A Day in a Life (Part 1)

The Long Way Around

Greetings, folks!
People from all over the world email me asking what my day is like, so I decided to create a video/photo series—A Day in a Life. This is Part 1.

If you’d rather watch the video footage and hear me read the text, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the video.
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It’s a fifteen-minute drive to Coney Island from my apartment in Brooklyn. Ten if I ignore the stops signs and traffic lights.

But instead, I take the train to Manhattan (at dawn, and I’m a night owl). I plan to rent a car there, and drive back through Brooklyn’s arteries until the Wonder Wheel appears against the sky. Does a simple trip need to turn into a full day journey?

I can’t pretend there’s logic in it. Maybe it’s ritual. Maybe it’s something softer, like an old habit of resisting the straight line. Lately, I’ve been thinking about aging, trying to recalibrate the idea of comfort. Does it cause soft edges, rust, and decay? Some smart people believe it does. When I was younger, I rushed toward destinations. Now I linger in motion, as though the act of prolonging the journey holds some small promise of continuity.

The subway rattles beneath the river, its lights cutting through half-sleeping faces. Everyone is sealed inside their own mind, scrolling, thinking, dealing with shit. I used to find the stillness unsettling. Now I find it familiar, even comforting. Movement without urgency. We’re all traveling somewhere, but not too fast.

At the car rental desk in Manhattan, I go through the same repetitive motion — licenses, signatures, keys. These small formalities anchor the day. The comfort isn’t in the escape but in the choreography of the everyday.

Driving back across the Brooklyn Bridge, I catch myself smiling. There is a peculiar serenity in doing something inefficient on purpose. The highway gives way to side streets, to rows of houses and sunlight on windshields, to the slow rhythm of life.
I’m not escaping time. I’m just seeing how it stretches when I refuse to rush it.

By the time I reach Coney Island, the afternoon has opened up. The ocean air smells faintly medicinal, the way salt smells when it’s left in an open jar for too long. I walk along the boardwalk, past the arcades and shuttered stands, and watch the light peck water. This place always feels older than it is, like a half-remembered memory.

Aging, I’m beginning to think, isn’t about loss so much as a shift in what feels real. The long way, the slow way, the deliberate inefficiency… these are comforts that don’t ask for permission. And time offers them without a fight.

I sit for a while, the sound of the waves blending with the distant screech of seagulls. Maybe prolonging the journey is just another way of making peace with time.

Thanks for reading and being a subscriber.
’Til next time.
ak