Grammer #01.

it’s 6:20 A.M. The sound of a loud, buzzing alarm on your phone gets you to crack open your eyes. You fumble for the device and turn it off. For all intent and purposes, that is the least intentional act you’ll take until you lay your head down to sleep some 16 hours later. Every moment in between will be spent reacting to other people’s plan for your day. Before getting out of bed or even acknowledging anyone sharing it, you check your email to see who will be setting your agenda, based on their need, followed by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and voice mail. Ten seconds in, and already you’ve lost control over how to spend your day.

I had been crying, and he heard me, I guess. My cries were not the muffled sobs of loneliness or whimpering of discomfort - though I was lonely and uncomfortable - but the anguished wail that a guy will let loose only when he is sure there is no one around to hear him. And I was sure. Wrong, obviously, but sure. At least as sure as one spending another night under a pier can be.

I didn’t handle it well. Not well at all. Knowing what his reaction would be, and dreading it, I put off telling Jonshon the whole story. I shot him a quick note, saying the meeting with Ontisuka had gone fine, telling him I’d secured national distribution rights. But I left it at that. I think I must have held out hope, in the back of my mind, that I might be able to hire someone else to go east. Or that Wallace would blow the whole place up.