How to avoid indecision

Living car-free has its perks

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Dear friend —

Should your car ever get into a wreck while you’re peacefully sleeping in bed, you’ll wake up to a world grown smaller. Gone — or at least delayed — will be your plans to explore your new city, gallivanting on beaches and salsa dancing at various night spots. Your adventures will be consigned to within four miles of your home.

It’ll be kind of nice!

Limit life to the boundaries of your neighborhood, and you’ll discover a lot of interesting fun stuff close by — at least if you happen to be in South Park, San Diego. I drank a Miracle Cure at a hip vegan restaurant with a fancy mocktail list. I brunched at a nonprofit restaurant known for its fried chicken. I snacked on a sweet basil mint choco bar from a fair trade chocolatier that also sold sparkle. (sign on door: “Life is short. Make it sparkle.”) 

But the biggest benefit to not leaving my neighborhood is that it dramatically limited my choices. 

No more bouts of indecision, trying to decide where to get my hair trimmed! There was just one place close enough for me to walk to during a work break. Actually, there were two — but Thee inglorious Blacktree Barberia seemed to cater to a different kind of customer, so Salon on 30th it was. I made an appointment, walked over masked, then hovered uncertainly at the entrance (sign on door: “PLEASE WAIT OUTSIDE FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT. Limiting The Number of People Inside Keeps Us All Safer!”).

Tess, my stylist, wore a cheerful daisy-print mask. “I have seven chickens!” she told me, snipping my bangs. She also had two dogs, two cats, and some other animals too — including, I think, a turtle? She and her boyfriend had been living in Coronado, but had decided to move to a different suburb of San Diego where they could have more space — and more animals. “When we have more eggs than we can eat, I’ll bring them to the salon to share —” 

Local adventures continued. I stopped by a florist and got a little soft dinosaur for my four-year-old nephew. I spent a fervent hour putting together a friend’s birthday present at a boutique with an assemble-your-own-gift-box deal. I went to a taco place but had to leave tacolessly because I’d forgotten my wallet and the restaurant didn’t take Apple Pay — boo.

It was all fun, but there was a problem: South Park shuts down early. Pretty much all bookstores, shops, and coffee shops closed their doors by five, which meant there was almost nothing to do in the evenings except dine out. 

So I joined a yoga studio with evening classes.

When my neighbor Sean saw me on the sidewalk with a yoga mat, he said, “Ah, going to South Park Yoga?” Yes, I was indeed going to the one yoga studio in the neighborhood — a pretty space with a gorgeous skylight. The first class I took was taught by a sweet older woman who’d been part of the studio for some 15 years, the second by a sound bath guy with a loud, clompy walk and a penchant for hitting his little bell so hard and so often I kept startling.

When I returned for a third class, I noticed for the first time the sign on the door: Masks required. Oh no! Was this a new regulation? I hadn’t brought a mask with me because I hadn’t needed one the previous visits. Quietly, I started panicking — then looked in the glass walls to see no one inside was wearing a mask, not even the check-in person sitting smilingly behind the desk. Then I looked at the sign again: Masks required if unvaccinated.

The class was great but hard, sweaty. I attempted a headstand without the wall! I did not succeed.

Tell me about the signs on the doors of your neighborhood.

Love,

Siel

On another day, I walked to the ocean

Three links you might love

1. The ambiguous loss of (probably) not selling my novel. “Though I’ve had my share of self-doubt in the past, I’ve always managed to find the smallest shred of faith and let it carry me through; now I think, with the most seriousness I have mustered in over two decades of writing, about giving up all together, which feels more reasonable than writing more books no one else will read.”

2. I woke up from a coma and couldn’t escape the guy pretending to be my boyfriend. “I started receiving various stories about what had happened. Some true, some, I would eventually come to realize, fiction.”

3. If America had six parties, which would you belong to? I ended up in the progressive party. What about you?

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