July 27, 2011

A shortish day in the office because I needed to get a haircut and because Kemi was coming in from out of town in the early afternoon, so I didn't really get to the office until 3.  Sigh.

The day was consumed primarily by two tasks:

1)  Finishing the blogpost about Soaking up the Annoying, which went up last night.
2)  Trying to write up some of the back-end requirements for the website, which I sent to Mark.

Nothing great.  Yesterday, Tuesday, was far more productive when I drafted up the entire fee structure issue and took care of that.  

July 25, 2011

Today started out a little weak.  I woke up at 10 am, rather than at 8 am when I planned to be up and I just didn't feel great.  I think I need to stop eating spicy foods -- even though I have no issues with the actual eating or the spiciness, it throws my digestion into disarray for a couple days at a time and I have learned that when my digestion is a little bit off, my entire sense of well-being goes off-kilter.  Plus, we are coming off of like 5 days of wretched heat-wave heat, where we are subjected to a barrage of sweating, followed by sluggish lounging to avoid any sort of re-heating effect.

We spent the entire day yesterday lying on the couch and watching The Office on Netflix for like 4 hours, and a couple of documentaries (Beer Wars, eh, not bad not good), Modern Family and Jackass.  It was a good day, but it was extremely sluggish.  We also left the house exactly one time to go to Ben's place to watch Breaking Bad (the episode felt like filler) and came back home drained.

Anyway, today was not such a bad day.

First, I wrote a nice email to Alie Shaper at Brooklyn Oenology in hopes of having a meeting with her to learn about her business finances and seeing if they would be interested in the Villager platform.  After, I went over to Continuum Cycles, where I had a 30 minute talk with Jeff, the owner, about his finances and the Villager platform.  I love the store and I love what they do and I would love if they would raise through Villager.  They are good people and it seems like their business model is perfect for Villager.  I also met a young teacher named Frank who works with the CB3 to try and change the business makeup of the east village.  He pointed out that the neighborhood has like 24 bars in a 500 foot radius and that it means no one visits the area during the daytime so more sustainable daytime businesses can't stay alive.  Their goal (12th Street Block Association) is to bring more daytime non-entertainment businesses to the area.  Very interesting stuff. I reached out to the head of the association, Jill Ackerman, to see if she'd be willing to meet.

P.S.  Alie Shaper just emailed me back.  Awesome.  

July 18

Been struggling quite seriously over the past couple of days to finish up an entirely too academic issue of identifying the correct scale for social investments.  The concept hit me like a bolt of lightning during a discussion with Slow Money NYC, but getting it into digestible and interesting text is a bit of a challenge.

Today has been so-so.  I feel terrible today.  Sore kidneys or something and dullness in my stomach.  I have a feeling this relates to the massive amounts of alcohol consumed over the weekend.  I take responsibility, but ugh.  Plus, it doesn't help that it's upwards of 95 degrees and muggy as fucking hell in New York right now.

As far Villager goes, today was first contact with a business!  I met with the owner/head chef of Egg Williamsburg and his number 2, who runs operations at the business.  Egg is a gorgeous little restaurant that serves straightforward, super high quality southern influenced foods.  Very charming, loved the space and the atmosphere.  The main issue is that they are seeking funding in the 500K range which is outside of Villager's ability to manage and probably isn't a good start case.  We did discuss financing alternatives for the restaurant and I tried to walk them through some of the alternatives, but it's abundantly clear to everyone in the small business world that the securities laws are unholy minefield entirely focused on stifling capital formation and only aiding those who can access high powered lawyers.  They offered to feed me and I reluctantly declined, having just consumed a large green juice down the street and we had a productive and quite pleasant conversation.  I hope to re-visit them in a later phase.  I liked them a lot.

I spent the rest of the day reviewing financial statements and business plans of various presenters at the Slow Money entrepreneur's showcase.  The amount of cash flowing in and out of these companies is interesting to see on paper.  I'm not sure how much money I expected a small business to make or how much profit they would see, but in many ways it is lower than I expected.  Margins are also quite tight.

I also spent the rest of the day feeling lethargic and generally crappy.  My bike sprung a flat after my meeting with the Brooklyn Torch (local currency) ladies and someone stole Kristen's front tire in the course of the evening.  Bunch of fucking savages in this town.

July 12 and July 13, 2011

I don't think I really remember much of July 12.  Not for any particular reason, but just cuz.

So....the big event of July 12 was the "Find a Co-Founder" event that took place on a private terrace, a 4,000 square foot private terrace to be precise, where 400+ entrepreneurial types gathered for free drinks and ostensibly a chance to meet a co-founder.  As could be expected, almost everyone that showed up was some person with a business idea seeking help in executing that idea.  This is pretty much the prevailing theme in NYC startup culture.  I certainly was not looking for a Co-Founder, I was just forcing myself to go to a networking event of this nature (which I totally hate) and just getting used to the friction of having to cold-introduce myself to dozens of people.  Among the people I met included the founder of Rent-Hackr, who wants to bring transparency to rents but has no clear strategy on how to get thousands of people to sign up when you need thousands to have a starting point, a video conference consultant and a reporter who started writing down everything I said, even though I spent most of that time talking about Villager and how frothy and ridiculous the tech scene is.  I drank beer.  It was just fine.  I am a natural relationship builder -- I am not a natural networker.  I also found a woman who wants to build a "social gifting" sight, but refused to reveal her "twist" her "secret" her "special little design" which really wasn't that secret.  (As you can tell, I got the secret out of her.  I kept a straight face.)   Afterwards, I made my over to Williamsburg for the Gastronauts event and add tongue tacos, congealed blood, gorgeous Van Leeuwen ice creams, pork chop over rice and paired it all with...Rolling Rock.  Mmmm.  (New york is fucking hot these days and sitting outside in my suit was a no no).

Other than that, I spent quite a bit of time refreshing myself on securities laws in preparation for a Slow Money NYC small working group meeting the next day and also studied up on the models they were considering.  It should be interesting.   I also chose some more samples I received from my web designer.  That guy is the tits.

Today, July 13 has been better.  I just had lunch with Amy Cortese, author of Locavesting, at Rucola, a beautiful little restaurant in Boerum Hill that serves all local, organic foods.  Delicious food, great conversation and really got along well.  Hopefully this relationship continues on and that we have a long fruitful partnership in working on local projects.  At 4 pm today, I will be attending the Slow Money Investors meeting to explore options of how to invest in farms and organic food in NYC.  I hope that my years of organic farming, Pollan-fever and securities law background are a good fit for what they need.

ALSO, I received an email back from Egg in Williamsburg who are trying to raise money for a farm in upstate New York.  They are excited to talk about Villager and I really hope they are a good first target for our pilot. First business contact!  Whoo hoo!!

Update:

The meeting with Slow Money NYC (Investors Inspired by Slow Money) at Faber Daeufer & Rosenberg was quite productive, not least because I was gathered in a room with many people with similar food and investment philosophies as well as a mix of accredited investors and, of course, Amy.  From my memory, I met a dude named Michael, who worked at an investment fund, Derek Denckla (the chairman and serial social entrepreneur), Amy Cortese, Steve Godeke (an investment manager and business prof at NYU), Holly Howard (on steering committee and works at Egg Williamsburg, who we are going to be speaking to next week), Nicole Reed (steering committee, need to follow up), Brian Kaminer (Steering committee, need to follow up), Sam Kressler (a finance guy who didn't survive the cataclysm who went into food systems and is now trying hard to get back into a big bank...) and Evan Wagner, who is in Green construction.  

The thrust of the discussion was finding ways to foster an actual investment platform for agriculture and slow food.  The discussion was slightly discursive at times and the chairman of Slow Money NYC was quite good at explaining a lot of the possibilities. We had a hard time finding focus, but I think it was a relatively productive session, not least because people began to develop a baseline familiarity with each other (at least us new ones) and I was able to make some of my views heard.  

In particular, it was entirely unclear whether the point was to democratize slow money financing for the public or whether it was merely to channel capital to preserving the foodshed.  I think the issues faced are entirely different on both sides.  If you are trying to channel capital, then you are targeting accredited investors.  Among accredited investors, you are probably shit out of luck targeting institutional investors or funds, who do not invest in "high risk, low return."  That leaves you with rich folks.  Ultimately, as I said during the meeting, what we are pricing into these investments is a positive externality.  You are never going to be able to get a single individual to "invest" in high risk, low reward investments if you expect to provide a return, social or economic.  They, investing 1 million dollars, will never reap enough social reward to give up that giant chunk of money unless it is a form of philanthropy.  I argued that on a small scale, of 100 dollars or 200 dollars, people are able to reap the social return on investment and externality because their contribution was small.  Thus our focus should be on expanding opportunities to the retail level.  Otherwise, it was charity.  

I think I need a more fulsome post about this on the Villager blog.  To the top of the list!

July 7, 2011

Day 3 of the raw food / only plants day was in some ways better and in some ways worse.  I certainly feel a little less ill than I normally do, when I eat myself into a stomachache and coma three times a day, but I find it difficult to cope with the gnawing hunger.  It is amazing how much food I don't have to eat, but nevertheless cram myself full of.  After waking up to a crazy green juice Kristen made out of lettuce, chard, kale, apple and some other fruit or other, I went to the office by bike, sweating the whole way over the bridge and sweating another 30 minutes in the office.  I LOVE new york in the summer, but sometimes it can be a little bit brutal.

Today I did a full re-write of the Villager Questionnaire for individuals to get a sense of lender demand.  I decided to eschew the corporate voice and just write in my own voice.  It is still slightly sanitized, but hopefully it's not all that different from how I used to write on this blog.  I'm sick of corporate voices and corporate language and the jargon that glazes over communication with a slick veneer of vagueness.  Maybe it will land with a pitiful thud, but might as well give it a go.  I don't want to become what annoys me.

I also spent a significant amount of time researching methods of credit analysis and re-examined the Five C's of credit analysis: Capacity, Conditions, Collateral, Character and Capital.  After going through each prong, I realized that Villager fulfilled each of these issues in innovative new ways and was excited to go through and write it up.  As usual, my first run was extremely subpar and my final was only slightly better.  I need to spend a little more time with this, but I think it is important and useful.

There was also a torrential downpour that appeared from nowhere and disappeared as quickly.  Not before the Manhattan Bridge spawned dozens of beautiful little waterfalls and the sewage line in the office parking lot began spewing sewage, flooding the cars up to their bumpers.  Gross, but still kinda interesting.

July 6, 2011

Sent out an email to Jessica  at Greenlight Bookstore, who had capitalized their business with community funding.  She's out of town until the 10th, but hopefully I will hear back from her soon after.  Got her information from Amy Cortese, the author of Locavesting.  Hoping I can learn a lot here. 

Scheduled a lunch with Amy Cortese at Rucola for next Wednesday.  Also very excited to see what she can tell me about the brooklyn local finance scene. 

Spent some time reviewing securities offering exemptions and options for small businesses.  Made a small business securities grid to prepare for meeting with BedStuy organic. Met with Darell Brown and Evelyn Oliver of Organic BedStuy to discuss their financing options.  They are a startup, but are trying to create an organic grocery in BedStuy, which is a virtual food desert, so hopefully that works out.  Fortunately and unfortunately, they are seeking a relatively small slug of capital ($85,000), so they may have some difficulty getting any investment.  Very interesting to meet them and hope they do well. 

Discussion with Mark O. today about the possibility of coding the back-end of the platform, which he says shouldn't be too complicated.  Am interested to see what type of product he can put together and see if it can form the foundation of the site.

Swapped some emails with James G. about setting up the servers and the PayPal sandbox.  Hope to pull the trigger on those arrangements as soon as I get the incorporation documents back from the NYSOS.   Hurry up!

The biggest issue is to just get out there and start talking to businesses.  I need to figure out a game plan for this, I am stalling and I don't have any good reason for it other than just being nervous about the process.  I'm hoping to spark that process by creating a few more organic relationships that get my foot in the door rather than blindly soliciting, so we shall see how that goes for a couple more weeks, otherwise I will need to just suck it up and get going.

***

This is also the third day after we watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead", which is a documentary about an aussie who decided he was too fat and too sick and went on a 60 day juice fast across the United States.  Pretty remarkable stuff.  I was entirely skeptical and definitely had the "oh here we go again" thought once I saw him making juice in the back of his SUV...but after the first 30 minutes I was hooked.  It was fascinating to see the changes he underwent.  Even more fascinating is his encounter with a morbidly obese truck driver who he happened to encounter at a truck stop and the unbelievable transformation the truck driver underwent after attempting his own juice fast.  Pathos galore.  I didn't pull this hard for Rudy.  (well maybe)

In any case, Kristen and I were so enthralled we decided to go on a 3-day mini fast:


Cooked food once a day.
No alcohol.
No meat.
No eggs.
No dairy.
No fish.
No flour.
No refined sugar.
No simple carbohydrates.
Lots of green smoothies and fresh juices.

I have to admit -- this shit is difficult.  I find myself hungry ALL of the time.  Even after eating a barrel of vegetables, my stomach feels oddly hollow.  I am grumpy.  I am just sorta uncomfortable and not really in the mood to eat another raw piece of vegetable. 

That being said, I do feel strangely better that I am just filling my body entirely with plants, lots and lots of greens, lots of water, nutrients and nothing refined. Also, even though the first day was kinda shitty, the second day feels normal.  Lets see how the third day goes. 

(Why only three days?  Visiting Kristen's family down at the shore this weekend and it's unlikely that we are going to be eating only vegetables and not drinking anything.  And we don't want to have a conversation about it.  I, myself, find myself very easily annoyed by dietary zealots and raw foodists and juice people and fasters, etc.  I just am curious and already fully subscribe to "Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  Why not see how it goes?)

July 1, 2011

So the Digital Dumbo event (sponsored by Big Fuel) basically exemplified all of the things I don't really like about networking:  Lots and lots of fashionable young people crowded into a giant sweaty room, the twitter stream for the event writ large on a screen, "Like" stickers that you are supposed to stick on each other's customized T-shirts to demonstrate how much people like you for some sort of contest and just a pervasive sense of "awesome awesome awesome!" in a way that's not awesome.  I will continue to go to these events and hopefully meet some interesting people, but it's just not all that fun.

Today was not a very productive day, I suppose.  We woke up at 11, went to lunch with Jeff M. at B&H (good dude, good food) and then we arrived at the office around 3:30 pm with all sorts of gear in tow: a new television, some cables, a twelve pack of old school Rolling Rock.

I had a long productive talk with James G. about his web development contract and we talked through the ins and outs of print and digital design so that he could get to work in earnest on the development.  And then drank beer.

Now Kristen is going to help me develop my forecasts so I can determine how many accounts I need in order to make my first dollar and then my first billion and a half.  Oh yeah.

Thursday, June 30

Quote of the Day from Rework:  "It's entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true."

Arrived in the office a bit late, ended up sleeping until 9:30 or so due to meeting with James R. and Wei D. over drinks at Old Town Bar to discuss refugee life from the BigLaw maelstrom.  Good talk, mostly ended up gossiping and talking about every thing for a few hours rather than dig into the details on our respective companies.

James raised the point that Villager should just intermediate between the businesses and the lenders without actually issuing any of the notes.  That is, the business should be the note issuer.  I spent some time today thinking about that, but I think in the end we have to avoid that path because 1) simplicity is critical to the customer experience on both ends and 2) the securities laws implications of a direct issue are a bit too complex to have a  small business owner grasp.

Today was another day of struggling to figure out what to do:

1)  Finished Zaragosa post on the blog.
2)  Reviewed the contract from James G. at GoToBed for web development services.  Revised the contract and sent it back.
3)  Modeled out the direct issue concept and decided against it.
4) Emails with Brooklyn Torch.

Still haven't heard back from the developer who was ostensibly the dream partner, but I think my decision to go with GTB rather than them is probably proved right by the fact that it took 1 week to get a proposal (after a promise of "this week") and a day has passed without a response.  In the end, I need someone who will work enthusiastically and throw themselves full-time to the project and be fully available and responsive to my guidance.  James seems to be that guy and he is very good.  Hopefully his chattiness will not cause any productivity issues.

Also came across someone else's post on Profounder who rolled up the concept fairly neatly, which I have re-summarized here:  Villager will have the advantage of rolling marketing, customer acquisition, identifying loyal customers and strengthening existing relationships into the process of funding.

Off we go tonight to the Dumbo Digital "What's Your Status" event sponsored by Big Fuel.  The last Big Fuel event I went to was annoying and I did not enjoy it.  We shall see how it goes.

Migration.

So, I may or may not blog here from time to time.  But since Villager is the new focus of all of my time, I suggest you also re-direct to villagernyc.wordpress.com.  It's beta and will be migrating to the actual site once it's ready...but it's a start. 

Villager: The First Week

Unsurprising -- there is a lot to do.

The initial moments of panic I suffered in the first three days came from thinking of Villager as a tech start-up, which would put us in fierce competition with the bustling  masses of crowdfunding platforms, peer-to-peer lending giants and social media driven start-ups.  Ten minutes on Techcrunch or a quick review of the dozens of start-up articles that are published daily by mainstream media sources immediately convey the fact that New York and San Francisco are in the throes of start-up mania.  The (must-be-dreaming) valuation of Groupon at $25 billion, Facebook at $50 billion, Twitter at $7 billion and Zynga at $10 billion has angel investors and venture capitalists in frenzy mode, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at start-ups in hopes of riding the next wave.  Software developers are being lured with bigger perks and better compensation and there appears to be unlimited appetite for developers and a very limited supply, as the earlier fears of software engineering being dominated by outsourcing were clearly wrong.  All of this led little ol' me to start freaking out because so far this is just me and all of the tech folks I know are so happy at their jobs that there is no way I could convince them to jump ship.  This is a fiercely competitive world and culture I was not entirely ready for and that I am frankly a bit terrified of.

But, I think all of this is wrong.  Besides the fact that I think we are witnessing the frothy crest of a social media bubble (I don't see how it could be otherwise -- all you need to do is look at this article to fully grasp the froth), I think it is fundamentally wrong to think of Villager as a tech start-up, despite the fact that the internet is a critical tool.  I am not trying to reach a national or global market, I am doing the opposite -- I am trying to reach deeply into local communities and strengthen the ties within.  I need to push hard to cultivate connections with small businesses in New York and Brooklyn and push harder to reach citizens (heh, villagers? (no.)) in these markets.  I want to use technology to re-orient to the local, not to the global.  Now that it's the simplest thing to take a dollar and stuff it into the balance sheet in a Chinese or Indian company instantaneously, it should be just as simple to take that dollar and invest it in the donut shop next door. (Disclosure: I love donuts.) (Not much of a disclosure, of course I love donuts.)

In these terms, I am more comfortable and confident of steering my own course and finding my own way.  The entire mission of Villager is to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, of allowing local entrepreneurs and their dreams to thrive, to strengthen the bonds of community, to re-consider the meaning of investment, to reduce the footprint of the chains that slowly undefine the character of a hometown and use of the power of infinite possibility and optionality to choose what we would like our neighborhoods to look like.  I hope to build my business accordingly.   

Starting Over

The idea of starting an ambitious and complex company was a lot less scary at 3 a.m. while handcuffed to my office desk.

I've been on "vacation" for exactly three days working from my brand new "office" space in DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) Brooklyn just trying to get a sense of what I will need to do to get Villager from just another idea to a company that actually works. 

Three harrowing days.  Just sitting at my desk.

I have discovered that I am going to be trying to elbow my way into a crowded room full of very connected and powerful people.  Since embarking on my "internet surfing IS learning" tour of social lending and crowdfunding, I have since discovered profounder, rockethub, indiegogo, crowdrise, microplace, loan guarantee fund, myc4, on deck capital, funding circle, community lend, fynanz (awful name), big carrots, crowd cube, start some good and of course have learned more about Kiva, Lending Club, Prosper, Kickstarter and Inventure, which I already knew about. 

Three. Harrowing. Days. 

It's easy to tell yourself that it's going to be hard and there's going to be doubt and it's going to be challenging and that you have to fight for everything that is worth it and that you just have to believe and struggle and keep moving forward...but sometimes you forget what that actually means.  

Overcoming self-doubt is the challenge.  Here I go. 

Villager.

I have decided to learn to fly on the way down.  Wish me luck.  

Terry Jones is a fucking idiot. 

$1.44 two hard boiled eggs, testicular in my styrofoam bowl, flat spots notwithstanding.
$17.99 giant bottle of yellow tail cabernet sauvignon (year irrelevant, if the label even attempts it)

Tired.

But Hunger Games was awesome. 

7.25 whole + sum lunch (don't ask)
3.83 oikos and gum.


My birthday party was lovely with activities from 5 pm through 4 am, although it is my understanding that I fell asleep sometime around 3 am, after which people messed with me, and after which I woke up at 7 am to release the red wine that was still inside of me, causing my head to spin.  I was informed there are as many neurons in the gut as there are in the brain - I believe this.  I was also informed that I played and sang on the ukulele extensively, but I have no memory of that either.


Work has gotten bad -- the feeling of despair and dread that comes with working in such an office is difficult to deal with.  Yes, all of you stupid assholes, I should be happy to have such a well-paying job, but boy do I hate it.  This is simply not my highest and best use and is deeply bad for my will to live.  I am by no means depressed and I am by no means suicidal or anything like that, but sometimes I just feel so trapped and feel so dissatisfied with where I ended up in a career that I am not all that fazed by the prospect of simply being wiped out by some freak accident. Even though I clearly deeply deeply don't want to die or suffer or anything like that, some part of me always thinks "at least I won't have be a lawyer anymore" and I find comfort in that.  


Call my symptomatic of chronically dissatisfied yuppies or youth.  Or just call me someone who isn't where they belong in life.  

I've been a little bit lax in posting because my job has decided to fuck me again.  Granted, I did basically have 4 months of doing very little and enjoying my life, which I savored, but now it looks like I'm back to the shit of things.  So I lost track.

But before i go back into penny pinching and counting, I think I have discovered the rule that will save Villager -- the key that will prevent me from being dragged headfirst into the morass of SEC regulation and pain and suffering associated with trying to get a start-up company registered and completely nailed down with the securities law before even getting my shit together.  And that is Section 3(a)(11) of the Securities Act of 1933, the Intrastate Offering Exemption.  I can totally help small local companies offer securities to small local investors as long as they are all in the same state.  This is exactly the law I needed.  Elegance.  Exciting.

Okay back to it:

Yesterday:


$40.00 Gramercy Park Dental co-pay for fluoride treatment. (sucker)

$3.95 Fast and Fresh Burger exactly 30 minutes after my fluoride treatment at the dentist - looked like an In n Out rip off.  Had to try it.

$1.75 Bag of Almonds (Chili Lime) because I get so fucking hungry after work I can hardly stand it.

$101.50 Whole Foods preparing for my birthday party on Saturday.  Microgreen salad with parmesan, olive oil and lemon with a dash of salt and pepper, 7 pound Bo Ssam to be shredded and glazed wrapped in bibb lettuce, rice, with an oyster, kimchee puree and ginger scallion,  ginger scallion with cold spaghetti noodles, bread, baguette, beer.  I think I am approaching my birthday correctly -- not with exaltation and celebration of my existence with a roomful of strangers -- but keeping it small, with those who matter to me and breaking bread and drinking wine.  An offer, not a receipt.  A thanks for the life they allow me, not for the life I give them.




Today: 


$1.75 bottle of V8 from the cafeteria which i promptly spiked with black pepper, cholula hot sauce, a dash of worcestershire and some sort of pathetically damning cold mixture from the salad bar which, despite all mental models to the contrary, was not healthful and good for me just because it came from the salad bar.


And that's a wrap.

No breakfast.  First full week of work.

$3.45 the most depressing salad of my entire career -- ignored the wilted mesclun mix (the inclusion of red lettuce in any salad bag or any salad mix is a 100% certain sign that you are going to be eating gritty, rotten vegetable matter, I hate mesclun after learning this fact, the hard way) and went straight to the sad, watery, slightly too cold iceberg lettuce and random red leaf veggie (cab) mix, topped with soybeans, chunks of broccoli that are entirely too large to be pleasant for a salad, dried out chicken breast cubes, red and yellow bell peppers tossed in blue cheese (which is really watery blue cheese since the cafeteria folks don't really dry the salad that well) from a styrofoam bowl.  I am going to start bringing my own salads to work because eating is a chore from the cafeteria.   The upside is that I recently got an insane micro greens salad mix from the farmer's market and it was the most incredible, tender, fresh, broom of the system wonderful mouthful of greens that I've ever had.  I feel like a happy cow.

$0.72 red bartlett pear.  Despite eating this as my mid-afternoon snack, I felt super hungry.

$3.99 chicken gyro from a 14th street halal cart on the way for a 45 minute subway ride to Bedford-Stuyvesant to pick up our bicycles which we would promptly grab and ride back for 45 minutes to Manhattan.  I remain convinced that the ride over the Brooklyn bridge at night, into the heart of wall street and the skyline, over the wooden planks and over the river and through the wind (to grandmother's house we go?) is one of the greatest experiences New York has to offer.  It is a free moment.

$4.20 for a red velvet donut and marble glazed donut and decaf small coffee from Donut Pub at 10 pm on the way to the subway station.  Just cuz.  Donut Pub is the best.

Today, although a good day, was a sad day because work has picked up in such a manner that I think I have legitimately lost the rest of the month and most of April.  My new plan is to quit my job in May and line up a job for July or August, giving myself 2-3 months to pursue Villager full time.  This seems eminently reasonable. 

$1.44 for two hard-boiled eggs with disconcerting flat spots, corners, edges and thus a surprising lack of resilience -- these must have come from a giant bag -- which rang up on the cafeteria as "boiled chk egg" which, all together, was highly alienating as I imagined a giant plastic bag full of soapy looking liquid and a ghastly number of hard boiled eggs laid by dozens of different chickens kept in pens in a giant factory farm, all somehow sterile and biologically toxic at the same time.  (Isn't anyone else freaked out by the fact that a carton of milk probably has a bodily fluid produced inside the bodies of dozens if not hundreds of cows?)  (Come to think of it, I think "single cow milk" cartons of milk would be a real money maker.  Or single cow cheese, raised on a diet of dandelion and dew rather than bone meal and prions.)  (I wonder if a pack of bacon is all one pig.  It's gotta be, right, if only because it's cheaper to slice a slab and package it then re-organize multiple pieces of bacon?)

$7.55 spinach pita with falafel, tzatziki, hummus, tomato, romaine lettuce and feta with a side of half sour pickles and terra blue potato chips.

$3.20 heirloom tomato salad (the red and dark green bad boys) from the cafeteria, which clearly is not in season, but I figured was completely and entirely irrelevant because there is no way that anything in our cafeteria is local, organic or anything short of agrindustry, and I was so excited to see a tomato salad that I got a heaping bowl and promptly dropped an oily tomato on my dress pants after getting back to my desk

(all of the above underwritten by styrofoam plates/bowls and delivered using a fork that I literally have not washed -- but have wiped -- for at least two months)

$13.00 six pack of miller lite tallboys

$7.50 post open bar New Amici pizza slices (for me and K)

$7.04 Barbecue tofu wrap (actually fucking awesome and my favorite thing in the cafeteria when it's there) and bag of baked lays with half-sour pickles (so much better than full sours)

$3.17 Hummus, cucumbers and bell peppers

I am beginning to mull the possibility of throwing caution to the wind and taking a risk with Villager.  A serious possibility.  

Yesterday:

$25.60 Fuji Sushi (lunch for two)
$72.14 Whole Foods (shopping for the week?)
$50.59 CVS (shopping for the month?)

Today:
$2.00 bottle of water.
$3.00 snacks in the day
$12.00 Xi'an famous foods (dinner for two)

I am deeply depressed today.  The prospect of continuing to be a biglaw lawyer is starting to wear on me.  Deeply unhappy about this.  The dream job is over.  In, what I believe, is bullshit HR nonsense.  I don't know how I am going to be able to cope with this.  Even if objectively, my job is not something that sounds that unbearable, I am just so deeply disappointed in my job, so deeply disappointed in ending up as a corporate lawyer serving the bad guys, that I don't know what to do with myself?   This disappointment is beginning to consume me.

How do you fix it when you are too demoralized to do anything?  I need to find my will.  I have no discipline and I have no will and it is starting to ruin my life.