This afternoon I was working a small job that I don’t like but pays for a few days’ worth of sustenance.
I got roped into a conversation where my mental health and professional future (and their combination) were the main topic of discussion.
This led me to leave later that I had anticipated. It started raining and I didn’t have any form of protection. I had to take an Uber, which is obviously more expensive.
I arrived late to my second destination slightly wet. I managed to do what I had to do before closing time. The rain got worse.
My only real option was to wait where I was. The rain had no signs of stopping (and it still hasn’t at the moment of writing this) so I could either wait for an unknowable period or risk getting wet. In either case, the wind was blowing, so I was getting wet no matter what.
This place is close to home (merely a 15–minute walk) so it made sense waiting a bit. Then, the rain stopped and I went on. Then, the rain came back with a vengeance and I had to find a new shelter with greater urgency than before.
I came to a small stand on the side of the road, where this person sold snacks, cigarettes and N-95 masks. This was less than perfect, of course, given that the beach umbrellas were set to protect from sunlight rather than rain, so they provided cover only from the waist up, while we got diagonal rain on our pants and shoes.
Then the rain stopped and then it restarted. My new shelter was worse than the last and I had the occasional drop fall directly to my head through a crack in the tarp.
Then it ceded again, and again it returned. This time I had a nice, strong, ample tarp just outside the glass walls of an office where people could see me.
Then it stopped again and the wind resumed, so my glasses quickly acquired a layer of droplets, cute when they’re in focus but sight-blurring when they stand an inch from your eyeballs. The options at that point were to (1) take my glasses off and rely on my myopia-and-astigmatism ridden eyes; (2) walk with water blobs that make almost everything blurry, or (3) clean my glasses every so often.
All of those are potentially dangerous options, either for me or someone else on the road (cars, bicycles, motorcycles, other pedestrians…) so I need to walk very slowly, with only minor attention to puddles (my feet are completely soaked at this point, and avoiding puddles is only a matter of how much I’ll have to clean my shoes tomorrow). Slowly, much slower than I would.
The 15–minute walk ends up taking over an hour between stops and slow-walking.
And the only thing I can think of is how much this trip home resembles my own life.