Every so often, there’s that day.

The day where you get an email from a former flame who wants her record player back, because one year ago, she really wanted you to hear the way that Beatles sound on vinyl. Specifically, the Revolver album.

It’s also the same day when you get into a fender bender on the freeway during heavy traffic at night. A car rear-ends you at a slow speed. You step outside, look at the damage, but you’re so shocked that it happened. You get the driver’s business card and you think five minutes, “The insurance information!” And it’s too late as you see the driver speed off two lanes over.

It’s the day when you spill a little coffee on your white shirt, a pen stain on your hand, and when someone cuts you off in line.

You think to yourself, This isn’t a bad day. This isn’t a bad day. But the moment that you get a text saying that your library books are overdue and your friend cancels dinner, you start to believe that there’s bad luck even though for your sanity, you had to swore bad luck off 5 years ago.

So it’s 8 PM and you seek mind-numbing experiences. Where will you begin?

…and it wasn’t a good thing.

“They are probably all tools,” Chris said. “Just look at them.”

The party was entering its third hour. The music and the crowd seemed to increase in volume. People stepped all over us as we sat near the bottom of the stairs in faux granite bean bag chairs. Following Chris’ comment, I watched a guy coming down the stairs. He wore a button-collared silk shirt with a print that repeated throughout the material. He was Asian with a short-trimmed haircut and carried a drink in his hand. The guy noticed my eyes studying him and headed directly for me. I could feel Chris laugh silently as I brainstormed options for retreat.

“That looks like a nice chair,” the guy said, hovering above me.

“It is,” I said and mentally kicked Chris for getting me into this situation.

“What are you drinking?”

“Water.”

“Not a drinker?”

“No.”

“A good girl, huh?”

I stopped myself at that moment, frantically thinking of something that would make him go away instead of myself having to leave. “Are you in user experience?” I asked politely.

“Sort of. I heard about it and came here.” He swirled his drink and took a sip.

I narrowed my eyes and became testy. “So what is it? What is user experience to you?”

“An experience for an user. A user that experiences. An experience of an user.”

“I see. It doesn’t sound right.”

“You got me! I am not in user experience! I like your boots.”

I didn’t respond. He leaned over and touched them. Then he tapped my arm and said, “What’s your name? My name is John.”

“I think that my friends are leaving so I am going to go,” I said and stood up, exchanging an angry glance with Chris who sat mute and amused.

“See?” Chris said moments later. “He completely proved me right.”

This is what I won’t write in my police report:

“Value,” I said. “You just have to show value.”

My friend looked at another friend and me. We had spent the last 45 minutes talking about how to negotiate salary when someone says no. The party was winding down and the noise had decreased to the 3 conversations happening in the room. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

“Just remember, show value!” I said. “Let me know what happens.”

We hugged and I walked to my car. In the next 10 seconds, I thought about how I had succeeded in building a successful career, about how nice it was that a small boutique agency hosted the party, about where I could get the toffee that was served, and all the lunches/coffee that I needed to set up with colleagues. I pressed the “unlock” button on my keys and sucked in a breath when the car honked back.

It meant only one thing: someone/something had touched my car and the car alarm went off. But I didn’t see anything in the barely lit street. I opened the driver door and gasped to find that the window of the front passenger side door was completely smashed. I walked to the other side of the car and found that the wing door of the back passenger door was smashed. The glove compartment was closed but its contents were all over the seat. The center console was open and its contents was dropped in the backseat and the front seats. I looked to see if anything was missing: my garage door openers were there, the fast track was there, the three cords I keep for car charging still there.

Shocked, I called Chris unsure what to do. Was I supposed to call 911? I remember calling 911 several years ago when I was hit by a car while on a bike and they refused to come since no injury occurred. Was I suppose to file a police report? In the past, I have always done it wrong, losing money in the process. I agreed that he would help me assess the damage.

“Are you okay?” he said when I arrived.

I worried about my bikes and my laptops at my place. Those are my valuable items. I thought about the wallet I lost in DC and how when I got it back, $200 in cash was missing and a few weeks later, my credit cards were used. I thought about how I tossed the wallet shortly afterwards feeling the filth of a malicious stranger. I touched my wallet and my phone in my bag, which was next to me the entire time at the party. I thought about how I keep multiple addresses in my car and whether they would confuse thieves to where I really lived. And then I thought about what a thief thought about my last name of two letters.

Chris observed that my pens and an old pink GPS were missing. He taped up the wing window and told me how the process worked. He had more experience with this than I did, having experience theft more than 3 times.

I decided to go back to my place into my garage where I parked awkwardly. As I diligently put my paperwork into a box, I came across a shard of glass with a red mark. I imagined the thief smashing the window and his fingers grazing the glass. But I didn’t see blood anywhere else. I thought about how I could bring this as DNA evidence and the laughter a cop would say, “That’s not enough to convict.”

So then I went into my apartment. Chris had emailed his police report when his car was vandalized several months ago. I wrote up a police report, and said only a part of what was above.

“Um, I am going on mute.”

“You’re breaking up.”

“There’s a bad echo. Can everyone go on mute if you’re not speaking?”

“Can you hear me?”

“Who is the organizer of the meeting? John says that he needs the audio code.”

“Who just joined?”

“Sorry I am 15 minutes late. Can you quickly repeat what you just said?”

“I can’t see your screen.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Bark Bark.”

If only everyone I needed to work with were all located in the same place, I would be a happy person. But they never are, so I will always have to listen to conference calls.

So then, is time what is the function of memory? That time multiplied by personality is what makes a memory?

As of this moment, I believe that my fingers are tapping on the keyboard, giving my thoughts the graceful contemplation. I am sitting in a slouched position in my bed. Half of my body is underneath the covers. Three layers of covers. Outside, I hear the occasional car drive by swirling the water that has fallen from the sky. It is silent now, except for the movie score playing from my speakers. My throat is slightly dry, perhaps due to allergies or hoarseness.

But will I remember this moment? Beyond reading this entry years later? What I will remember will not be this moment, but the sum of all these moments writing these types of entries. I will remember how I love to think, to contemplate, to analyze, to philosophize. The memory of these moments before I close my eyes for the night will return the joy of turning an item over and over again, looking at it at different sides, tossing it up in the air wondering if it will land the same way.

I will remember that. But what I won’t remember is the memory of the time. The time that others will say that I wasted in doing this. It is not productive. How can you hack that time to make it useful?

But I will continue to lie back in my bed with poor posture, my fingers expressing themselves, dancing across the keyboard. Declaring that even if there was a choice, the memory of all of this was already destined because of who I am. I would always make this choice.

From time to time, I open Spotify and hit play. More often than not, the music comes from a TV or movie I have seen. But as time passes from when I first saw the story, the music stays. What I remember isn’t what happened to the characters or how the world changed. What I feel, rather than what I remember, is the only physical and mental sensation that I feel.

I often write to this music, letting the emotions that I created for myself with the music take me on journey. Perhaps the minor chord remind me of the vulnerability that I felt as a child standing on the playground? Or the way that the music swoops into a crescendo and the violins violently play, it reminds me of the imagined terror? Or simply as the lyrics wax fondly of a distant happiness, I remember the emotions of a memory so vividly that it felt like it happened just now.

When I first moved in, my neighbor downstairs would im me. “I hear that you’re playing Muse again,” he said, crushing heavily on the person that he thought I was.

Embarrassed and irritated, I would hit pause, and my speakers would be silent. “No more,” I said.

But then the following evening, I would forget and turn up my speakers again. He moved away later for graduate school. But I kept writing to the sounds of the music, finding the touch of the C notes, the shapely brass horns, and sultry singing voices to beckon me into imagination.

In the past 8 years, I have moved from movie scores to indie pop and back to movie scores. In hopes that they’ll tell me something that I don’t know.

Every day approximately around 2 pm until dinnertime, I get this insane urges. A hankering of, sorts. I sit at my desk working, and my gaze floats upwards to my shelve. Instead of the books, notebooks, piles of papers, and speakers, I see snacks. Tasty snacks. Consisting of candy. Then I imagine it filling my tongue—the sour ones burning it, the fruity ones filling my mouth with a satisfying squishiness, the sugar that perks me up.

But it’s not there.

You see, I have a sugar tooth. And for the longest time, nobody would ever call it a vice.

When I was 22 at an internship, the director of the agency asked me in casual conversation, “Do you have any vices?”

“Sugar!” I said, thinking of how I spent money on candy, ice cream, and desserts.

He laughed and said, “That’s not a vice.”

I laughed too, matching his tone, but I hid my embarrassment by changing the topic. Afterwards, I wondered why I didn’t have any vices, desperate to be like everyone else. Drinking wasn’t my thing. Nor was smoking. I was too prudish to do much. I wanted to be as wicked. But instead, I slipped back into my perfect controlled role.

With the increasing awareness of the importance of health, almost anything we eat is a “vice”. The glutenful pasta. The bread. The lack of veggies. The dessert. During lunch at a writing event, a woman looked at her plate of food from the buffet and declared, “I wish that I didn’t get too much.”

The Asian woman next to me jumped in and asked, “Why do you think that you got too much?”

It was a good question. We think that we eat too much because society says that big portions are bad, too much meat is bad, too much sugar is bad, and too much of anything is bad. It’s not just “not good”, it’s “bad”. Like the big bad.

But instead, I jumped in, saying “Is it because you’re afraid of feeling bloated?”

We chatted more while I ate my very full plate with a touch of salad, turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, beef, mashed potatoes, and crumbled boiled eggs.

In the past year, I have seen an old man at the entrance of San Francisco Costco who checks for membership cards. His hair is all white and his stance is slightly tilted from years of working. As members walk in, he barks, “Your membership card? Let me see it! Do you have it? Your membership card, please!”

Members pull out their card, obeying their orders. Then they walk in, stuffing their cards back into their bags, to be forgotten until it’s requested to be seen at the register.

On my first encounter with the old man, it was amusing to be yelled at by a drill sergeant. Chris called him a “crotchety old man”, noting that “crotchety” is often only used for old white men. For me, I started feeling embittered on return visits. His behavior was so unlike the usual door greeters (or door enforcers). Now let me start that I love Costco. It is a big-box retailer, but I actually find the limited choices and quality to be appealing. It’s rare that I can get high-quality cheese at bulk prices. Not to mention discount gas.

We whispered to fellow staff members, “Who is the old guy at the door? The one who yells?”

“Him? Oh he’s always like that. He’s always angry.”

Chris isn’t bothered, but my stomach tightens each time we approach the door. It’s like walking through a door with knives. I know how to go around it, but it’s always unpleasant each time to be pricked. I start to wonder what if I went inside without showing the card. Like heading to the pharmacy as I should be allowed to do in the state of California.

Instead, later, as I am dealing with something at the membership desk, I notice the woman helping me has the title “front end supervisor” on her nametag. Chris urges me to mention something and points at the sign that says customer service is our priority. “I am uncomfortable,” I say, rehearsing out loud as the supervisor heads to the other side to grab paperwork. “With the way he yells at the door.”

Indeed, I stumble over my words, panicking that I am not making sense and that my concerns was going to be dismissed. I nearly dismiss myself to say that it doesn’t matter even if it did matter. But then she understands and tells us that they have tried with him, but he doesn’t seem to listen. And the supervisor was concerned as Chris added, “She doesn’t feel comfortable when yelled at.”

My appointment was 2:30 PM. I was sure of it. I had checked the text messages twice to make sure before I even departed my apartment. I sprinted up Sansome Street, going full speed when the lights turned green and moving as efficient as possible to Montgomery Street. I reminded myself that I will have to take the time later to seriously consider if this location was worth it.

Outside the building, I pressed the # button to get to the directory. I punched in the number, unsure if I did it right and hoped that the “system is dialing” meant that something was happening. I tried to focus on the sound spilling out of the metal speaker, hoping that I could hear both the dial tone and the door unlocking at the same time in the midst of the street noise. Anxiety hurtle through my chest. Last time, did I announce myself? Didn’t she just let me in and I didn’t have to say a single word at all?

Her voice began speaking, and I was puzzled. I started saying my name, but I thought that it was silly. I was here for my appointment and really, who listens to their voicemail anyway? So I pressed the star button and hung up. I checked the directory and dialed the number again. It rang and rang. Suddenly behind me, a woman opened the door, leaving the building. “Oh!” I said and quickly hit the star button.

It was 2:31 PM already and I felt late. So I ran to the elevator, pounding the call button. It arrived slowly in 30 seconds and I climbed it, slamming the 4th floor. It felt like a snail moving through the building. Then the doors opened and I walked down the hallway that I had visited a few months earlier. Outside her door, I heard voices. So I patiently waited, checking my phone to make sure it was on silent. I sat down on the steps and wondered what to do.

But then it dawned on me after 10 minutes that my appointment time was incorrect. I checked my text messages again. She had said, “2:30 pm”. I thought to knock on the door, but I couldn’t do it. I was admonished by a nearby practitioner for thinking such things. So I paced up and down the hallway. I was here and could figure out the misschedule right now instead of resorting to an abnormal communication. But I felt the invisible force shield as my hand reached for the door.

If only I could not hear the voices, would I behave differently? Would I consider this whole space to be mine? I couldn’t do it. Instead, my fingers touched the door and absorbed the voices. I texted, “Am I supposed to be scheduled at 2:30 pm?”

I texted Chris to ask what I should do even though I already knew what I was comfortable doing. He texted back saying, “Knock softly.”

I raised my hand and just could not. I thought about all the times that I couldn’t do something that I thought that I should do. The time in college when I wanted to join a club and got to the door one minute late and was panicking in the worst way possible, never making it inside. The time that I was 20 minutes late to a blood donation center and completely flaked out on my appointment (only time in my life ever, I swear and they never contacted me again). But the funny thing is that I clearly remember pushing myself to go some places in despite being uncomfortable and late, and I don’t remember what they were.

So I stood outside the door for 30 minutes wondering what to do. I sent another text message, thinking that I had fulfilled my duty of acknowledging my presence. I lifted my arm and made a soft barely audible knock. One that I couldn’t even hear myself. In seconds, I received a text message confirming my hypothesis. So I took a deep breath and went down the elevator. Out back on Columbus Avenue, swinging down to Kearney stopping to get an expensive Sea Salt Creme Oolong Tea with Milk Pudding in the Financial District. The rain poured then, dripping all over me since I opted not to bring an umbrella. I looked down the sidewalk, letting my hood shield my head and breathed in the air.

Yesterday morning, I walked around my block and documented it for the local blog for the Mission neighborhood.

I came up with the title, “Leave your mark”, within the first few minutes when I stepped outside.

It started like this: Just steps from my apartment where I have lived since 2006, I discovered the tiled entryway “Dog Eared Books” in shades of green. You see, I knew that Dog Eared Books had never been there ever since I moved in. I had always known it as the “witch” and “herbal” store, which recently moved several doors down to be replaced by an artsy zine store. In fact, Dog Eared Books had been several blocks away. It is the bookstore whose bargain bin always caught my eye, the location where I found something for a SF “scavenger” hunt experience, the place where I could find literary magazines and zines and other various things.

But what struck me was how the former businesses here left their mark whether it was their historical and/or artistic signs. How people left food outside. How artists left their marks on the sidewalks in Koi fish or fried eggs. How the city’s sirens ring every Tuesday at noon singing “This is a test.”

What would be my mark? I moved here in 2006, not knowing that I would be still living here in 2014. I think that I believed then that I would be a transient, making a momentary stop as I figured out my life. But as I look around the neighborhood to the businesses that used to be here, I wonder if I would disappear? Just like all the people I never quite knew who lived right next door, quietly watching in the window, wishing that the neighbors wouldn’t block the driveway. Again.