logs

Days 15 through 28 are no longer missing — I went back and filled in weeks 3 and 4, so the numbering runs straight through after all. Same rule as those posts: the bullet points are Claude’s, written from my notes. The paragraphs are mine.

Day 29: Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Okay I’m catching up on writing some of these logs (Aug 11 today) but wow Claude randomly filled in some of these logs. I think it could be interesting to see if Claude can generate enough content for me to recall days that were long past. And I can fill in the rest with what happened in between. That way I have some written record, but removes a lot of the activation energy. A counterpoint is that recall is an important reason why I write these logs.

  • The storage saga finally unblocked. I’d booked a unit in Long Island City for an August 3 move-in, showed up on the day with boxes, and found somebody else’s stuff already in it. Nobody at the company could tell me why, because the whole operation is remote-staffed — there is no person at the building who could walk over and look at the unit before assigning it to me. Exactly the kind of failure mode you write off as irrelevant right up until the one day it isn’t.
  • Got sorted today and started hauling. The unit turns out to be a 5x10 rather than the 5x5 I had in my head.
  • Clothes should go in soft bags rather than boxes. Boxes are for dense things and for stacking; clothes are light and bulky, so putting them in a box mostly stores the air around them.
  • Dutch Kills at night with my old manager, I really enjoyed it. Alternate account was the standout. Also the aku aku, the freshman daiquiri, a rum barrel, a captain grog, some old fashioned variant, and a carajillo to close. He put me onto Scarlet, a Japanese amaro — apparently a whole category of these never makes it to the US. Filed away for October.

Day 30: Thursday, August 6, 2026

  • Pure packing day. Clothes sorted into what flies with me versus what sits in a unit until 2027, then the bathroom, then the kitchen.
  • Organizing an izakaya dinner before I leave. Seven confirmed and a few maybes, a bigger number than I expected. Need to actually call and book rather than keep assembling the list.

Day 31: Friday, August 7, 2026

  • Went to the unit and found it unlocked.
  • I scramble the dials to one specific number when I leave, precisely so that a different number means somebody has been in there. So this should have been readable. Instead it was open, which tells me nothing except that either I autopiloted the whole pull-and-set in a daze, or somebody else did. I’ve been running on very little sleep and I can’t rule myself out. What I can rule out is ever knowing, because a padlock keeps no record, and the only photo I have of the unit is from before my things went into it.
  • What actually bothers me is that the storage company holds the combination to the lock they issued me. So I swapped in my own lock today. That was already the right move before this morning; today just made it urgent.
  • Rest of the day was the desktop coming apart and getting packed, the last run to the unit, and the apartment going empty.
  • Tomorrow’s flight to SFO got cancelled and rebooked to Sunday, so Saturday turns into an extra working day instead of a travel day.

Day 32: Saturday, August 8, 2026

  • The bonus day from the cancelled flight — the last full day in New York. Nothing recorded about what it went to.

I spent most of this day packing and hanging out with friends.

Day 33: Sunday, August 9, 2026

  • Flew NYC to SFO in the morning. Landed in the Bay Area with fifteen days until the Tokyo flight on the 24th.

Day 34: Monday, August 10, 2026

  • Wrote a list and did approximately none of it: IDP, Japan planning, Japanese, arrange an initial tutor lesson, video camera, shoes. Almost all of it rolled to the next day.
  • The video camera keeps reappearing as a question mark rather than a purchase, which by now is its own answer.

Okay Claude is wrong here, I at least got the IDP done which was nice.

Day 35: Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Back in California, and the first day I’ve actually been productive since landing. I met up with a friend who’s traveling here for work which is nice. Currently catching up on some productive stuff in Philz, after I crank some of this out I might look to run a few more errands before going home and looking at learning some Japanese. But honestly feels good to get some stuff done again, it’s not quite work but does take some mental activation energy to sit down and get stuff done.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about is perhaps arranging some of my vlogs into video essays about cool concepts. Maybe do one once a week when I have some time. I used to do something similar when I blogged for the first time, and I could adapt some of those essays into my noncompete vlogs. But alternatively I do think noncompete could be a good time to reflect and turn some of the relevant thoughts/ideas into a vlog essay! Perhaps I can have AI help look through a lot of the things I’ve written/thought about and give me some inspiration.