Yesterday, Karl stopped by the city and hung around for a good bit of the day. Karl is the name of the fog here in San Francisco. There’s a twitter account for him. I guess it’s a thing.
Yesterday, I renewed my room at the hotel for a few more days. I also toured and applied for another apartment. I have two places where I’ve applied and where the landlords seem to be willing to work with me and my no income situation. I have two where I’ve applied and the landlords are not willing to work with me. I have another property management company that seems willing to work with me but doesn’t have any listings that fit with what I’m looking for (size or neighborhood or both). I also toured a sublet where if I took it, I’d be sharing the house. The owner was nice, the location was great, but the place itself was dark, old, and depressing. I’m really hoping that in the next couple of days one of these places comes through (though not the sublet).
One of the cooler things about places here in SF is that they’re all unique (so are the neighborhoods). That also makes finding a place time-consuming. Unlike a large, modern-ish, non-descript apartment building (like the place I rented in Memphis), where you know it’s going to have a reasonable layout and a bedroom that’s the size of a bedroom, there are a lot of funky configurations here. Funky configurations mean seeing the place in person. Seeing the place in person involves back and forth texting and emails about scheduling and time spent getting to and from appointments. From a return on investment standpoint, it’s a pretty low return. I can spend an hour walking to a place, tour it in five minutes (it doesn’t take long to look at 600 square feet) all to decide I don’t like it, or worse, that I like it but they’re not willing to work with me.
At a certain point, a type of fatigue sets in. I get tired of looking and scheduling and applying, and just want to be done with it (though I love the excuse for long walks). Once in a while, I want to be able to come home and cook my own meal. I want to have my favorite chair or spot on the sofa where I read or do bullshit stuff on my computer. I want to have beer in the fridge, books on the shelf, and a bag of frozen raviolis in the freezer. As much as I love trying new restaurants, deciding on a new restaurant every day gets old. Some nights, I don’t know if I want tacos, pizza, burgers or other, I just know I’m getting hungry and want a feedbag in front of my maw. I never thought I’d miss those moments of staring into the fridge or the freezer or the pantry trying to figure out what to cook. And restaurants can be expensive. Last night, I stopped at a place where I paid an obscene amount for a glass of wine and two crab cakes. I didn’t know it was fancy (and on the stuffy side) until I had already plopped my hoodie-wearing, apartment-searching, weary ass down at the bar. By that point, I’ve wandered around for half an hour and by sitting at the bar and looking at the menu, I’ve publicly committed. I can’t possibly get up and leave…
Being in limbo affects other things as well. Mainly, it affects where and how my mental energy is being spent and how I’m spending my free time. To which one might reasonably ask, isn’t all of your time free time? It is. Most of my time is spent in seeking mode (jobs, apartments, things to do, people to meet, restaurants, bars, etc. etc.). As such, my little hamster brain is always online hitting the refresh button and getting a tiny pellet of stimulation that is mostly devoid of mental nutrition as a reward. My web browser has 27 tabs open on it (a lot of jobs and apartments). My phone has at least a dozen apps open on it. All of these activities fall into this space of quick hitting, low-reward stimulation. This is the essence of Facebook, Twitter, and most social media. None of these activities provide the deep joy of getting lost in something for a period of time (reading, walking, visiting a museum, spending quality time with a significant other, or even watching a TV show or movie). I’m finding that when done often enough, my brain begins to look for (crave) these little hits of stimulation (hitting refresh on the dating app or the Zillow page) which, in turn, makes it more difficult to focus on the longer, deeper, forms of joy. In the middle of reading or writing I’ll pause to hit refresh. Or worse, instead of reading or writing, I go straight the refresh button (on whatever it is).
And I’m not sure that I’m really getting to the heart of what I’m thinking or trying to say. It seems like a rich and fulfilling life, one in which we feel actively engage and moderately in control, is a multifaceted life (or it’s a singular and completely obsessed life). I’m very hesitant to use the word “or” there. As an example, there’s a guy I follow on Twitter. He’s a poet. He lives over in Oakland. I’ve been meaning to reach out to him to see if he’d like to meet up. Most of what he shares on Twitter is related to poetry. He’s often mentioning what book he’s reading on any given night. And as much as I like poetry and enjoy reading, I can’t imagine having that much of an “interior” life where I spend the bulk of my time reading every night. I feel like I would struggle to sit still for that long.
Of course, what I’m not seeing are the other things he has going on in his life. I believe he has a partner with whom he spends time and eats meals and converses. I’m assuming he has a job where he puts some of his efforts. I think he has friends and dinner guests, etc. etc. Given all of those other things, the reading and writing persona presented on Twitter is only part the picture. And I think that’s where I might be feeling a little lost. I’m not entirely sure what my persona (or real life) looks like. I’ve shed, or attempted to shed, pretense in an effort to rebuild.
I’ve been contemplating this concept of breaking things down in order to build them back up. We hear these motivational mantras in sports and business quite a bit: “get back to basics” and “get back to fundamentals.” But what does that look like in rebuilding a life or rebuilding a sense of home? I’ve always believed that people draw strength or inspiration or fulfillment from multiple buckets (family, friends, partners, jobs, home/community, hobbies/passions). I’ve also believed that when we’re low in some of those buckets, it’s helpful to be full in other buckets. This is, of course, a simplistic generalization on how to make it through life’s peaks and valleys. There are some people who only need one or two of those buckets and can go all in on them (I don’t think my father has much need for family, friends, job, home, or community – he has his partner and he has his passions/interests). And what I’m currently dealing with on an internal level is trying to figure out which buckets to fill when and how. Or perhaps more accurately, I’m recognizing that in trying to pour my energy and time into all of the buckets at the same time, there’s quite a bit of spillage – some of which feels wasted.
In the spirit of getting back to basics (with a nod to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), I’m trying to build from the ground up. A place to live, food, a way to support myself, a sense of community, etc. etc. Another way to look at it would be to suggest that I’m trying to find my place (or places). Having a physical presence in this world necessarily means occupying space in this world. For many of us, we tend to have a handful of “spaces” in which we reside and move. Our first space is our home, our second space is usually our job, and our third space is usually a public setting (or settings) where we feel comfortable (park, beach, woods, nature, bar, coffee shop, cafe, church, department store). In moving here without a place to live or a job, I find myself living in a void – without any spaces (yet) – which is why I’m probably spending my “free time” online – because that (while superficial) is a familiar space.
To be clear, none of this is a complaint (or at least not a real complaint). Despite not having a job or a place to live, or a set of first, second, or third spaces, I’m loving the city. Being able to go for runs outside almost any day of the week has been fantastic. Being able to go for walks after dinner and not having to bundle up against freezing temperatures is fantastic. Seeing different things (architecture, shops, people, views) every day is refreshing. If job, home, friends, hobbies, etc. are the buckets, then maybe novelty and learning is the trough below the buckets where the spillage is collected. I think what I’m looking forward to is finding a slightly better balance between the familiar and the novel – spilling a little less of my energy into the trough and getting more of into the buckets. Enjoying the journey, despite the rebuilding involved, is what gives me tremendous optimism.
Yesterday, the fog rolled in. I walked around. I didn’t get to a number of things I had hoped to get to and I was thrilled with those deliberate distractions that kept me otherwise engaged.