Josiah’s Johnson

So today was one of those days that you really only dream about in the wettest of dreams, the ones where you change your sheets afterwards (sorry for the vulgarity, I’ve actually never had one, to be honest).  Anyway, the point is that I very much enjoyed today.  The rut I’ve gotten into lately is that I always have something that I should be doing, so I’m always on my computer, telling myself to get to work.  Problem is, the brain, soul, whatever, needs a break. So on any given night, I’ll be on my computer for 7 hours: 4 hours of actual work and 3 hours of doing I-don’t-even-know-what-trying-to-mentally-force-myself-to-down-to-business. Ridiculous. The result of this is that I do not go outside and explore as much as I want to, because all this work is not only forcing me to spend time doing it, but also to spend time psyching myself up to doing it.

So today. I said, “Let’s try something different. You spend all this time not working, but on your computer, wanting to just get this stuff done.  How about spending all that ‘psyching up’ time doing other cooler stuff?” Right? Make sense? Made sense to me.  So I hopped on the route 18 bus, which goes straight to downtown and I got off at the 1st and Pine stop. Pike’s Market.  My first stop was the “The Crumpet Shop,” which is just as amazing as the name would lead you to believe. I cannot describe how just beautiful it is to sit and read and drink Irish Breakfast and eat a pesto, english cheese, and tomato crumpet. I’m reading The River Why, courtesy of Alexa Frazee, which just kills me so far. I’m folding down so many pages (see: underlining).

Anyway, I spent time eating, drinking, and reading in the Crumpet Shop, was told to come back and be a regular by the beguiling waitress with (to her detriment) an Angels and Airwaves t-shirt on.  After this simple pleasure, I walked through Pike’s Market and just took it in. Good shizz. I felt just entirely content to observe the flow of people bustling past the various farmer’s market stands.  I’d been here before, quite a bit ago at this point, and a lot of the memories came back to me. I went to a coffee shop and did a bit of work (allowing yourself to not do work makes the time you actually attempt to work much more productive), then walked a bit more.  I went to the Tully’s next to the market for the first time since I’d been up here. It holds a personal significance to me, so I reflected quite a bit as I looked out on South Seattle, then to the bay, and then up to the apartments with rooftop gardens, and remembered how similar it all looked 3 years ago.  It’s different now though. The scope of possibilities seems changed now from how it was then.

On my way home, I meant to catch a bus, but I couldn’t stand to wait at a bus stop when I could be walking and making my way back on foot.  I walked, and, as I walked, I passed a group of men wearing not much more than rags arguing over whether or not one had stolen something from another, a couple in which the man was maybe 4 inches shorter than the woman, and so many people pulling drug deals that I stopped counting.  I love walking.  You see the world from the street, I can’t explain how much I feel we miss when we’re in our vehicles (cars or buses, whatever), cruising around the city. I developed this metaphor as I walked about how, in my life, I was walking along, hoping for a bus to pick me up. Whatever. I didn’t imagine, in the 2 miles from downtown to home, that I wouldn’t encounter a bus to take me home, but I never caught a bus. No biggie. 2 miles isn’t a big deal. In my metaphor, never catching a bus didn’t bode nearly as well for me. C’est la vie, right?

The point is, I’m writing this from the cuff, I had a wonderful, reflective, productive, relaxing, exploratory, and simple day. Daniel just got home and turned on the TV. Of course. Ahaha.