decisions

After spending the majority of the day taking care of pre-holiday tasks, I readied myself for work and left with what I thought was more than enough time to get to my 5pm client. Anyone who has ridden the NYC subway system knows where this story is headed. Flash forward 25 minutes, and I'm still standing on the same damn train platform where exactly 1 train had stopped. A train which I decided not to take because it would have involved two switches, thus making it too much of a hassle (famous last thoughts). I decided to wait for the correct train, but it was a gamble I knew I'd lost when I heard the announcement that service into Manhattan had been temporarily suspended. Good times. Or rather, no time because I used up my entire buffer reading my book and listening to the rumble of trains headed to other stations in the distance. It's so hard to decide when to ditch a particular train. It's like waiting for the damn bus: you never know when it might show up, so you keep waiting because you've already invested such and such amount of time and how much would it suck if it came right after you gave up?? As I ran (literally) to the 2/3 station up the avenue, I imagined the B train arriving down below. These are not helpful thoughts. Thankfully, they didn't stick around very long because at a certain point you just have to choose your choice. So I hauled ass to the other station and settled in for another wait, happy to have brought a book good enough to distract me from my watch ("Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave"). The trains cooperated for the rest of the trip and after a leisurely jog (yes, I'm that dummy running down the sidewalk in work clothes with a book in their hand), I managed to beat my client to the session by about 3 minutes (his usual amount of lateness). And now in short form:

feet pounding the street
dodging strollers and pigeons
hurry up and wait

//

went from the sedate
state of baking cookies to
rushing and cursing

(there's something here with a sugar rush and rushing to the train but I don't have the brain power to put it together)

picture: out of service delivery truck on the side of the road, near Hartland, VT, June 2014, film, Canon Tlb