Field Notes on a Sunday

Diary Entry: May 18, 2025

The neighbors in Champaign have deployed their party tent again. It sits on the lawn like a makeshift embassy of good times, broadcasting a generic bassline into the night. I pointed my phone at it twice, hoping Shazam could identify the tribe’s official anthem, but even the algorithm was stumped. The proper diplomatic protocol, I imagine, would be to present my credentials, go inside, and engage in some light-hearted American romance. Instead, I opted to remain an outside observer.

My counter-programming for the evening was a solo expedition. The itinerary included a long walk to survey the quiet emptiness of downtown, followed by a culinary adventure pairing cheap beer with whatever candy was on sale. The night’s grand finale was a visit to a Chinese restaurant that treats chili oil less like an ingredient and more like a challenge. My taste buds lost, spectacularly.

My commitment to certain botanical hobbies continues to yield predictably poor results across all major life metrics. It’s a persistent drag on body, mind, and wallet. And yet, this is what they call freedom, isn’t it? An invaluable, abstract concept that, upon closer inspection, requires a surprising amount of cold, hard cash to maintain. It’s a beautiful idea with a very inconvenient subscription fee. You wake before the city even remembers its name. You shuffle to the toilet, joints stiff, breath thin, and somewhere between the cold tile and the faucet’s tired drip, you notice it: a clean, inexplicable lift in your chest, happiness arriving without announcement or cause. Which makes no sense — there’s an upcoming meeting, work waiting with its gnawing teeth, and you can’t stand the world on mornings like this. On the way back to bed, you catch it — a glint on the nightstand: the one last shot you left untouched, set aside last night with something like Herculean restraint. So that’s what the sudden brightness was. Not a mistake at all, just memory recognizing its promise. You tip it back. Heat stitches a quick seam down your throat. You sink onto the mattress and sleep like a child abandoned to sunlight, dead to the day until afternoon. Hell with the work.

I sometimes find myself gaming out what the business plan looks like after the family funding dries up. The list of stakeholders I can rely on once my parents and grandmother are no longer on the board is, to put it mildly, not a long one. It’s a solo venture from there on out, and the market looks bearish.

My roommate operates on his own ghostly schedule, a phantom I occasionally hear but rarely see. I’m waiting for the next cash injection from headquarters — officially for groceries, but I’m diverting the funds to a SIM card. One must have the proper tools of the trade to hunt for a job in this wilderness. If the hunt comes up empty, then it’s time to call the whole experiment a wash and book a one-way flight. Pull the plug on the whole operation and see what happens next.