I read that somewhere. Walking up those stairs is taking a leap of faith, over and over again, trusting that I will not land flat on my face. I could lean forward and touch the stairs with my hands if I wanted to. If I fell. But I don’t. I stumble up the stairs and plod down them, day after day.

I am on an airplane right now. Literally, sitting on an airplane, returning home, glad for the distraction of being away from home while looking forward to the familiarity of being back. I remember returning to Boston a number of years ago, feeling as though I was ready to dive back in to my life. A few years later I remember returning to New York and feeling that I was ready to attack my work with a renewed vigor. This time, I return home with as little conviction as I’ve ever had, and a sense that something must be done.

Why is it that so many people I know get so agitated so quickly?

We demand so much from the world. We must remember, on some level, the the universe is under no obligation to accommodate our wants, or even our needs. So many people I know demand so much, and are willing to toss away what they have in pursuit of something bigger. Grander, perhaps? More, certainly. More excitement. More challenge. More passion. More intrigue. Is it noble, or just fickle?

I have this discussion a lot with myself.

“What do you want to do with yourself?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not happy with where I am now.”

“Well, what would make you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

The obvious followup, that I suspect I never actually get around to asking myself, is if I don’t know what I want, and I don’t know what would make me happy, how could I possibly know that this isn’t it? But I tell myself that I know.

This is, of course, completely idle speculation, to be mused upon only, and certainly not acted on.

They say that change comes when you least expect it, so for now I will continue to strap my life to my back and stumble forward, step by step. Some day soon I hope I’ll trip, and I’ll be forced to pick myself up, and figure out which way I really want to go.

That said, there is a scrap on my desk that reads “Write a story about: the boy with the french fries.”

So I think that’s where I’m going to start tonight.

I guess we should demand a little more of the story than just that. Perhaps we should demand context. Perhaps we should demand those things that put us right in the heart of the story. Perhaps. Or perhaps we should just jump right in and see where things take us.

The fact is, if his french fries had fallen to the ground, it really would not have made a lick of difference to me, except that I really like french fries, and it looked like he did too, and on this particular night, it looked like he was really, really enjoying them. He was sitting on a bench on the subway platform, waiting for the train to come. The display overhead indicated that the next one was due in about twenty minutes – certainly enough time to significantly wallow in misery had his fries actually taken that leap off the arm rest.

They were balanced precariously as he opened up ketchup packet after ketchup packet, tearing into them with his teeth, his arm bumping the tin of fries on each bite. I took a step toward him and put out my hand, steading the container.

“That could have been a disaster,” I said.

He didn’t thank me. He just nodded in agreement and went back to opening ketchup. A minute went by. And another.

“I really need to eat these fries. I’m about to go and drink a lot of Patron.”

This was not exactly what I had expected after saving this man’s dinner. Unexpected, but curious, nevertheless. He went into more detail, because I was clearly interested in what he had to say.

“I don’t understand. I’m going to see my girlfriend tonight, and we’re going to drink Patron, and I’m going to get wasted. I mean, she’s probably already eaten, and I’m going to have to drink fucking Patron and I’m going to get hammered.”

I suggested that maybe he didn’t need to drink the tequila. That, perhaps, he could stick with the beer that he’d been drinking. I mean, he had been drinking, right?

“Yeah, maybe five or six beers. And that’s the thing. I’m going to have a beer, and then for every beer I have, she’s going to have a shot of Patron. And like, seven or eight shots later, and she’s the one taking care of me, and I’m the one that’s wasted. I don’t understand.”

I realized that it was probably not worth explaining that the fact that he was drinking, and not eating, and that the french fries were the only thing resembling food in his system at all, and that his girlfriend, by his own admission, had probably already eaten dinner already, all might contribute to the fact that he would get completely loaded and that she was going to be fine. Instead, I offered up what I can only describe as an attempt to relate to a drunk person while being completely sober.

“Girls exist to fuck with you, man,” I offered. “That’s all. They’re just there to mess with your head.”

I thought this was a good response. It positioned me on his side of the equation, while offering a sweeping generalization that clearly could not be disputed.

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Ah, dissension.

The voice belonging to those words in turn belonged to a young woman who was sitting on the bench next to the young man with the french fries. She had been buried in her magazine, doing the crossword puzzle, but had been listening in on our (incredibly boring) conversation until this point, and finally felt the need to inject her opinion into the conversation. I, in turn, did what most men will do when confronted by logic from the opposite sex: I back-peddaled.

“It was a joke,” I responded. “In fact, I’m heading home now because I was hanging out with my girlfriend but she sent me away because she wanted to have some real fun.” With these statements I hoped to show that while I was capable of maintaining a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, I was also comfortable enough in that relationship to understand exactly how things are supposed to work between boys and their girlfriends, thus gaining the respect of the woman who at this point believed that I was just a dickhead. I looked across the bench at the woman and our eyes exchanged a glance that said: “Besides, this guy is wasted.”

“Maybe you should have eaten dinner, first,” she offered. Precisely what I was thinking! I liked this girl already. “Besides, I don’t know how you can drink beer. I can drink alcohol as much as I want, but once I have a beer I get completely drunk.”

The young man with the fries thought about this a bit. “Yeah, you know, I can drink as much beer as I want, but if I have a shot of Patron, I am gone.”

They batted this thought back and forth a couple of times before the young man sitting next to them, not being able to sit on the sidelines any more, chimed in with his observation.

“I’m the same way! I’m fine with beer, but will get completely wasted drinking shots.”

The conversation carried on from there, talking about drinking, and the possibility that men and women metabolize alcohol differently. It continued on to the discovery that the young man with the french fries had just beaten a DUI charge by pleading it down to disorderly conduct, which means that he gets to keep his license but has to be alcohol-free for the next six months. (To which I say, hey jackhole, next time you’re blotto in Brooklyn, take a freaking car service the 10 minutes back to your house instead of cruising around in a Patron-fueled haze, ok?)

The girl pointed at me, and then to another young man who had just gotten on the train.

“You’re both cats,” she said, pointing at the ears perched on top of my head.

“Yes,” I replied, “but at least I’m still wearing my tail.”

And then I started taking photographs of the three of my companions, and the girl hiked up her skirt to reveal that the tights that she was wearing had “pubic hairs” sewn into the crotch area.

It was that kind of night. The kind of night where strangers will get together and talk, because there is nothing better to do when you’re sitting on the subway platform at two in the morning, and a man you don’t know has just saved your french fries and you’re about to go get wasted on tequila with your girlfriend. It’s the kind of experience that I have every so often, mostly when I’m alone, mostly in cities. It’s the kind of experience that one can have when one just decides that whatever happens can happen, that most people are probably out looking for the same kinds of things, and that maybe, just maybe, sharing a word or two with a stranger might help everyone get to where they finally need to go.

In my case, it was back to Manhattan, back to my home.

I got off the subway and saw two angels standing on the sidewalk, holding hands.

It was Halloween, it was New York City, and it was perfect.

That hasn’t happened to me in a long time. It used to be that I would go out with the express purpose of going out. Not going out to go back in again, but going out to be in the world, to see what the universe had to offer on a particular night, at a particular moment. As I’ve gotten older, or more busy, or more responsible, my desire hasn’t waned as much as my motivation. Motivation, not motivations. Those are still the same. The former though, the former is what keeps me in, glued to the computer or the television, and occasionally to a book. But not often enough to the latter. In fact, as another year slips by, I find that more and more of life is spent in front of one glowing screen or another, doing the things that I do to make the world a better place.

But what do I do to better myself? Alas, not nearly enough. And so, last night, I found myself walking the streets of SoHo as I so often did in the past, with no particular destination in mind, and found myself, as I so often did in the past, sitting on the corner of Broome and Greene streets, watching the world go by.

It wasn’t too late, and the streets were far from filled. That neighborhood never really gets too full anyway. Mostly people passing through, as was the one man who was looking for his car.

“I think it’s on Broad Street. Where’s Broad Street from here? Oh? Not Broad Street. One minute. Honey! Where did I leave the car?”

He walked away for a minute, and I thought about how strange it must be, walking around SoHo, with its large iron columns and cobblestone streets, looking for your car, and coming across a young man, sitting nestled between two columns on the sidewalk, a camera at his side, watching the traffic go past. Do you approach him to ask for directions? Years ago in New York City? Most likely not. But in this, the biggest small town in the world, everyone is as helpful as you want them to be.

“Wooster and Grand! That’s where I left the car. Wooster and Grand!”

I pointed him in the right direction and continued to sit.

The nice thing about not having anywhere in particular to be is that you have the freedom to not have to go anywhere. My butt was getting cold as I was sitting on that big iron step, and at that moment I had a choice. I could stay there, but shift around so my butt wouldn’t get cold any more, or I could get up and move on. The great thing is that I didn’t have to do one or the other – it was an actual, legitimate choice. One wasn’t better than the other. They both had equally compelling arguments in their favor, and it was really just a whim at a given moment that would lead me down one path or another. It’s rare in life that you end up not only with choices but with choices that have such insignificant consequences. It’s quite liberating in fact.

I ended up staying. I shifted into a cross-legged sitting position and remained on the step on the corner of Broome and Greene for a little while longer. While sitting there, I was approached by two more people looking for directions. The first was looking for a sneaker store that was down the block. The second, and older man wearing a t-shirt with a button-up shirt over it, shorts, very long fingernails and a beard, stopped to ask me if I knew where he could catch the 6 train so he could go home. I pointed him in the right direction, and as he was leaving, he stopped and turned back to me.

“I’m taking a bit of a survey. What do you think of the state of the world today?”

I thought this was quite a broad question and asked him to be a bit more specific.

“Well, what about the United States then?”

Now, the first thing you have to remember when engaging with crazy people is that, in general, they just want to talk. They have their own thoughts and their own opinions and their own stories, and they just want to make sure that as many people as possible are exposed to this information. So it’s best to just go with it, if you’re so inclined.

This particular man didn’t seem to have a particular agenda in mind. I told him that I thought that we all need to respect each other a bit more (I, citing littering, was countered by his argument about post-Katrina New Orleans, and a conversation about bottled water were about the only two lucid moments we had together). He looked me in the eyes after a few minutes and said “What’s your name?”

I told him.

“Your last name?”

Again, I told him, though in retrospect, that may not have been such a bright idea.

“I know you. I’ve seen you before.”

“Oh? From where?”

“From, from,” he stammered, and stopped for a minute. “Elementary school. Philadelphia. In the early 90s.”

The fact that I’d not been to Philadelphia until the mid 90s did not seem to deter him, and he pressed on. I was there, he told me. I was in school there. I always had my camera with me. We were part of a commune, my parents and I, and we (from the commune) went to school in Philadelphia. I told him I sounded like I had a good time.

“Oh, you did. You always had your camera, and that’s what you always said – that you had a good time. You were always at the mosque. You know people now. Famous people. Actors and artists. You know them, you’re friends with them. You all went to school together. That’s where I know you from.”

We spoke a bit more about Philadelphia. What did I say my name was again?

“Ka-”

“That’s right. You’ve got it.”

“Ka-. Ker-. Khan… Khan-Miller!”

Well, close enough.

He asked where my parents were living. Haverford? No, I told him. Downtown Philadelphia.

“I’m one of the richest people on the planet, you know? It’s because I made a motion picture when I was two. Mary and the Beetle.”

“And you’re still getting the royalties,” I ventured.

“That’s right. But I don’t get to see any of it. That’s the deal I made before I came to this planet…”

At that point I had to leave, for while I started my evening with no plans in place, in New York City, it’s rare that you can go an entire evening without someone finding something for you to do. In this particular instance, an opportunity for dinner had presented itself, and I had to take leave of my new friend.

“What’s your name, friend?” I asked him, as I was getting up to leave.

“Christopher Wynn, 1786. You know your number, right?”

I informed him that I did not.

“Your BOP number. Ask your parents. They’ll know. Christopher Wynn, the runner.”

“Oh, you’re a runner,” I asked.

“NO! The Runner. So, which way is the subway again?”

And with that, my encounter with Christopher Wynn was over. Was he crazy? Was he just out for a good time? Maybe he was going senile. He’d mentioned that he had been to a photo opening this particular night, and he was just heading home. I don’t recall the photographer’s name, but she was the lover of one or two famous musicians in her time, from what he tells me. He asked if he could come to dinner with me. I told him that unfortunately, it was a closed party, but in retrospect, it could have been the most wonderful night of conversation of my life.

I got up off my perch and headed off to meet my dinner companions. We were the last party seated for the evening and we dined on arepas until we felt like we were going to burst.

I do not like to feel cheated, and I do not like to be lied to by companies to whom I have chosen to give my business. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you an experience I had renting from Dollar a couple of weeks ago. On June 19th, I arrived in Charlotte, NC for a four day long trip. I had booked a car through the Dollar website and was to pick the car up at the airport. The car was available, and as was my usual practice, I informed the agent at the rental location that I would like to decline the insurance offered by Dollar as I know that between my car rental insurance and my credit card insurance, I would be covered.

It was at this time that I was informed by the agent that due to certain laws in North Carolina, I would need to make sure that I was covered for “Loss of Use” of the rental vehicle, in the case of an accident. I informed the agent that I was covered for damages to the vehicle by my credit card, but he assured me that he was intimately familiar with both American Express and Mastercard policies (the latter being the card with which I was renting my vehicle) and that they would definitely NOT cover me in the case of an accident. He recommended insurance that would cover this “Loss of Use,” which resulted in almost $100 added to my rental fee.

Of course when I contacted my credit card company to inquire about “Loss of Use,” I was informed that of course I would be covered, but that by purchasing the insurance through Dollar I had prevented myself from being covered by the insurance provided by my credit card.

I do not expect your employees to be able to make any claims about my person insurance situation. However, when I am told explicitly by your representative, an individual whose job it is to deal with these things every day, that because of specific circumstances in North Carolina, my card will not cover me, I am inclined to believe him. To find out later that this information that I received was just false was to find my trust betrayed and my wallet significantly emptied.

Between the fluctuating rates, gas penalties and insurance, renting a car is one of the most stressful parts of any travel experience. My last experience with your company was certainly a unsatisfactory one, and I would challenge you to think about how you may serve your customers better in the future.

Sincerely,

jcn

Update!

Dollar did right by me and issued me a refund for the insurance portion of my rental bill. Amazing! I was honestly not expecting anything back from them, but I must give their customer service credit for listening to my concern and rectifying the situation in a way that is completely satisfactory to me. Nice job, Dollar.

After college I found myself at two full-time jobs at startups followed by a brief stint working full-time in theatre, before ultimately ending up with a combination of freelance technology work and freelance theatre electrics work. Over time, this shifted more towards the technology end of work and after three years, I found myself completely burnt out on sitting at my computer in my living room, alone, every day, and ready to return to the world of coworkers, lunch breaks and year-end bonuses.

What I found, though, was that this did not jive at all with the way that my brain likes to think about work, and my working environment.

The reasons for my leaving the freelance life are varied (and probably flawed at the time, though in hindsight I would probably have done it again). One of the things that I’ve often said about working freelance is that, schedule-wise, I end up working all the time. That is to say, I can come home from dinner, see an email from a client, and I might start working then and there. Or I might wake up early to work. Or I might work my way through lunch, and forget to eat until dinner, if then.

While this “work always” mindset may seem a bit insane (and is probably what burnt me out in the first place), there is also the flip side to that situation, which is that I can simultaneously “work never.” I can take a two-hour lunch break and not have to worry that someone is banging on my desk wondering where I am. I can leave to go to meet my friends for dinner, or take in a play, or go on a photo outing and know that, as long as I finish everything I need to finish, then my actions impact me, and me alone.

As I found myself rushing about the other morning performing my morning routine, I also noticed that I do not enjoy the separation of work and home life that so many people tout as one of the benefits of having a full-time, “go to the office” kind of job. While there may be something to be said for being able to “leave my work at the office,” in practice, I find that the corollary – that I am forced to leave my personal life at home – is far more inconvenient. I resent that I am forced to perform all of my personal tasks in two chunks, one in the morning, before work, and one in the evening, after work, and that during that middle period, I do not have access to all of the things (my files, my apartment, my stuff) that make performing those personal tasks possible.

When I was freelancing, my morning routine consisted of a bike ride, a shower and then, intermixed, with working for the rest of the day, tasks such as: eating breakfast, updating my web site, doing laundry, making and eating lunch, grocery shopping, making personal phone calls, dusting my apartment, folding my socks, reading the newspaper. All of these tasks would be stretched out over an entire workday-plus, with no discernible difference between when I was “working” and when I was not.

As it stands now, my morning routine consists of a bike ride (if I can fit it into the schedule, for this takes up the largest chunk of time that can not be shared with any other tasks except for listening to NPR), breakfast, updating my web site, checking personal emails and, today, dying my hair and whitening my teeth (man, I am so vain). Note however that all of these need to be performed before I even get to the office, and though I have the flexibility to show up approximately whenever I want, that is still a significant amount of energy that needs to be expended at the beginning of the day, and a lot of my mental capacity that needs to be taken up simply by considering all of the things that I need to do before I “start the day” (and knowing that once I leave the house I am most likely not going to do any of those things that I missed until the evening).

Which is, of course, why I ended up working from home yesterday, and why I didn’t mind working all of Memorial Day this year. In both those instances, I was able to get my work and my personal task completed and was able to get a couple of hours out in the lovely, lovely summer sun at the same time.

While I recognize that I completely burnt out on freelancing the first time around (living a life solely in my apartment, without any coworkers, without the separation of work life from home life), I have finally come to realize that the lifestyle that it enabled me to live was worth all of the headaches that went along with it.

I will definitely get it right the next time around, I promise.

Let’s take my recent experiences with Bank of America, which I have now decided is the worst bank in the country. It all started when I wanted to start getting my checks Direct Deposited into my Citibank savings account, which I have been using since I was a kid and which has been the recipient of many Direct Deposits in the past. We were told by our Bank of America representative that we could not do a transfer from our BoA business checking account into the Citibank account. Well, inconvenient, to be sure, but easily solved by opening up a Bank of America account at the branch across the street from me. With a referral, I even got $25 for opening an account with them, so I was pretty happy.

So the first thing that happens is that I have a paycheck lying around that I would like to deposit into this account. This is a check drawn on a New York Bank of America account being deposited into the same. I am assured that the check will clear in two days. Two days into the waiting process, I am told that because this is a new account, the check will take longer to clear. Maybe three or four days. Also fine. Inconvenient, but fine. A week into the process, I inquire again as to the availability of my funds and am told that because it’s a new account, the funds won’t be clearing quickly until they “determine my spending habits,” or something of the sort. Not only that, but I am reminded that if I really need the funds quickly, I should cash the check and the turn around and deposit the cash which will be available immediately. Say what?

All of this is moot once I get my Direct Deposit set up though, right? In reality, not. Because what we discover is that our business checking account does not have a feature that lets us do those kinds of transfers. My sister’s checking account, which she uses to transfer money to her roommate to pay her rent and bills, has this feature. But our business account? No dice.

All of this is made even more frustrating by the interplay between Bank of America the centralized corporate entity and Bank of America my friendly local neighborhood branch. Take, for example, the situation where I needed to set up an electronic transfer between my checking account and another bank account (one of those nifty, high interest rate online thingers). I went into my local branch and had a very nice conversation with the representative who told me that I would have to call the bank’s toll free number to get the paperwork that I needed faxed to me before I could set up the transfers. Well, I asked, could I just do it in the branch? After all, I was standing right there. Well, he explained, the branch doesn’t really do that kind of thing normally, but if I really needed the documents quickly, then they could mostly likely accommodate me. So I called the toll free number and was told that the document that I wanted (to set up this transfer, because I didn’t have any checks on my checking account – another bit of absurdity) was going to cost me fifteen dollars. So back I went to visit my friendly neighborhood branch to try to explain in no uncertain terms that I was not going to spend the money just to get a document faxed to me, whereupon I was told that, in fact, the original representative was mistaken, that I did not need this fancy document faxed to me, that they could do it all at the branch and it wasn’t going to cost me a dime.

Total time spent dealing with their misinformation? Three days.

Oh, and finally, finally, to top it all off, I went in to get a roll of quarters the other day and it was clear that it was just a roll that someone had rolled himself and traded in for a ten dollar bill and this person did what we all do when we roll coins to the bank, we leave out a quarter or two because nobody will really notice. Oh, but I noticed. Believe you me I noticed. And I went right back to the bank and told them that I wanted my twenty-five cents that I had coming to me. They looked at me a little funny, asked if they heard me right, that I really wanted to get a quarter back from them that I thought I was due? Oh, I sure did.

And they gave it to me. Wonder of wonders, shocker of shocks, they gave me my quarter.

Now I may just be unlucky. Or I may just be a whiner, but as I walked out of that branch that morning whistling my happy little twenty-five cent tune I thought to myself “You know what? I never want to deal with these fucks ever again.”

Of course I still have my account. Bastards have more ATMs than anyone else after all.

Of course it’s not just the official policy thats the problem – this city, like everywhere else in the US it seems – lives off of plastic bags. Just the other night, I told the woman at the register at Walgreens that I did not need the plastic bag into which she she had just placed the items I had purchased. First came the initial shock of the idea that I wouldn’t want a bag. Next came a fairly aggressive move involving a mock backhand with her hand raised up over her head and swiping down at me. And finally, the nail in the coffin of this planet, when she handed me my items (shaking her head as if to say “my God, the terrorists have already won”) and tossed the bag into the trash can behind her.

I died a little bit inside at that moment.

On the other hand, I have to remember that I am not living on an island here, as I am when I am in New York City. Space is almost limitless, as anyone who has ever driven to the outskirts of this city and seen the acres and acres of condo developments going up out there, stretching out into the desert, can tell you. According to the aforementioned “Barriers” document on the Vegas DEP website, there is actually no market for recycled glass in Las Vegas, and any glass that wants to be recycled needs to be shipped to California for processing and sale. In light of that, it seems to make perfect sense to just throw everything in a hole and cover it with more sand.

I’ve often said that people won’t actually participate in a recycling culture until either a) they are fined for not doing so or b) it becomes part of a product’s life cycle and they don’t even realize that they are recycling. Anything outside a purchase and dispose situation is too foreign for Americans to understand. Fortunately, some companies are actually taking this to heart. I recently learned that Continental recycles the little plastic trays and little plastic containers that hold their salads as part of the salad and cheese pizza snack that they serve (or at least that’s the line that their flight attendants are told to deliver when asked why they are separating out the plastics from the other trash).

Now I understand that it’s a bit counter-productive to talk about recycling while hurtling across the sky in one of the most polluting contributions our society has given to this planet, but given the realities of modern life (which includes at times, the occasional airplane ride), it’s nice to see a company making small strides towards something resembling an environmental good deed. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “sustainable” by any stretch of the imagination, but just imagine if everyone took a cue from Continental and began to do their part.

There might actually be something left of this planet for my kids.