Perspective
Day 10 | $0 paid | $90,717 till freedom
Financially speaking, today could have gone a lot better.
No Saturday pedi-cabbing. I canceled three morning meetings at work to go downtown and get my chauffeur's license so that I could ride this game-day Saturday and make up to $400. Without the license, the pedicab owner, we'll call him Nick, wouldn't put me on the schedule. So I texted him as soon as I got the license, and he texted back that the Saturday slots were already full and I would be the first alternate. Fail.
I got back to work at around noon and over 80 emails had accumulated in my inbox during my morning absence. I answered about ten of them before my afternoon of back-to-back meetings kicked off and put me even further behind in my inbox-clearing efforts. Fail.
Broken bike. On my way from downtown to work, I stopped to fuel up my bike. I tried to start it up after I was done filling it, but the engine kicked over only a couple of times before the battery died and the starter became inoperable. I had to get off the bike and run-start it. To run-start a bike, put it in neutral, get on the left side of the bike with both feet on the ground, squeeze the clutch lever with your left hand, grasp the right grip with your right hand, then run with the 400+ lb beast until you pick up sufficient speed, throw your right leg over the bike, sit down, shift into first gear with your left foot, let go of the clutch, and roll on the throttle. If the bike is going fast enough to start the engine, you're good to go. If not, the bike will skid to a stop and you'll have to repeat. Onlookers will laugh. You will not.
This problem has been rearing its ugly head ever since last week. The curious thing is that the bike starts up just fine if it's cold, but refuses to start up if it's warm.
I called up the shop, and the tech told me it could be one of three things: a bad battery ($170), a bad starter ($200), or a bad charging system ($400). Fail.
No promotion? I still haven't gotten a formal offer letter for the internal promotion, and the VP just issued a hiring freeze. Fail.
No roommate? The potential roommate still hasn't confirmed our 7:30 PM interview for tomorrow that I emailed her about 24 hours ago. I've already turned down four other candidates because I promised her that I would hold the room for her. Fail. I lose $15 for every day I hold this room open for her.
Net net, today was not a profitable day.
To top it all off. My city is burning and an enormous inferno is putting people out of their homes and destroying memories. Fail.
...Actually, that kind of puts my whiny little complaints into perspective, doesn't it? This morning, my neighborhood smelled like a huge campfire and the air was thick with smoke. There was no cause for alarm, however, since some weird atmospheric phenomenon had diffused the smoke over the entire city and the fire was actually many miles away from my house. I should be safe. The same cannot be said for a lot of people, however, many who have already lost their homes, some who have lost their lives. My heart goes out to them.
Net net, I actually have a lot to be thankful for.