I can tell something is wrong when I arrive at Starbucks.
It is 5:15 a.m., and I am typically one of the first people at the café. (It is the first stop on the morning dog walk.)
Aside from the normal collection of doctors and nurses, there is a strange, short man standing by the half-and-half. He’s mumbling and shaking.
I look over to the barista, who is glaring at the man, who is apparently high.
Putting creamer in my coffee then becomes a logistical problem.
The high-guy is blocking the creamer and obviously going through something. He catches my wide-eyed stare and asks, “Do you have a problem? Do you want a problem?”
“No, just half-and-half,” I reply, while making a grab for it.
“I think you want a problem,” High-Guy says.
“Nope. Pretty sure that’s inaccurate. K, bye.”
I’m out the door and booking it down the street with Gunter within seconds. Getting into it with a crackhead is not on the agenda this morning.
Timing is essential for the morning dog walks.
5:30 a.m. is the sweet spot. It’s before Starbucks and the roads get too busy, but late enough that Katy Trail isn’t scary.
I left the house at 4:30 a.m. this morning and entered the trail by Highland Park – that is how I learned that the lights for Katy Trail don’t turn on until it is closer to 5:30 a.m…so I was essentially walking by myself in a pitch black isolated trail.
It didn’t feel incredibly safe.
I was equally as concerned about getting mugged as I was about the dog getting attacked by a stray cat or possum – a possum family actually jumped out at us a few days ago, and I basically trampled my dog trying to pull him away.
It was a loud hot mess.
The 6-mile morning walks are often the most social part of my day.
I work and freelance from home, so ordering coffee at 5 a.m. is often the only face-to-face conversation that I have for the entire day.
This type of 12-hour “work from home” schedule seems like it should feel incredibly isolating, but I spend my days plugged into a firehose of emails, tweets, instant messages, and conference calls. It’s actually more emotionally draining than working in the office.
I also don’t know what the alternative would be – the Thomson Reuters corporate campus is a 30 minute tollway drive, and my division has no presence there.
I would essentially sitting in a visitors’ cube if I worked from the Dallas campus. I probably would have less interaction there than my current “crackheads and possum” excitement on the morning dog walks.
Then again, that’s still a pretty charmed problem to have, isn’t it?
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