Locked Out

One of my little tricks is to carry a pocket backpack with me when I go out for a run. Since I don't consume much living on my own, it's the perfect size to pack with groceries on my way back while staying virtually unnoticeable during my exercise. A few days ago, a little bit rushed for time because of a looming thunderstorm, I forgot to grab it as I went out the door. Luckily, I realized my mistake within a few steps. Unluckily, I realized I also forgot the key to my apartment. 🙈

The little issue here is that my front door is one of those pesky locked-by-default designs, where just closing it requires a key to be opened again. Backtracking the few steps back to my apartment, a sense of dread closed in as I desperately rummaged around my pockets, smothering the last flickers of hope.

Naturally, I also don't bring my phone on my runs. Phones are too bulky! Then what was I to do?

I wandered around the block to an office building with staffed reception to call the rental agency. Of course, without my phone, I couldn't look up the number to call. But that wasn't a problem; for some reason, the receptionist had their number saved (apparently she was quite used to seeing this!). After a few minutes of being juggled around various colleagues, they told me that due to some permutation of excuses involving busy scheduling, poor weather, bad traffic, lack of staff, etc. etc. the earliest someone could unlock my door was at 3 pm. And the current time was 10:30 am!

How bad can it be?

Upset might be too strong a word for how I felt at first, but I certainly felt a little dispirited at that moment.
I don't want to speak for everyone, but I think many of us are accustomed to a constant and instant connection to all the endless distractions of the internet. As long as you have a phone, boredom is a completely foreign concept.

Suddenly losing that can make you feel a little defenseless.
How can you choose which restaurant to step into without perusing a thousand reviews first? How can you watch a movie without equipping yourself with the collective opinion of the internet? What if you're waiting for the bus and have nothing to do?

But I wasn't going to freeze, and I wasn't going to starve. So I felt a little embarrassed that my first feeling was dismay.

After this momentary emotional swing, I scrapped my running plan since I definitely wouldn't want to spend the next few hours in sweaty clothes.

No, this was a great chance for a little adventure. What would you do? You have no electronics but quite a few hours to spend. I think there's a comment section somewhere on this page. ⬇️

What Next?

So I hope we haven't strayed too far into the territory of LinkedIn-style, fake-inspirational preaching tone. Here, I'll keep it simple in recounting what I did and a few things I noticed.

I decided the library made the most sense as a place to stay for a while. I had been there a few times before, and I'd say it's my favorite place in the town where I live. On the way I really took my time though, stopping by places I would normally breeze past. One clothing shop caught my eye as a potential source of nice summer cycling apparel. I meandered through it, but nothing quite fit my target image.

this is my kind of summer bike outfit

Then I stumbled across a little unnamed, unbranded, unremarkable Asian grocer on the other side of the street. If I wasn't actively looking for new spots I would have completely missed it! I checked at home; it's not even labeled on Google Maps. This was perfect for me since I've been ramping up my cycling addiction recently and wanted to try making rice cakes, but regular grocery stores don't carry glutinous sticky rice to get the best chewy texture. I can't wait to finish the spice cake I made in my rice cooker (sounds funny but it actually worked quite well 🤔) so I can move on to something even tastier!

Eventually I did end up at the library, though now with a new problem: which book to read? The last time I faced this issue I went into a hackathon and made an app to find ratings for books on a shelf. Oops, that isn't possible anymore, so back to the old-fashioned way.

I noticed the English section was very heavy on the romance and murder mystery genres, which I don't read much of normally. Thankfully, they still put summaries on the back cover of books and I found one I ended up enjoying quite a bit. Well, at least the first 4 chapters were interesting; time will tell how the rest holds up.

In the end...

...made it home, happy to be back! From one perspective the day seemed entirely wasted: I didn't get to have my run and I didn't finish any work either. But I'm choosing to think of it as an enriching experience; it ended up being fun to explore again without being tethered to technology (perhaps befitting the date, Liberation Day).

Though now every time I close my door, I twitch with a tiny twinge of panic even if I have double checked I have my key...