Blinded by the Light 16: The Long Walk

The walk along east 15th Street involves both new buildings and building that used to be new.

Blinded by the Light 16: The Long Walk

Hi, I’m 63 years old and unlike many of my friends, I’m not thinking about retirement, not even close. Instead, I work two jobs, and for the first time in nearly two decades, I awaken every morning free from deep, haunting existential economic fears. I think this means that after 20 years of intense struggle and depression, I’ve returned to the bottom rungs of the Middle Class. This blog is an exercise in figuring out what that means.

Almost every New Yorker has an area that isn’t homebase but familiar enough to feel like it. For me, it was the few blocks along 15^th Street that extend from Union Square toward 1^st Avenue. In the late ‘80s when I first moved to the East Village, those blocks were my way home from the subway. I’d walk past the luxury apartment towers that back then felt incongruous (now they feel like the norm), the private school, some doctor’s offices and into the lower-lying residential area that was my new home. Eventually, I began riding a bicycle to and fro, so those blocks receded into an almost sepia toned past.

Then four years ago, I took that walk again and it felt totally different. It was the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns. I no longer lived in the East Village, having moved a year or so earlier to Brooklyn. And now, one of the doctor’s offices belonged to my doctor. She had closed her office to spare her staff the risk of infection, and she was doing testing. You signed up online for a time and lined up outside of her office. This initially felt admirable, until one evening in late March, when I felt feverish, a symptom of COVID.

My innards had been on red alert even before the lockdowns began. I worked at a grocery store, the very definition of a public facing job. I had already endured customers yelling at me, spitting on me and doing all the other things New Yorkers do when they can’t have every single desire fulfilled immediately and cheerfully. My roommate was astonished and consternated that I had kept the job, but I figured he’d be even more consternated if I couldn’t pay rent; writing assignments were hard to come by, and those that did were painfully late in payments.

As I walked, I passed a pub that was formerly a noted jazz club, and my mind drifted happily from the terror I felt inside to memories of extraordinary music I’d heard there, Hank Jones and Abbey Lincoln came to mind. Then it occurred to me, I was being far too timid about my fate, perhaps the cantankerous spirit of Lincoln was inspiring me). I was 59 (at the time), I had decades of experience as a journalist, I was a respected professional in the food biz with substantial knowledge in two fields, craft beer and artisan cheese. How the hell did I wind up in harm’s way like this?

I didn’t have to think too long about it. The thing was that I’m from the kind of middle class family that you were taught not to complain. We weren’t that kind of African American. My Dad went to the University of Chicago but didn’t get a job commensurate with education for 15 years. We were taught to channel our anger into energy and ambition. I might be stricken with a deadly disease; it might be time to acknowledge that this noble strategy didn’t always work. I also realized that by keeping my failures to myself, I had let them eat away at my self-esteem. It is true that I’m not the first Black man to suffer from racism, but I often felt that I hadn’t overcome those barriers as well as others. However, as I crossed Second Avenue and got in line outside the doctor’s office, I began thinking that I had it wrong, this isn’t the We Shall Overcome Olympics, and that I should talk about all the potential employers who looked me in the eye and said I wasn’t qualified because the job required hard work or that I was “so not the type.” I don’t think my peer group thinks that racism ended after Dr. King’s Washington Monument speech or Obama’s election, but it felt important to explain that while some people might have thought that a minimum wage job at a grocery store was a good fit for my Ivy League alumni ass, there were extenuating circumstances that needed to be brought to light.

The visit to the doctor was calming. She tested me (it was the first time in a long time that I’d had anything that far up my nose). Then we talked about my diet and about how her daughter was going to manage her collegiate visits (she’d been my doctor for 10 years at that point, I’d met her kids when she shopped for cheese with me. She said she didn’t think that I would test positive.

My boss at the grocery store who was on top of matters (he required masks a week before lockdowns began and distributed new ones with our weekly paychecks), put me on leave while I awaited my test results. My first afternoon off, an editor from many years ago reached out and asked if I could write an appreciation of Bill Withers for her at Huffington Post Black Voices. I happily accepted. Four hours later, the piece was live, and Huffpo tweeted links to it almost hourly. It was the polar opposite of Wall Street Journal, where my work hides from pubic view behind a paywall. My network began to swell.

Later that weekend, I got a call from my doctor. I had tested negative. That began a streak that continues today. I’ve tested negative 47 straight times. I still work in a public facing job, though it’s a far better one, I manage a small cheese shop. I still wear a mask on public transportation. Not only have I not suffered from COVID, but I’ve had only a stomach virus and a mild case of sniffles in four years.

Meanwhile, lots of people saw the Withers piece, and via my rapidly expanding Twitter network, I began receiving work from NPR, Bandcamp, TIDAL and Mic. At a time when most sixtysomething journalists were struggling to survive, my inbox was constantly overflowing.

A few weeks ago, I took that walk again. I was on my way to the doctor for a routine appointment. I no longer thought about the ‘80s. I thought a little bit about that night, and how in the aftermath of my realization, my self-esteem has improved, and it made all the success that followed feel less like a fluke and more like the proper result of a lot of really hard work.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Tidal, Bandcamp, Wine Enthusiast, Jazz Times, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 28, Life During Wartime Part Three

Life on Aisle 2 Episode 28: Life During Wartime Part 3

This blog parses the changes in my middle age–how I went from working as a columnist at a major daily newspaper and a leading cheesemonger to being a beer buyer at a fancy grocery store–and how I maintain hope of finding happiness. It’s underpinned by an element of confusion fatigue, frustration fatigue and fatigue fatigue, but it’s about life and downward mobility in New York City, which is never dull.

Continued from Episode 26

And Episode 27

When my doctor called me to tell me the good news that my COVID 19 test was negative, I was in the kitchen chatting with my roommate, broaching the possibility that I might not go back to the store while the situation was so dangerous. I had been pondering the idea all weekend, while sort of informally furloughed awaiting my results. Was I really putting my life on the line for a grocery store? In particular, didn’t I have enough writing income to cover things for a few weeks?

I told my roommate the good news and then I texted my family and emailed a few longtime close friends. Then—over a beer of course—I began to take a good look at my situation. For most of the last year and change, I’ve had a full inbox of writing work, but I was hamstrung by late payments and occasional droughts due mostly to record release date changes. Early spring 2020, things seemed to be working as well as ever. Could my ever-fledgling writing work be counted on to carry the full load? Wasn’t that the dream? To be a self-supporting writer, even if only temporarily? I hadn’t enjoyed that kind of life in 20 years.

The following morning, I got my answer, no. Two assignments that were pegged for early and mid May moved taking with them the paychecks I had incorporated into my financial planning. In the big picture, that wasn’t a huge problem, but it did underscore that my income flow from writing was far too volatile; I needed the supplement from retail to be effective, or at the very least to keep me from worrying myself to death. I shrugged. As I went deeper and deeper into middle age (I turned 60 on the day after I got my results), I began to accept that in general society marginalizes me (and it’s far, far worse for women). Potential employers stopped telling me that they need someone who can work hard and began telling me that they needed someone who could move fast. Potential networking partners asked me to recommend writers to them and cited scribes in their 30s. In response I looked for a way of saying, “well, what about me?” But that feels hopeless.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I like the situation, just that I deal with it. So fine, I’ll include wandering through the empty caverns of Ghost Town Manhattan, masked and gloved and carefully cataloging any surface any part of my clothing comes in contact with, and I’ll make do. People who think that youth have a monopoly on grit are wrong. I’m really good at channeling resentment and frustration into energy; it’s part of the secret of how I work so hard and move so fast.

The further consideration in staying in retail was that no one knows when this situation is going to end. If we were five weeks out from a readily accessible vaccine, then I might have sat home anyway, but we’re probably not five months and maybe not even ten from that promised land. The kind of risks I’m taking are the kinds of risks that millions more will be taking in the coming months as states “reopen the economy” knowing full well that a second wave of the pandemic is in the offing.

With that kind of timeline in mind, I began to settle in for the long haul, normalizing the new normal. I pride myself on my adaptability, and it pleased me to see how I was pretty much reflexively cataloging anytime my body came into contact with a surface of unknown sanitary quality. For instance, recently my roommate was out of town but several deliveries from Amazon, Chewy and the like arrived for him. I easily remembered what part of the package hit my legs or arms as I carried it into the apartment, then wiped the package and those body parts with disinfectants and went on about my business as if it were all part of the process. I both think about what I will wear to retail and what I will change into as soon as I get home. I’ve started shopping for masks that will complement the ensemble I’m wearing.

Then I had to move the goal posts back to their accustomed position. I had been telling people I was “hanging in there,” and, though true, I hate that. I have goals, and I pride myself on striving usually little steps but occasionally large ones, every day, every.damn.day. So, I decided that this new normal afforded me chances to pursue them. For instance, since there were no concerts to cover, I began cooking more, a lot more. I aimed to add a few minutes of evening restorative yoga practice to my daily 20 minutes or so of more active asana practice. And I began to get back into cinema. Overall, it was a plan to be happier rather than merely contented. I still wanted to be some semblance of my 40 year old self, and again, following the mayhem of the early days of COVID New York, it began to feel possible again. I wouldn’t be hanging out in cool coffee and craft beer bars after taking yoga and dance classes but the spirit of doing so would be accessible to me. It was a big ask, but not an unreasonable one.

In the days leading up and just following the lockdown, I joked with customers on the beer aisle. I told them that as a freelance writer was well familiar with the insecurities and fear—the existential dread–that the present day had brought us. In some ways, I was, and in some ways, I had to accept the challenge to meet them. Life remains a struggle, but at least for me, that isn’t news.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.

20200426_175654 — Before you reach Aisle 2, there is other information

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 27, Life During Wartime Part 2

20200407_182814 — The Atlantic Terminal Area at Rush Hour

Continued from Episode 26

When I arrived at my doctor’s office for a COVID 19 test, I found a substantial line, and I could see that there was a sign on the door. Not only am I a New Yorker, but I’m a music journalist when not working in the food biz. I’ve squirreled my way past many a line. I walked straight up to the door to read the sign despite a few people in line protesting.

I don’t remember the words of the sign, but the gist of it was simple, wait your turn in line.

It wasn’t tersely phrased, though some of the commentary from people in line was, that’s not my doctor’s approach. She’s remarkably affable. I often tell people that if I didn’t see her twice a year for checkups, I’d want to get coffee from time to time. I care about her and her kids, and the vagaries of being a single middle aged Mom in Manhattan. It makes people think that I have a crush on her; I don’t. If I had a crush on every attractive middle aged woman in New York City, I wouldn’t have headspace to accomplish anything else.

I got in line and made a joke to the woman in front of me that I felt like I was at Trader Joe’s again. She snapped back, “are you talking to me?”

Yeah, I guess this was a tense situation; comparing it to getting frozen burritos or jars of Thai green curry sauce wasn’t entirely appropriate. The line began to move slowly. I estimated that I was about 45 minutes away from seeing the doctor, and I drifted away in thought. My mind teetered on falling down several rabbit holes. For one, there was the discouragement that a job in a grocery store may has resulted in such potentially deadly circumstances. Did I work myself to death? I put those thoughts out of my mind. My nephew upon finding out that I was being tested texted me reminders that four out of five people contract COVID without needing hospitalization. Still, Gil Scott Heron’s “New York is Killing Me” echoed in my head. I thought about people I know who have not left their apartments since mid-March, and I wondered why I lacked that kind of prudence and discipline. And finally, I saw a wealth of woulda coulda shoulda’s during my professional life; I’m used to dismissing those. I’ve made a lot of really good moves too.

Yet then I found myself on a mental road that wasn’t so easily escaped. I pride myself on my adaptability and embrace of my vulnerability. I seemed to have failed at both of those qualities this time. Why had I fallen into the foolish pretense of bulletproof-ness at such an inopportune time. I looked down. I took a deep breath of resignation, fully aware that I was resisting the symptoms and looked at the line. It was shorter.

The woman in front of me, looked at me again. Her expression had softened. It looked like she now agreed with me; some light conversation might break the tension. She too worked at a grocery store, and she was with a younger coworker whose aunt was a patient of the doctor. I told her that I had been a patient for more than 10 years and thought the world of the doctor. That seemed to put her mind at ease. After a brief discussion of the weather the conversation fizzled. The thick air of tension seemed to be receding as the line shrunk. There were only three of us left; it was well after 9 p.m. The woman went in ahead of her colleague.

When she came out, she began raving about how great the doctor was. She was impressed by her cordial manner, especially since she had been working for nearly 12 hours. I smiled knowingly. The fact that my doctor closed her private practice to protect her staffers then found a way to be an asset during the crisis was her in a nutshell, but the loyalty she builds in her patients via her demeanor is more than icing on the cake. She saw me and smiled cautiously. She seemed happy that a regular would be the end of her workday.

Inside, we chatted about her kids, my family, my work. She asked if I was feeling symptomatic. I told her that I felt feverish the day before. She took my temperature—it was 97.9–and she gave me a look like “tell me again, why are you here?” I reminded her that I work in a grocery store. She ran down a questionnaire of telltale signs of the disease. Body aches? Not really. Taste/smell? Just fine. There were about ten others. She seemed pleased with the results. Then she broke out the monster sized Q Tips. After I shook off the effects of the nostril probing, we talked about when I could set up an appointment for a regular visit. Two months seemed like a good timetable. I was encouraged that she felt I’d be alive in two months. Her original email announcing the testing promised results in 24 hours; she said that since there was more testing—I smiled at that good news—results probably wouldn’t be in for three to five days.

I wended my way home through the ghost town that is today’s New York City, frankly too mentally tired to catalog every surface I touched. I simply resolved to give my jeans, boots and jacket a solid wipe down when I got home. It was 10, which meant it was too late to get takeout; I’d have to cook, but I was used to that by now.

I woke up Friday and texted my boss at the store that I’d gotten tested and expected results in a few days. He told me not to come in until I knew that I was healthy. A day off, a Friday off, was an especially good thing. It put in position to write an appreciation of Bill Withers for Huffington Post, an unsolicited assignment that came in just a I would have been wrapping up the writing part of my day to go to retail. And I began reading and listening to COVID narratives from people that had suffered from then beat it. I began to understand my doctor’s skeptical look. The symptoms I did feel were minute compared to what others had endured. Still just because I was relatively asymptomatic didn’t mean I wasn’t infected.

I awoke Saturday with the kind of shot out of a cannon energy I hadn’t felt in months. It occurred to me that it had been a long time since I had had four days in a row off from retail and slept in my own bed during that span. I felt great on Sunday too. My roommate and I began discussing our gameplan for what we’d do if I tested positive. It was during one of those discussions, which took place with me in the kitchen cooking something and him on the sofa grading papers, our usual positions, that the call came from the doctor. I didn’t get it as the phone was in the bedroom and my ringer was turned off.

I took a deep breath when I saw that she called. The vibe from many of my friends and a few relatives was that I could beat this thing. I looked at my text-based voicemail. I had to read it and reread it to absorb the answer: I was negative. I told my roommate to put the plans on hold. He was grinning ear to ear. I went to the bedroom to text my family and email some friends. In the email I said that I’d dodged the bullet, but I had many more trips through the battlefield. I poured a beer (Other Half DDH Oh, in case you’re wondering) and began to examine if there was a way out of this mess. My body seemed up to the challenge, but my nervous system could use a break.

To be continued

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.

20200324_194349 — Day or night, there’s always a line to get into Duane Reade now

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 26 Life During Wartime

The view from just south of Union Square on a Friday night.

For years, I used the term existential dread metaphorically. It was in reference to a way of life from my late 30s and early 40s that I still feel closely attached to two decades later. My increased attachment was in response to the reality that those days–and my lifestyle from that era–were as gone as jitterbuggers, Edsels and reel to reel tape. Still I felt somewhat prideful that my nostalgia was for my early middle age, not the giddy post-collegiate years that many of my friends yearned for. Yet I dreaded that that existence was gone and wasn’t coming back. Each major cataclysm—the dotcom crash, 9/11, the Great Recession– bore the era further and further into the fog of history.

The new cataclysm, the onset of the novel coronavirus and COVID 19, has me using the term existential dread in a far more representative way. Aisle 2, in case you’ve forgotten, is in an 18,000 square foot grocery store. So, while millions of American workers got used to working at home, and millions of others got used to navigating the bureaucracy of unemployment applications. I got used to my roommate reading up on whether jeans or yoga pants should be my work clothing since the viral material lasts longer on synthetic fabrics. It’s not a minor concern. He has risk factors; hell, I have risk factors. He’d rather not risk catching the virus at home. Hell, he’d rather not catch the virus, and needless to say, I share that sentiment even though I travel via the subway to a risky work environment in the age of a lethal, highly infectious disease.

The weeks since the mid-March shelter in place orders have left me feeling that what used to be routine, banal even, has now become life threatening, both for me and for those around me. My rides on the subway are positively harrowing because whether day or night, the cars are empty; and now the wait at 1 pm is about the same as the wait used to be at 1 a.m. The streets are deserted. There’s a real sense that the zombie apocalypse is upon us and everyone else got the memo while mine went to spam. And that sense intensified as the few eateries that initially remained open, closed their doors. I was here for 9/11, and it wasn’t anywhere near this desolate.

At the store the vibe is completely different. The crisis has yanked the store into the 2020s. We’ve gone from something like 80% walk in traffic and 20% deliveries to something like (the caveat is that this is based on observation, not data) 65/35 the other way. It’s meant creating a fulfillment staff on the dead run, and it’s left me to patrol far more than Aisle 2, assisting many more customers throughout the entire store, often at a distance of less than six feet. The job is already exhausting and stressful. This has added new layers of tension to it.

Oddly, those episodes are completely contrasted by the sheer phenomenon on Aisle 2. Alcoholic beverage sales are up during the lockdown anyway, and my craft beer program has become a rock star again. With on premise consumption of well, anything, banned, and many bars either closed or only open for retail purposes, many brewers whose divine nectars I used to beg for, are now sending me their cans on a weekly basis. So sure, we’re selling lots more Victory, Six Point, Bells and Lagunitas, but we’re also selling lots and lots of Other Half, Hudson Valley, Aslin and Equilibrium. People are coming from well beyond the neighborhood and loading up six, eight, even 10 or 12 cans at a time. And other top brewers that we routinely carry like Finback, Grimm, Lawson’s and Industrial Arts are flying off the shelves too. The crazy thing is that close to half of my regular customers are away, sheltering in place somewhere out of city, which is an epicenter of the virus.

The emotional swings from euphoria on the beer aisle to alternating currents of panic and gratitude elsewhere in the store, to something bordering on fear on the streets and in the subways exhausts me, but I can’t be. I try and carefully catalog what parts of my body have come in contact with surfaces of uncertain cleaning. I used to sit on the trains, enjoying the rarity of it, but I began wearying of wiping down my jeans and the back of my jacket. Now I stand, and I’m not the only one enduring the absurdity of standing in an empty subway car, so that the only surface was a gloved hand. Then upon exiting the subway, I change gloves. The busses are free, and it’s impossible to stand and maintain expected social distance, so I sit on the edge of my seat as if I were watching a close NBA game (and I rue the nostalgia of watching NBA games period).

For a couple of weeks, these meticulous endeavors were evolving into a ritual of security. Then, I began noticing that I felt more tired in the latter stages of my retail shift. Not knocked out tired, but wearier than I’d been. My uber rational inner voice rationalized the fatigue as only natural. On my retail days, I work on writing endeavors for five or six hours then run around the store for seven or eight. I was almost 60, and I ate less because all my go to places for a quick snack, a wrap here, noodles there were closed. I felt moments of headaches and sore throat, but uber rational voice dismissed them as momentary. Then one night I ran a fever for about an hour before Tylenol restored order. My uber rational voice was quiet.

I’m especially fortunate. My doctor had shut down her private practice to minimize the exposure of her staff to people with the virus, and she was now doing tests for established patients and anyone else who wanted it. I went online to make an appointment immediately. My doctor is great and like me, she’s a workaholic. My appointment was 8:30 that Thursday night. I figured I’d be the only one there. I got there and there was a line, not a Trader Joe’s level line, but a considerable line. It gave me time to gather my thoughts.

To be continued.

The Q Train leaving the Barclay’s Center stop midday.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 25 Flavor Matters

20190513_184831 — Garlic, onion, ground beef, chopped tomatoes, bell peppers before they meet the pasta

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like Episode 25, Flavor Matters

About six years ago, I was in a small, Upper East Side wine boutique hawking some artisan cheese as a means of promoting a wine and cheese event there that I was co-hosting when in walked an extraordinarily well dressed woman, even by the standards of a nabe where low six figures puts you toward the bottom of the local income strata. It turns out she was a VP at a well known fashion company, and I wouldn’t say she looked like she stepped off the runway, because her magnificent ensemble spoke of both taste and battles fought and won, battles fought to a draw and either won later or de-emphasized and battles confidently in progress. In other words, her appearance expressed a celebration of decades of success, not the mere good fortune of a teenager with high cheekbones and very little body fat.

She politely declined the cheese samples, walked straight to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of the cheapest California Chardonnay in the store, paid for it, chatted amiably with the owner for a moment and left. After the door closed, he told me of her position, and I wondered if she was cooking something with the wine. My brow furrowed a little when he told me that the cheap bottle was her go to selection; I would have thought something a tad more upscale, a Chablis, for instance, might have been more appropriate. He told me that if she can’t taste the difference between cheap and expensive wines, then cheaper ones were the way to go.

It made perfect sense, but I have struggled in the years since to apply it to my own life, because I can taste the difference, and the bolder and more nuanced flavors have become a necessity. I thought of it on a recent weekend, when a cashflow crunch reduced me to only a few dollars until Monday. I could afford one beer, and my choice was a double IPA from Lone Pine, a brewer in Maine whose cans are new to NYC. I could have bought twice as much Modelo for the price, but I didn’t consider it; the bright, intense, citrusy flavors of the Lone Pine would keep me from numbing, which was essential.

Numbing has been an important coping mechanism—a reflex even—during the last two decades as I descended from middle class to the semi-bohemian working poor strata I now occupy. It’s a way of stemming the pain when I can’t even think of attending a friend’s 60^th birthday party because it’s out of town, or I can’t make rent because a writing client is late, or because my landlord just served me court papers or because I can’t remember the last time I took a vacation (it was more than a decade ago) or simply because the weekend is lost to a cashflow crunch because a direct deposit didn’t hit on time. It combats stress, but it also combats sadness anytime I bond with a woman of interest and then she cools because I’m broke and too old. Essentially, it’s narrowing the range of possible outcomes because most of them are not good, and it’s especially essential for someone who spends three days a week interacting with the public

All this numbing seems quite savvy (I strongly suspect it’s my version of “chilling,” i.e. not letting anything bother me or even better an emotional equivalent of opioids), but my current goal is to lose the capacity or at least the reflex. I’m looking to return to a headspace of my earlier days.

I’m fond of saying that I discovered my inner dancer in my mid to late 30s, and that began my happiest time as an adult. Besides biking and a variety of yoga classes, fitness back then often meant the most complex, funky dance classes at my gym, and the skill of moving to beats and reflecting the spirit of the music, enabled me to feel the energy of the world around me much more intensely when I was merely executing the choreography of moving through Manhattan. But then the dotcoms crashed. journalism work, my primary income back then, began to evaporate, then the Great Recession happened, and my culinary work also became dicey. The energy of the world around me became much less inviting, and at times, it was simply menacing. My body began to show signs of age and frailty, so dancing became out of the question. Flavor, be it in a double ipa, a slice of pizza with pecorino, prosciutto and pineapple, or an affordable variation on scallops that I cooked annually for my mother, became my escape from numbville. I would feel the energy of the world in a positive way for at least a few moments.

Things are different now. I’ve abandoned my one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan for a share of a nice place in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The view outside my bedroom window is no longer the gray, grimy airshaft of my building but a sunny, green courtyard. I’ve added steady, interesting regular writing work at a branch of CUNY. I’ve resumed doing yoga albeit a self-practice for about a half hour a day and one hour on weekends. What I haven’t done is roll back the numbing reflex. I’d like to. Even if my world lacks the sunny optimism of the dotcom days; for the first time since then—yes, we’re literally talking two decades, a third of my life and half of my adulthood– I’m absolutely certain that I’m moving in the right direction. Yet the emotional responses of a far more fraught time still exist, practically hard wired into my psyche. I think this is what people mean when they talk of economic PTSD.

I’ve thought of several ways to transition out of this mindspace, but many of them like spending five minutes dancing to a song from those classes in the 90s or some music I feel comparably close to (oh say, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, or Meg Meyers version of it) feel too ambitious for my current fitness level. Meditation is another good idea but quieting a mind that has been standing-near-the- speakers-at-a-death-metal-concert loud also won’t come easy. Instead, I’ve settled on daily agenda making (once the weather warms a little, I’ll try and do it in the courtyard). It will be a way of enforcing that my personal glasnost is in full effect. The big picture task is how to progress further and faster rather than how not to fall backwards into the abyss.

And of course, one of the agenda items will be to cook more and more interesting foods. I drink good stuff as a professional necessity but surrounding myself with flavor will become a celebration of the progress rather than a pushback against the numbing.

20190302_113713 — Even on a cold, wintry day, the view outside my window is pretty cheery

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 24, Five Years!

a95eb-1f7ahq0ixuz_rb3aq_sz0cq — What was supposed to be a way station has become a destination.

Reflexively, when I’m on the aisle, I cite my experience. It’s mostly to keep people from thinking that the stock guy is chatty. I’ll preface my observations about the availability of this brewery or that beer with “in my three and half or four plus or so year as a buyer…” Recently I was in that exact sentence structure, when I realized it was my fifth anniversary as the craft beer buyer at the store. My thought process came to a screeching halt even though my mouth kept moving as I explained that I’d inquire about the beer that the customer was looking for.

Five years!! A David Bowie song took over the mental jukebox.

That took a minute to settle in. When I shook hands on the gig, I thought for sure it would be a two to three-year run. I’d need a year to get to know the New York City craft beer landscape, a year or so to build the program into a force, then a year finding my way into a gig at brewery or a distributorship. I nailed the first two, but clearly things had subsequently gone awry.

That isn’t new for me. Most of the last two decades have been spent in a scramble. Journalism income fluctuated wildly then ultimately failed to produce a living wage. I bumped up my work in the cheese business to a professional level. Then, suddenly that failed too. Looking ahead to a dire future, I shifted to craft beer and rebuilt some journalism income (now, fully aware that it would probably never fully support me again) and well, here I was. All that pivoting—sometimes changing directions in mid-air—looks savvy from a distance, but the desperation takes a toll. I wondered if I was still on the right path toward a sustainable solvency or had I chosen—albeit quite reasonably—to pause on a sturdy ledge with much more climbing ahead. I no longer had an unshakable faith that I knew what I was doing, yet I rarely paused to take stock. I typically call my Saturday afternoons, when I’m free from retail and stop journalism-ing around 2, my regroup and refocus time, but that only deals with short term matters like how will I pay the rent next month. Longer term issues don’t factor in.

With the year and the decade approaching conclusion, a reconsideration seemed overdue. When I tumbled down that rabbit hole, the first thing I considered was what went wrong with the most recent plan. This is something I’m bitterly tired of doing. I come from a family of dogged overachievers, and I fit in perfectly with them for 40 years. Why do things keep falling apart?

When my outlook cleared of past frustrations, I looked at the craft beer community. Who looked like me? Well, no one. The sales representatives, marketing people and brewers were not just younger (and whiter but that’s a barrier I’m well accustomed to overcoming) but they were MUCH younger. There were no “cool uncles” in the midst; in fact, there was only one cool aunt. That wasn’t enraging; rather it was relieving. I had built one of the best retail craft beer programs in New York City, but I was a unicorn, by definition a hard fit. Secondly, I had to look in context. When I pursued other craft beer work in 2016 or early 2017, I was just a couple of years removed from a three year stretch where knee issues resulted in needing a cane. While I thought of myself in the present tense as the guy who can do journalism from 9-1 on Fridays then a retail shift that is usually 2-12 but sometimes extends until one. Afterward, I spend ten minutes stretching to counter the toll of running cases of beer and well, yes, White Claw around an 18,000 square foot space. I finish the night with a quick beer at a nearby bar then I pick up Korean fried chicken and head home with a head of energy. I wake up at 9 on Saturday at get back at it. So, my reality probably conflicted with those of my potential allies, who probably remembered me as the overweight old dude hobbling around a store.

So I probably was an exile in bro-ville.

All of which was a great realization. I could stop my inner demons from pounding my self esteem to a pulp over my perceived lack of progress toward my goals. But the bigger question was where was I going, did I know how to get there? If I no longer trusted my ambition’s GPS, what could I do?

I make a better Sisyphus than Icarus. I never tire of rolling that rock up the hill, and even though I’ve had eight book proposals fail to get a deal, I was mostly undaunted when a new idea occurred to me and I began outlining the outline and plotting the research. The last few failed because of a lack of brand as a writer. I built the store a superb brand as an outlet for some of the finest craft beers available in NYC; I’ll have to use similar tactics for my writing career. Perhaps I’m letting the fact that I’ve written for most of the leading publications and presently write for one of the world’s leading newspapers speak for itself. I’ll have to devise a bullhorn.

I always feared opening a place of my own would be an Icarusian episode, but an idea for one in my new Brooklyn nabe occurred to me. I kept mulling it until I saw a way to make it profitable beyond simply attracting the beer enthusiasts of Flatbush Avenue to the venue.

I think I’ve figured out a way on the business (now, all I have to do is learn the rudiments of starting one) and I feel good about the book prospects despite so many great ideas lying in rubble near me. So maybe I reached a perch of stability and am looking toward sustainable solvency ahead. I think so. I’ve been wrong before, but I think this is the way. If it isn’t, I’ll shrug and figure out another path even if shrugging is hard.

***

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 23, An All Too Familiar Feeling

CB Dorset — Consider Bardwell Dorset, R.I.P

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 23, An All Too Familiar Feeling

Earlier this year, I applied for a Google Podcast Creator grant in tandem with a young French music journalist that I met while shopping for a new living situation in late 2018. She brought great energy, enthusiasm and connections to the project. For me, I’ve rolled enough rocks up a hill only to see them go tumbling back down, that her involvement kept my usual Sisyphean pessimism from setting in.

We differed on a key aspect of the proposal, however. She thought it should be about music and cheese, and I thought it should be about music and politics. From her French perspective, cheese was underappreciated in America, and I couldn’t agree more. But from my former cheesemonger’s perspective, the approach to cheese was a little more dire. I love cheese but I fear for it too. The best cheeses come from small dairy farms and small dairy farms like small farms in general are getting clobbered by the dual forces of global capital concentration and climate crisis. I feared that a podcast on cheese would be a recurring, painful obituary.

I thought about that this week when the news hit that the wonderful Vermont cheesemakers Consider Bardwell would be shutting down. They had been in the news about a month earlier for a product recall due to fears of a potential listeria presence, and in the aftermath, they determined that it simply wasn’t economically feasible to continue making cheese.

This isn’t surprising and that’s the saddest element of it all. Nobody goes into cheesemaking to make lots of money. It’s a passion project abetted by skin of your teeth profits. The difference between success and failure is a very thin line, and it’s mirrored by the struggles of retailers in New York where Lucy’s Whey has vanished and both Saxelby Cheesemongers and Malt and Mold have left the once funky and now quite tony Lower East Side.

Even though it had only been around since 2004, Consider Bardwell felt like an institution. Cheeses like Rupert, Manchester and their signature Dorset were on the short list of many New York City cheesemongers. They were cheeses that were unusually sophisticated. They had subtle distinctive flavors. They seemed well suited for cheese plates and unsuited for sandwiches or macaroni and cheese. They made cheese lovers cheeses.

I vividly recall the first time I had their cheeses. It was 2004, and I was working at Bedford Cheese Shop when a shipment arrived. It was anticipated by the bosses and a hush practically came over the shop as the cheeses were unpacked. A wheel was cut, grassy buttery flavors were savored. As customers came in, samples were given. A half wheel was sold in quarter and half pound increments before it was rewrapped. During those heady days it was an oft repeated scene. Arrivals from Twig Farm, Andante, and Capriole in America, Rolf Beeler, Casa Madaio and Neal’s Yard Diary from abroad were events, moments to quiet one’s mind and alert the senses.

The news of their closure hit on Thursday as I was buying cheeses for a class that night at the 92^nd St. Y. When Andrew, the Cheesemonger at Formaggio Essex conveyed the news, there was a depressing familiarity to the feeling. It was from journalism, and it felt the same way it did talking to others in the business when ESPN of the New York Daily News or Buzzfeed or whatever announced significant layoffs. It was the feeling that this once great place to be professionally wasn’t so great anymore and might never be viable again. As I wandered into the Manhattan sunset, shoulders slumped ever so slightly, I reminded myself that this is why I’m in the craft beer business. Breweries are certainly not immune to the vagaries of contemporary capitalism, but the closure of one doesn’t feel like a death knell of a sector.

In the end, we didn’t get our grant or even make the finals as I had the previous year for a proposal built around this blog. I suspect that my colleague’s idea might have been more suitable to Google’s interest. It was more whimsical, less conventional. But I know the story of my life, and when I tell it, I’d like to focus on the episodes of resilience and triumph, not tragedy.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and cinema has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.

CB Rupert (photo from murrayscheese.com)

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 22: The White Claw Effect

White Claw BC 6 — Something like a phenomenon; by some estimates it outsold Bud this summer.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 22, The White Claw Effect

This blog parses the changes in my middle age and how I went from working as a columnist at a major daily newspaper and a leading cheesemonger to being a beer buyer at a fancy grocery store and how I maintain hope of finding happiness. It’s underpinned by an element of confusion fatigue, frustration fatigue and fatigue fatigue, but it’s about life and downward mobility in New York City 2018 and 2019, which is never dull.

The biggest story in the craft beer world this year isn’t about a beer at all. But because craft beer is largely misunderstood insufficiently understood, its impact is worth discussing. The “it” is White Claw, which is by far the industry leader in a fast-emerging sector known as hard seltzer; these are fermented beverages usually seasoned with fruit of some sort. They are light calorically and refreshing, sort of as if LaCroix or your favorite flavored Italian seltzer contained 5% ABV.

Sales are through the roof. Since its introduction in 2015, hard seltzer sales have soared with triple digit increases every year. By some estimates 2.5 billion dollars of the stuff was sold last year and yes, that number is may be on pace double this year; some contend that the stuff outsold Budweiser this summer. This rapid rise parallels craft beer which has gone from 8.7 billion dollar in sales in 2011 to 27.6 billion in 2018. Get in at the right time and an investment in the right sort of alcoholic beverage will pay off handsomely.

But White Claw and its ilk, principally Truly, which is owned by Boston Beer (the brewers of popular craft beer lines like Sam Adams and Dogfish Head) and both Bon & Viv and Natural Light Seltzer, which are owned by Anheuser-Busch, aren’t having a tangible effect on craft beer sales for one very important fact: their constituencies have minimal overlap. And in the long run, the trend could benefit craft beer.

First off, consider this scenario. Four young people walk into a bar with an especially well stocked selection of spirits. One person orders a single malt scotch, another orders a martini and specifies the gin, a third asks about the small batch bourbon and the fourth orders a vodka tonic. Right, the fourth person in general is the White Claw drinker, and no, that’s not intended as a disparagement. There are a lot of things in the world to get admirably geeky about. Obsessing about alcoholic beverages isn’t a necessity for sophistication. Low information drinkers should not be lumped into the same heap as low information voters! But, in that context, the beverages that White Claw is hurting are Angry Orchard, the cider produced by Boston Beer, Bud Light, Stella Artois, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, etc. Yes, the beer/cider equivalents of that vodka tonic. As sales of White Claw, et al have soared the sales at my store of those beverages have plateaued or declined.

It’s easy to taste why. White Claw (and its ilk, but…) is easy drinking and refreshing. And it has just enough ABV to take a load off without hurting you in the morning. To my observations on Aisle 2, the White Claw crowd is very, very young. The craft beer crowd has a reputation for being youthful, but that’s overplayed a little. You don’t put up numbers like those in craft beer without reaching all demographics. I have as many knowledgeable, enthusiastic middle-aged women among my avid craft beer constituents as I do young men.

Not that there’s anything wrong with having a very young constituency, that crowd has money and is eager to brand themselves by embracing the shiny new toy. It’s that spirit that fueled craft beer’s early rise as youngsters abandoned Miller or whatever for Brooklyn Brewery or Sierra Nevada, and the latest rise has been fueled in part by young adults abandoning those brands for super small local brewers like Other Half, Tree House and Monkish. But the shelf life of something as the shiny new toy isn’t long. This isn’t a dire prediction, hard seltzers–like Uggs and low-slung jeans–are here to stay, but their current moment and heat isn’t sustainable. Some of the drinkers will go elsewhere, and one of the destinations is likely to be, ahem, craft beer.

The two biggest trends in craft beer right now are hazy, fruit forward India Pale Ales, and oak aged, fruit forward sours. Notice the word repeat in that past sentence. People who think all beer is dry, grain forward in flavor and somewhat bitter, are in for a big surprise; the trend in craft beer is toward beverages that are lighter, food friendly and um, rather refreshing. Not only are these beers not vinegary or bitter like other brews in that category, most of the sours and many of the IPAs are also low alcohol and a short culinary move from the flavors of hard seltzers.

I’ve already had a few customers tell me that they are fans of Crooked Stave’s Sour Rose, St. Bretta and Wild Sage beers precisely because they are like a vodka tonic but with more flavor. When the inevitable fatigue arrives in the hard seltzer market, craft beer will probably absorb some of those customers. It will be more proof of the resilience of the craft beer market, which isn’t a bubble but a fundamental restructuring of American drinking habits, even if that isn’t a sexy story.

White Claw shipment — We were ready for the weekend. On Monday, we ordered more.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like: Episode 20, Acclimating

20190518_153724 — Brooklyn just like I pictured it, brownstones and everything.

Life on Aisle 2: Episode 20: Acclimating

I moved to Brooklyn in late January after 40 years as a Manhattanite and 26 in the same East Village apartment; in the days and weeks that followed, almost all of my friends eagerly asked, “how’s settling in going?”

It was a tricky question. On the one hand, what settling in? I moved with an inbox so overstuffed that I wondered if I would have time to sleep. I often told people happily that I was staring into the same old computer screen all the time, so it all felt rather similar. Yet, it felt similar on many more tangible counts too. My neighborhood in Brooklyn, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, resembles certain phases of my previous one, the East Village, except that it is a mash up of many eras. For instance, on Flatbush Avenue, there are bodegas, beauty joints, Chinese greasy spoons, and laundromats—the stock in trade of many an East Village avenue in the ‘90s–rubbing shoulders with craft cocktail bars, boutiques, new bistros, artisan coffee houses and gastropubs (the commercial content of much of the East Village now); one moment you’re in EV 1995 and the next is EV circa 2018. PLG is a changing neighborhood; it’s a vista most New Yorkers know well. Certain adjustments that I had to make simply reflected the different demographics of the area. For instance, instead of after midnight high end pizza or ramen as I might find in the East Village, the primary choices are jerk chicken or some stuffed pasta that I might have waiting at home.

No, except for the lack of easy access to Citibikes in my new Brooklyn ‘hood—there are only three ports all at the northern end whereas it seemed like there was a port at most East Village corners– acclimating to the new geography was surprisingly easy. It was the emotional adjustment that is still very much a work in progress.

I spent many years, working myself to the bone and often beyond (in my early and mid 50s I suffered through years on a cane, a result of lower body injuries that have as one root an inability to hear my body say “enough for a moment”) in order to keep up with the ever rising expense of living in Manhattan. As my rent escalated vertiginously due to loopholes in the stabilization laws, my grip on my life there loosened. My dreams were of me in my late 30s, a savvy New Yorker moving about the city with ascending career prospects. My nightmare was of being trapped on an upper floor of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and having no good choices for survival. The reality was nowhere near either extreme, but it wasn’t a positive circumstance. I was a refugee from two failed careers, journalism and artisan cheese, scraping by—if that—while building a third career in the craft beer world, nurturing the tidbits of journalism work that remained, and looking to break into writing books.

The bullhorn blaring “YOU FUCKING FAILURE,” in the back of my mind was loud, but I had experience in tuning it out and focusing forward. In that way, my East Village apartment, the location of many of my rallies from moments of professional and economic distress, was a comfort rather than a financial burden. How would I tune out the bullhorn in my new location would be a big determinant in how I settled in.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a challenge at all; the bullhorn didn’t cross the East River with me. One of the first emails I opened after unpacking my computer was my primary journalism client notifying me of a raise. Then, work began to flood in from another writing client and a new journalism client came on board. My Brooklyn digs were less than half of what I paid in Manhattan, so suddenly I had gone from being months behind on my overhead expenses to cruising several months ahead. The back of my mind was suddenly quiet and calm.

I had always envisioned that moment being one of euphoria, the emotion of a team winning the title. Instead, it was a moment of pleasure and relief, but I felt determination rising in me. I had a long agenda ahead. I was now freer to assert myself into the world. I was also freer to create a better career. Writing gigs with paltry pay now but prospects of better pay down the road were suddenly feasible. Fellowships and grants were also possible. I hadn’t won the title; I had made the playoffs. The challenges ahead would be tougher but with them came the validation and increased confidence of recent success. I was no longer constantly stressed out that I wasn’t “doing this right.”

Most importantly I found I could be patient with myself. When I was living in a total 24/7 panic, everything had to be right now, right this second. There was a constant sense of red alert; the house was on fire and I had to both try and extinguish the flames and choose what to save. Now, I could evolve a morning routine with a goal of blogging for an hour each day and rolling out a yoga mat for 30 to 45 minutes. That I didn’t do it immediately wasn’t a problem. The impact of the fear that gripped my life didn’t vanish; it simply seeped out of my system.

One alternative to Citibikes that I found useful was just walking. After so many decades amid Manhattan’s ever teeming glitz, it was restorative to walk amongst my new borough’s blocks of brownstones and other buildings that didn’t aspire toward a postmillennial Langian Metropolis. I began to grasp what I’ve long called Brooklyn piety; this sense that it’s not a refuge for failed Manhattanites, but an improvement over New York’s signature area.

One important ritual that was easy to tweak was establishing a nearby watering hole. The East Village was full of them, and they were a key survival tactic. Workaholic that I am, home was usually an office where I slept and cooked rather than a focal point of relaxation and that was even more true as my life became a constant crisis. I quickly settled on Parkside, a craft cocktail bar around the corner from me, as I don’t know that scene especially well, and they almost immediately welcomed me as industry.

The music was often great, and it was nice to drink and not think about my work as a craft beer buyer. The sonic brackdrop typically ranged from contemporary French hip hop to ‘90s R&B and much in between. One night, well into my second drink, I found myself drifting away on an old Leona Lewis song and pleasantly recognized the parallel experiences from craft beer and wine bars in the East Village. Yet as her creamy voice dripped over artificial, pumped up beats, I realized I wasn’t thinking of a way out of my problems as was so often the case in the last decade or so. Instead, I was thinking about attending the Newport Jazz Festival for the first time or participating in New York City Body Painting Day. I was looking ahead without fear. Now THAT was new. I turned my gaze onto Flatbush Avenue and realized that I was settling in. And it would be a long, valuable process.

20190406_001133 — This is what Parkside calls a Smoky Manhattan. It’s presented to you and you’re counseled to give it a few minutes to let the smoke infuse the beverage. It’s as good as it looks.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 19, Moving

20190128_221816 — Many things didn’t come with me from Manhattan to Brooklyn including this piece of graffiti art and those CDs

Moving from my home of 26 and half years was actually pretty easy; it’s what came after that was hard.

“This is so very Marie Kondo,” bellowed one of the two movers cheerfully as they moved my boxes, posters and clothing from my third-floor apartment to a van outside.

I had no idea who this Kondo woman was, but I got the gist. I had moved 88 pieces into my East Village apartment back in the summer of 1992, and now, in January 2019, I was moving 19 pieces into my new place in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The move in required an army of ten friends; the move out required two guys around 30. They reacted to the fact that I was leaving nearly three times as much stuff as I was moving. I gathered that this Kondo woman was an advocate of minimalism.

I thought this was a key to the move. I owned well more than six thousand CDs and many hundreds of books. The Martin Johnson Archive of Recorded Music had become too expensive to maintain. I sold about half of it, first to Stooz then to Academy Records. I invited friends to come over and bolster their collections with the leftovers. I was happy; it meant that the archive would in good hands. I donated my two butcher block wooden tables to Housingworks. I was moving to a furnished room in an apartment where my roommate had every imaginable kitchen gadget, so the countertop grill, the crock pot, the juicer etc., all went on the landing as did dozens and dozens of books and posters and the like.

I deflected the emotional weight of the purge by creating a different narrative. I wasn’t fleeing Manhattan rents, though I was; instead, I was positioning myself for a productive decade ahead. In my 30s and 40s, I often applied for journalism fellowships and often just missed out. I stopped doing that in my 50s because what would I do with this expensive apartment and this cumbersome collection of possessions. By reducing to a few hundred discs, a few dozen books and the like (I would do that Zadie Smith binge I’ve been planning on Kindle), I was now agile in a geographic sense. If I got a fellowship somewhere far away from New York, I could just toss my stuff in a $200 a month storage locker and head on or I could reduce further and take them with me.

20190122_221357 — An emblem of my ’90s self. That poster was on the landing for maybe 45 minutes.

Something felt very modern about the move. No longer was I a stowaway living amid million dollar condos. I would be living amongst people like me who abandoned Manhattan to thrive in their creative pursuits.

I realized the change the Saturday after I moved. I was heading back to the old apartment to clean it out, and I stopped at a coffee bar on Flatbush. While I was in line, the baristas changed from a scruffy college aged guy, to a cordial, business prim, middle-aged woman. I perked up at the sight of her, feeling like she might be on Plan B or even C too, and she noticed and smiled back. What surprised me was that I didn’t retreat emotionally. Often in that situation I feel the stench of my failures—the bruises and scars on my psyche–too close to the surface and gently shy away. The line was too long to pursue anything, but at least my self esteem issues had been tamed. I walked along Flatbush toward the subway, sipping my iced latte on a January day feeling that much taller.

When I arrived at what was now “the old place” as I’d slept two nights in my new place, I realized immediately I wasn’t going to get it all cleared out, but I tried. Some neighbors pitched in lugging stuff to the trash porch, but even with a full day there, as well as all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning. There just wasn’t time to return the place to the clean, barren standard that I’d left my previous old place in 1992. The futility of the goal began to mirror in my mind the silly ambition of trying to build a writing income that would facilitate a Manhattan rental.

A wave of resignation swept across me, I had to sit down in my main room now surrounded by remnants of my old life. I sighed and realized that I was on deadline. This is what I love about writing on deadline, you have to separate the big picture into a bunch of manageable little pictures. With that I charged ahead clearing this corner or that corner. I angered Ms. Kondo by loading a few bags of stuff I just couldn’t leave behind. Finally, on Wednesday early afternoon, I was back from running vestiges of a much cooler me, a silver leather motor cycle jacket and a pinstriped suit among other things, to a thrift shop. I realized time was up. It was the 30^th and I had to be out by then, and even more pertinently, I needed to be in retail by 2. I packed my last bag of leftovers that I was taking to Brooklyn, and I looked at the place. It wasn’t how I wanted to remember it. I wanted to remember it for the good times but those were so long ago, yet powerful in ways that it made sense I held on for so long. Slowly, I went into each room and thought about the good times. Then I left, locked the door and went downstairs to post a letter to my neighbors thanking them for making the building such a gold standard for the concept of home. I didn’t really have neighbors but rather an extended family. That’s what was hard to leave. I taped the letter to the wall near the mailboxes and sat on the steps for a minute. The weight of it all was catching up to me.

I thought about a picture I’d seen from my collegiate graduation day. I’m with a bunch of classmates. Some look a little apprehensive about leaving the academic bubble, some are celebrating the moment of receiving an Ivy League degree. I’m looking dead at the camera, arms folded, smiling, with a confident air of “okay world, whatcha got?”

I have often worried about what that dude would think of my middle-aged self. There sure have been more bumps and bruises than I anticipated. I heard my 22 year-old self say, “this was an awesome chapter. C’mon, get up, let’s go write some more really great chapters.” I smiled, exhaled deeply and picked up my bag and headed for retail. My collegiate self was right, there was a lot more to do. Time to get at it. I felt so driven that I didn’t even look back on the old place when the door closed. I had work to get to, a new home in Brooklyn, and an abundance of possibilities to follow.

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