Rain rain
Don't go away
The rain shook me out of something this week. Regular readers of this newsletter know I’ve been writing my novel less and less lately as work travel has increased and the schoolyard-to-domicile germ superhighway has reopened and my grumpiness is peaking over my apparent effort to combine both phenomenon into a Guinness Book attempt at working while low-grade sick for one million years straight.
I only have rain boots because I once threw a $20 pair in a digital Costco shopping cart just to feel alive. I don’t wear them much, but it was decidedly a rain boots morning when one of my three-year-olds asked “what was that?!” at the drops plinking loudly on the window unit air conditioner we’ll keep thinking we should remove until the one day in January we finally do (maybe).
A rainy enough day throws just about everyone off their grooves a few inches. Instead of well worn morning commutes — headphones, the spot on the platform your choice set of train doors will open, angling your body before the stop you’re most likely to get a seat — you’re dodging puddles, sweating in a nylon sausage casing, giving some effort at not slowly soaking someone standing nearby with your rolled up umbrella. I know I can’t run as fast down the stairs in rain boots. Little things that knock you out of the norm.
After I did get a seat at the stop I’m most likely to, the off kilterness helped me notice a sad new reflex. I was admiring how an older woman across the car paired a white shirt with black pants in a way that did not make her look like a cater waiter. She was not in rain boots, but medium-shine black loafers with exaggerated tassels that I was surprised she wore in the rain.
I reached for my phone to take a picture of the tassels but stopped before being a weirdo (this time), and the next thing my thumb did was open my work email instead of the draft of my novel. The hard won habit of writing during my commute, built over years, had been vanquished by my inbox. I could feel that a creep had been happening, but hadn’t seen how far it’d advanced until this rainy morning provided a moment to look.
My new habit was to reflexively check my work email at all hours. From bed, waiting for the toaster, on the sidewalk within the radius of home I told myself I shouldn’t look at my phone and should just take a breath instead. Look for a bird. Actually wait for the walk sign.
I’m reaching for my inbox all the damn time now.
Is it morning in any of the three countries I’m working on projects within right now? Is this the stretch of hours I’m most likely to hear back from someone or is this the stretch I better advance something or lose a full twenty-four hours before catching someone again? Better check, better check.
There is no great motivational ending to this story this week. I did not snap out of this new habit right after noticing it, my fellow subway riders unfurling their umbrellas for a choreographed epiphany dance number. I probably refreshed my inbox at the next station.
I’ll probably refresh it again after I schedule this newsletter.
It’s hard to stop.
Week 139: Junkie
Some everyday: No
Words: None
See you next week.