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One by one the nurses lead us to a large room that reminds me of a stable, with privacy curtains instead of doors and medical chairs with wide wooden armrests instead of horses. The scale and speed of the operation makes me feel like I’m a cattle being led off to slaughter.

I am one of the youngest patients here. I can see it with my own eyes, but in case I couldn’t, I can tell when the assistant at the specimen return desk asks me if I’m bringing those back for myself or another patient. Yes, they’re mine, I say. In another time I might have wished it weren’t for me, but I think I’m far past that point now; besides, wouldn’t I rather it be me than any of my friends or family?

I see only one other patient in the waiting room clearly younger than me, a young girl. She can’t be more than thirteen, zooming around on a motorized wheelchair with service dog under her arm. It’s sometimes hard for me to feel gratitude on my solitary pilgrimages to the land of the sick, but there is still so much to be grateful for.

I get lucky today. Hailey picks a good vein that dries up right as the last of ten vacuum tubes is filled. The dark blood flows like molasses — it always does — but I’m thrilled to escape with only one stick, and a fairly painless one at that. She chats with me as the tubes fill slowly, asks me about work and New York. The small talk makes me feel better in the way small talk sometimes does: it keeps me talking, makes it harder for me to listen to the thoughts in my head. She takes the reins of my mind and points them toward brighter shores, even if for only a few minutes. I think about that effect for the whole walk home, whether the distraction is really a good thing, whether I should use it more or less when I’m not feeling good.

I asked J if she was free last night to talk and not only did she call, but she canceled on plans to do so. She told me they didn’t want to go to anyway and that I was simply a scapecoat [sic], but I’m still very touched. Sometimes I think I maybe don’t fully appreciate all my friends do for me (“you have a good support system,” J said on the call) and I want to make more of an effort to recognize when they show up and support me.

I also feel grateful that I am here during what seems to be a warm front. The high today is in the 80s, which I can scarcely believe because this very town saw temperatures below freezing a week ago.

I have a full day to kill today and I haven't yet made up my mind how I want to spend it. I have my iPad, a book (Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams), and paper and pen to keep me company. I'm not supposed to be eating much (unhealthy food), I think, and I can't stray very far from my hotel room. It's a shame this town is so sprawled out despite being so small: the nearest mall is an hour of walking away and public transportation is nonexistent. Should I go shop? Or…

🥠

Half past three now. I've gone thrifting and shopped for vinyl and groceries nearby but spent most of the day lounging around in bed. Not reading or writing as I planned, but rather in a catatonic state in front of my devices.

Last week I read an Ann Patchett essay about email. In it, she writes about what her life was like before:

Let me tell you the story of my own now-unimaginable past: I wrote my first novel at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., in the winter that finished off 1990 and began 1991. There was no internet, and none of us had cellphones or televisions. There were so many hours in every day and so few ways to spend them that after trying to figure out how to write a novel all day, I’d drive to Race Point beach to look at the stars.

“As though an infinite store had been discovered, more and more stars kept appearing,” Noe says about the nights in Faha. “The sky grew immense. Although you couldn’t see it, you could smell the sea.”

I was hoping to get a taste of those boundless expanses of time today. A often talks about her love for them, those stretches where you get so immersed in what you’re doing you lose track of time. What better setup than to have nothing to do in a hotel room in a small Midwestern town where no one knows your name? In typical me fashion I frittered most of the day away on my screens and even still today feels like an eternity. How many whole days, entire weeks have gone by without me noticing the passage of time like this? Would I feel older, more mature, more peaceful if I took time to do nothing and get bored more?

🥠

I dreaded this trip for a long time. The last time I came to the Midwest in winter I was stranded at the airport after a late flight. I could see the edges of my cloudy breaths in the air. All the taxis had gone home for the night and there were no Ubers or Lyfts around. I got sick within hours of arriving.

So far it’s been better this time around. I think a short change of scenery like this could be good for me every once in a while. It’s so quiet here, even downtown, and everywhere I look I see empty space and open sky. I stop to stare at grasshoppers and ladybugs and ginkgo leaves glowing with sunlight. It feels weird to not be able to do anything to distract myself from my boredom: I can’t clean my apartment, do chores, or hang out with a friend. Maybe I can budget a week at the end of every year to go to the middle of nowhere with a box full of books in a last-ditch attempt to hit my Goodreads goal for the year? Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, honestly.

Work was surprisingly busy today. My director (my manager's supervisor) flew in from London and asked to meet me in person, so I went into the office and took a call with him. It went okay. I felt a little nervous because my manager told me to lead the meeting minutes before it started, and afterwards she gave me some constructive criticism about how I could have better facilitated the flow of the meeting. While it's never easy for me to take criticism, I appreciate her pushing me out of my comfort zone and giving me feedback gently. Of all the managers I've had, she's probably the one I most enjoy working for.

Perhaps to soften the criticism, she also said that I come across as very confident and self-assured when I speak, a sentiment which the director echoed. It's something I hear a lot, and while it can be a source of comfort, I of course still feel the nerves jangling when I'm thrown into new or unfamiliar situations, especially when I haven't prepared. Words trip over my tongue and my voice wavers but I just need to accept that there's no way I'll get better without feeling this discomfort.

I've been out of sorts at work recently, just checked out mentally. The other day I sent out an email with some typos and formatting issues and I felt like an idiot when I got it sent back to me with a pile of redlined corrections. My boss was understanding, thankfully, but it feels like a wake up call. Most of the times I goof she probably doesn't even notice or say anything, and after how productive I was today feel like I should probably start going into the office more regularly, just so I can force myself to be a little more present during work hours.

A introduced me to some of her friends in the office and invited me to sit with them. They were all really nice, and even though we chatted quite a bit I got a lot more work done with them around. I should probably start using the desks out in the open more instead of cooping up in my own room all the time. I need the potential for passerby judgment to keep me on task. As much as I hate to admit it, I am definitely motivated more by the stick than the carrot. Only the thrill of competition and my ever unreliable curiosity do a better job than good ol' fashioned judgment or cold hard consequences.

I'm going to go pack now and clean the apartment so J doesn't come back to a dump. I'm a little worried about the traveling I have to do tomorrow — half an hour is the least amount of time I've had to catch a connection on paper — but I must say I'm a little excited to have roughly a day and a half of being stuck in a hotel room to do nothing and get bored. See you on the other side, fate permitting.