I was sitting at Bao Lao, my new Turn Key. Not an intentional transition. Life happens, people move on and suddenly you walk into a place and realize you don’t know anyone, kind of like looking at the 2026 Brewers roster and not recognizing a single name. Well. Almost. Yelich is the new Braun. Figures they’d WIN THE FUCKING WORLD SERIES after I recategorized professional sports as Bread & Circus. I did manage to catch game five on the good ole FM radio, and that felt right. Anyway. I prefer to pair my food with delicious company, which I guess means I’m more a fan of people than a brand. I go to talk to Brian the Bartender and eat the spring rolls + whatever else I’m feeling. There’s only like five things to choose from, that’s why I like it. Technically it serves as a holding space for people waiting for a table at Ahan, but I just go there to go there.

Brian wasn’t sure about me at first. I know this because he told me on my third visit. I’m not offended. My first words were a dramatic NOTHING! Alcohol is POISON! when he asked if he could get me something to drink, and I’m sure I didn’t stop there, I rarely do. What? It is. It’s literally a Group 1 carcinogen and we’re all like oh my god, why is everyone getting cancer as we guzzle poison directly linked to at least seven different cancers. But whatever, I stopped trying to make sense of it all when a hateful puppet with zero values, fewer morals and no logic but plenty of judgment dripped in vitriol allegedly became ‘Merica’s mouthpiece.

There are only four seats at the bar. It’s a small place. I’m not really sure what I would do if they were all taken, maybe just walk out? Luckily I’ve never faced that dilemma as I prefer to head over around 3:55pm, when I remember food is fuel and I’ve been running on empty. As a general rule I avoid timeframes regular people get jazzed for their third meal. It was almost 7. Prime people time. I don’t often have adequate meal fixings at home and I’m slightly disgusted by take-out since Burrito Drive up the street closed, finding myself in a weird food delivery boycott serving absolutely no one. So when faced with hunger do I walk to the grocery store and deal with the existential dread that everything on the shelves is poison wrapped in plastic, cook the handful of items deemed safe enough/make the conscious decision to throw caution to the wind, and then also clean? Feels like a lot of work when I could just suck it up and deal with the claustrophobia that crowds my enjoyment of people.

I had been in Little Rock, Arkansas for a week of work just the day before, driving 14 hours there and 11 hours home by choice _{^{(remember to pay attention + use your judgment; it’s okay to question GPS, especially when it takes you off the main road onto dirt roads in the middle of nowhere for seemingly no reason except to fuck with you).}} When you start to feel all the tiny invisible handcuffs imposed by the parasites of the world, your willingness to negotiate any third party for your most valuable asset (TIME) wanes in a dramatic fashion.

I’m so over airports and everything in them. The incremental 15 minute delays for six+ hours. The lack of information. Being trapped. The posturing. The entitlement. The money bought status reflecting the lack of actual class of those demanding the respect. Everything in the airport costing a bazillion unearned dollars.

The cheapest glass of wine on one menu was $27, $30 for the 9 oz pour, woo what a steal! The entire bottle costs $15 at my local liquor store and I bet they get it for half that. A career’s worth of experiences with airport diners kind of grosses me out and I refuse to waste any money on overpriced mini hummus and the six pretzels it comes with, even if it’s not my dime. Fuck that. I’d love to proclaim driving is cheaper than flying, though just barely at this point. No president actually cares about the price of gas, in fact it’s probably that way on purpose, we ain’t playing the same game.

And I would rather raw dog it in my new old lady car, no music, no podcasts, just my thoughts for half a day than watch one more dysfunctional family slog through a vacation. I know, I know, the opening scenes of Love Actually tell a different story, but holiday specials always do. If you’ve not heard by now, both can be true.

All that to say, that’s how I ended up sitting next to Annie and her husband, name forgotten because men are really not impressing me these days (though he seemed like an exception and maybe it started with a J). Not important, it was me and Annie and I liked her immediately. Our conversation flowed effortlessly, both elbow deep down the rabbit hole of the mad Mad World, naturally arriving at the they’re chopping the spines off rare booksssss feeding them into the machines and destroying the booksssss portion of the evening when she mentioned something about her old yearbooks and I was immediately YESSSSSS! PRESERVE THAT HISTORY! OR THEY’LL STEAL IT FROM US ALL!! I got mine right next to my bed. She continued her train of thought without skipping a beat but tagged with a verbal pin: I have follow up questions as to why they’re right next to your bed.

Fair. Their table was ready before we returned to my bedside yearbooks, so I never got to share that my house is small and I move things around for potential fits a lot. Sometimes I move shit away from its spot because it doesn’t belong there anymore without having any idea of where it does, so it just stays where I moved it because I don’t really hate it and now it kind of works. Like when I got home from thrifting one day, unpacked an old mirror atop a stack of books and there they all still are hanging out together on the kitchen table. I’ve even made a tiny altar around them. For now. Most things are.

Turns out, my new friend Annie went to high school with Ba Lao Bartender Brian and that tracks. Every time I drop by I seem to meet someone who randomly kinda knows him and none of them suck. As I walked home, maybe a little more proud of myself than I should have been for making the uncomfortable decision to put myself in a public place potentially tight on space, I visualized those yearbooks on the old bar cart right next to my bed, thoughts drifting to my stack of notebook journals, on the shelf below.

Years ago I went went through the laborious process of digitizing my diaries, journals, notebooks, artifacts, so I could “preserve history” have easy access, a record of my existence on Earth. It felt like the thing to do at the time. I laughed out loud. I can’t even charge my “old” iPhones anymore. Technology has changed so much since then, even if I knew what storage contraption their shadows were living on, could I retrieve them? Floppy disks. Compact discs. Memory cards. Flash drives. Hard drives. The connection ports required. Antiquated. Outdated. Useless. Garbage.

But you know what I do still have? Those single-subject, wide-ruled, sticker-adorned, spiral notebooks. The easiest access of all. On the shelf under the yearbooks. Right next to my bed. Taking up space, but like, the OG kind of space.

According to my calculations, Progress is just like Time. A flat circle.