It is 2pm and I am debating whether to ditch for the rest of the afternoon or not. I really need to write and I can seem to start a sentence. Maybe because I am on day five of an eight day consecutive work stretch, maybe it’s because I’m writing to the same level of challenge I had many years ago, but mostly because just because. I walk out to the 711 behind my office building and it is a glorious day. Bright sunshine, with interloping clouds to make it not too bright nor too hot. I buy a diet coke and m&ms and make my way back to my office. Stay or go. My irish (or is it catholic or is it sibling or is it middle class) guilt kicks in and I think it is too early to leave. True, I have been at the office since 7:20am, so technically, nearly a full day by most any standards except my own. But I really need to write, not write like I do in this blog, but write in a way that instructs our coders what they should write in order for them to write the code that makes our product what it is. I used to be one of those coders and miss that time and think what I do now would not be so useful to me if I was one of those coders. So I struggle with what is useful and what is not, and then next thing you know I checking email which is a complete waste of time. Then I decide that after a 1:1 I should keep with an intern, I will head out, on foot, and into the sunshine towards home. 4pm comes and I do just that. A quick subject only email to my co-workers that I’m leaving early leaving and then I am out. Onto the street, Zhichun Lu, headed east, head set on, listening to some old music that I recently rediscovered. This area of town doesn’t have a ton of foreigners yet on my walk, I encountered several, all white. First, late 20s woman, very fit, on bike and riding confidently. Then a series of old men, which is to say they are probably my age but looked a lot older to me. And they looked weird. One had orange hair. Another looked like he woke up on the street and hadn’t showed for days. Another was sun withered and smiled at me as I past. I was trying not to think of them as my future self-incarnated but the thought did cross my mind and linger for a block or two. Eventually, I walked into a subway station and took it to Sanyuanchao, my normal stop and then continued my trek home. Three of four or five times before, I had walked all the way from work to home. It isn’t actually that far – 9 miles as the crow flies – but long enough that I don’t do it often. It takes me 35 minutes to walk from subway station to home and I was enjoying some podcasts as I went. As I got close to home, three beggar women with three beggar children were walking in the opposite direction. The children looked oddly familiar. They had on old clothes that used to be Aidan, Lydia, or Elisa’s and which Lydia decided to give away a few weeks back. The beggar women smiled, didn’t asked for anything more, and recognized me as Lydia’s father. And then I was home.