Sometimes you just gotta cut your losses.. You look back regretably knowing you got up waaaay early enough this morning to either bike or mass-transit your way into work like you wanted to do and promised to do, yet instead you got snared by various timesucking diversions and now you’re looking at the clock and its 7:45 and you come to the harsh realization that the only way you’re going to get to your gig on time is to drive… even though you despise doing that not just because you know that the 101 to the 110 southbound through downtown is a parking lot and because you detest getting another mile closer to the 100,000 mile mark on your truck’s odometer. Instead you’re pissed because you had made a deal with your better self and here’s yet another example of your inability to keep your end of the bargain.
Sure, you still could. The devil in you says the option’s there to scramble and get in the saddle or on the bus and fuck it be upwards of a half-hour late (or more). But you don’t succumb to that temptation. Instead now the goal of being at your desk at the stroke of 9 a.m. as you should be becomes something of a consolation prize. A redemption. A chance to take some of the bitterness out of the sour feeling that comes from letting yourself down even on such a small scale, all things considered.
And so you’re in your truck and out of the garage at 8:10, and you crawl across the 101 passing the public tennis courts on Glendale being played upon and wish you could be playing too. Then you creep with the slow flow spilling out of the bottleneck after joining the 110 and pick up a little speed south of downtown where you occasional watch your odometer tick of 99,617, 18, 19, 20 miles and then you get on the transition to the 105 and find that whatever agency in charge of doing it has finally and mercifully removed the decaying carcass of the pitbull dead on the shoulder since the previous Thursday and after exiting to surface streets you climb up to the fourth level and park in the massive garage and drape your ID badge around your neck and say good morning to the security guard and ride the elevator to the 7th floor and sit down in your cubicle at 8:58 a.m.
You’re pleased. And sad.
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