1/14 The shoplifting battle rages on in the drugstores here on the border between Manhattan and Harlem. Even in a well-kept drugstore like the CVS on 86th and Amsterdam, most of the shelves are now always locked behind plexiglass doors, and you need to press a button for someone to come and open it for you. In a well-kept store, there will always be several employees scheduled to do nothing but jump between the aisles and open shelves for customers. And tonight, for the first time, I notice that you can open the shelves yourself with the CVS app, on which you need to register with your name and phone number and email. Curious how that will work out. How difficult can it be for a shoplifter to get that app and register? Let’s find out.

1/13 Shared workday at J’s place. The intensity, the silence, the sounds of the keyboards. Noticing each other in passing. Boundless exhaustion at night, and we don’t even quite understand why.

1/12 I wore, by my standards, very average attire to the gym here in Newburgh, just a wrestling singlet, but in a conservative setting like here it draws attention. A guy half my age walked up to me and asked where he could buy something like that. The other day an older, long-bearded man stood for almost a minute and, as I realized slowly, was staring at me in disbelief. I don’t feel awkward because I am not consciously daring anything, I don’t need to fake confidence because I have it, I simply do things that for me are natural. I may be very mistaken just how offensive I am to the people around here, fifty miles from the city.

1/11 I am lost. I no longer have any coordinate system into which my thoughts fit. I am lost politically, scientifically, technologically. No, of course it isn’t so, I am still operating under many implicit, unshakable beliefs, and yet I have lost a crucial, essential part of knowing where to go and what to do.

1/10 Newburgh. First time at the Blu Pointe, where the waiter puts me into my place by offering so many things with such weird words at rapid speed that I barely realize what is happening.

1/9 Got asked for the first time whether I wouldn’t be able – and wouldn’t want to – retire already. No, I like my job so much. I want to work at least another 5 or 10 years. Really? Am I not just a little afraid?

1/8 Canary in a coalmine: A customer was not getting the numbers they expected. This was because the system took one gigabyte to be 1024**3 bytes, not 1000**3 bytes. They went on to check the numbers, not using a calculator app, but asking a Microsoft AI to convert them, not actually telling it about the base-2 thing, they just seemed to know that Microsoft likes to operate in base-2.

1/7 I want to do all the new things, voraciously, while keeping track, meticulously, of what I lose, and then do all of the things that I would otherwise have lost, also.

1/6 It used to be only in Ubers that I wondered what our conversations sound like in the ears of the driver. Now I hear that all the time, even when we’re alone.

1/5 Took my last chance for another run before there will be snow tomorrow.