It turns out, giving up requires making a conscious choice. I kind of thought that after making the decision to stop trying, I would naturally fall into my new, effort-free life. But once you’re into a habit, it can be pretty tough to break out of it. Even if that habit is just the mundanity of everyday life.
The day after my expulsion, I found myself thoughtlessly beginning my day as usual. Alarm. Phone. Headline.
Raid on Drug Lab Ends in Badass Shootout – An early morning raid conducted by police on a suspected drug lab resulted in gunfire between officers and gang members that onlookers described as “fucking awesome,” and “like something out of the movies.” Accounts tell of guns being held sideways, big muscly guys with shotguns, and one guy doing a sick kick to knock the gun out of an officer’s hands. Police Chief McAngy gave a statement confirming, “In all my years of law enforcement, this is by far the coolest gunfight I’ve ever witnessed. One guy got lit on fire! I don’t even know how that happened!” Including bystanders, casualties are estimated to be in the hundreds …
It was only when I reached the ‘shave’ part of my morning routine that I came to a realization: I was shaving for work. Work that I had decided last night didn’t matter. And if I didn’t go to work, there was no reason for me to shave. I had always wondered what I would look like without a beard.
There would be consequences for not showing up for work, of course. I’d be fired. Without work, I wouldn’t be able to pay for rent or food. But continuing to struggle just to survive no longer appealed to me. It was time to start leading the life of someone who has given up. I’d deal with the consequences later.
I decided to spend the time I would have been working instead thinking about what my new life philosophy entailed. What did it mean to truly give up? How was I supposed to spend my days now?
My first thought was that I could spend my days in bed, or otherwise lazing around. In the movies, characters who hit their lowest would just lay around in their pajamas, sometimes eating a tub of ice cream. But I wasn’t waiting for a redemption arc. Besides, sleeping all day seemed boring. A big part of this was supposed to be about me getting to spend some time having the fun I didn’t have the time or energy for before.
Not too much fun, mind you. Nothing that would cost so much money that might encourage me to go back to work. But the little bits of fun I could have without having to put too much effort into it.
What I needed was some sort of guide to go by. Guardrails that would keep me from accidentally falling back into the trap that is believing that hard work would pay off.
And so, I came up with my first rule for living life after giving up: When presented with two options, always pick the one that requires the least effort.
I was sure I would need more rules as I discovered what this new life had in store for me, but for now that seemed like a good governing principle. And it worked! For a while, anyway.
That first week, my job called me. A lot. It probably would have been decent of me to quit properly. Give them some notice. Or at least answer the phone and tell them I didn’t intend to come back. But that seemed like more effort than simply not picking up the phone, so based on my newly established rule that’s what I did. Eventually, that sorted itself out when I missed a payment on my phone plan and they cut off my service. Nice when one problem solves the other.
For most of the following month, I hardly left my apartment. I slept in, ordered food delivery (which quickly drained what little funds I had in my savings) and then played games. I must have gotten more gaming done in that month than my entire adult life up to that point combined.
It would be hard for me to say definitively if I was happy during this time, but I can confidently say I was content. The best way to describe it is that it was like there had been a massive weight crushing me my entire life composed of obligations, expectations, and ambitions, and I had finally managed to drop that burden. I was truly free for the first time ever, and while the life I was leading might not have been most people’s definition of fulfilling or exciting, the freedom alone was enough for me.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and my life of solitary independence came to an end with a knock on my door. I opened it and found Derek waiting for me.
“Hey, Kit, what’s up man?” my landlord said in his usual tone. “Woah, growing out your beard? Looks sick.”
I absentmindedly scratched at the peach fuzz on my face. In my mind, I imagined myself growing a full Grizzly Adams beard if I stopped shaving, but instead I looked more like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Hopefully it would still grow out if I gave it more time.
“Anyway, I was wondering if you’ve been having any trouble with the app,” Derek said as he held out his phone. “I’ve been checking it, but I haven’t seen your rent pop up for this month yet. Wondering if its bugged.”
Had it already been a month? Without my phone or a schedule to keep, it was hard to keep track of the passage of time.
“No bug. I haven’t paid the rent,” I admitted.
Derek looked surprised. “Oh. Well, rent was due a few days ago, man. It’s cool if you forgot. You can send it now.”
“Actually, I quit my job. I decided you were right about us having only one life, and I was tired of struggling for no reason. I’ve spent the last month just living for me.”
“Oh, nice!” Derek pumped his arm in approval. “Glad you’re not working yourself to death anymore. You already look better. But what’s that got to do with the rent?”
Did I really have to explain this? “Well, without a job, I don’t have any income. And no income means no money for rent.”
Derek scratched his chin as the gears in his head turned. Finally, he exclaimed, “Dude! You need a job to pay rent!”
I shook my head. “Did you really not know that?”
“Sorry, man. I think I gave you some bad advice. Didn’t think that through. Cause it’s at least partly my fault, I can give you some time to find a new job before you got to worry about rent.”
A generous offer, all things considered. I could think of my past month as just a bit of a vacation and get back to my regular life. If I wanted. Which I did not.
“Nah. Working a job really doesn’t appeal to me right now,” I replied.
My landlord looked confused. “But if you don’t work, you can’t pay rent. And if you can’t pay rent…then I got to do that eviction thing to you. Man, I’ve never had to evict anyone before. It sounds like a real pain. Do you got to go to the courthouse for that? Damn, I don’t even know how it works.”
It struck me that if I really wanted to take advantage of Derek, I could just leave the conversation there, leaving him to try and figure out how to legally get rid of me. It’d probably take him a while to figure it out, and that’s not counting all the times he’d probably just forget about it. I’d have months at the very least before I had to worry.
But that didn’t seem right. Derek hadn’t really wronged me in any way, and if anything, I owed him for helping set me straight.
“I don’t want to cause you any trouble,” I said, shrugging my shoulders at the futility of the situation. “Give me a couple weeks to pack up and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“You’re just going to leave?” Derek looked troubled. “You got somewhere to go, man? Maybe you could go stay with your folks?”
I shuddered at the idea. It was likely they would take me in if I asked, but under the condition that I lived my life the way they wanted. Like my perfect younger sister. There was a reason I had moved out the first chance I had got, and I had zero desire to go back.
“Probably not,” I replied. “But I’m sure it will work itself out. People live in their cars, right? How bad can that be? Guess it would be tough for me to game like that, unless I can find somewhere that will let me plug my console in…”
“Dude…” Derek suddenly sprang up, excited. “Dude! I’ve got a great idea! You can be my building manager!”
“Huh?”
“I told you how there are things I got to do to run the building that I don’t like doing? I’ve been thinking about hiring a manager to deal with all those things so I don’t have to. I can have you do all that and have your rent be part of your wages. I’d toss you some spending money, too, so you don’t, like, starve.”
I frowned. “Sounds like you are offering me a job.”
“It’s a job, but it’s not like, a job, you know? You said yourself that I had plenty of time for my hobbies. You just got to collect rent at the beginning of the month, and call the repair guy when something breaks. Sometimes a few other errands, but they don’t take long. It’s a good deal, man.”
It did sound like a good deal. Free rent in exchange for what sounded like a few hours of work per month?
I analyzed the choice using my first rule: which option required the least effort? While I wasn’t versed with being homeless, it did seem like the kind of thing that presented frequent challenges and hassles. If I took this offer, I could still spend most of my time doing what I want. When put that way, it was an easy choice.
“Alright, yeah, let’s do it,” I said. “How bad can it be?”
I had no idea.
Derek was excited by my agreement. “Awesome! This is going to be a sweet arrangement, man. You’ll see. And you can start today. I was supposed to make a trip to the pool supply store to pick up some stuff. Almost the warm months and some of the residents get all complainy when the pool’s not available. Now you can make the trip. Come on, I’ll give you all the stuff you’ll need for your new role before you go.”
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He started to walk away without waiting for my response. I sighed, already somewhat regretting my decision.
As I followed Derek to his apartment, I thought about the building and tried to estimate how much work there would be in maintaining it. The building was two floors and laid out in the shape of an L, with the aforementioned pool sitting in the inside corner. There were four units on each floor on both segments of the building, for a total of sixteen apartments. Derek had once told me he never rented apartment 4D because it had ‘bad vibes’. I lived in 2B, and Derek’s unit was 1A. That left thirteen apartments I would have to be responsible for. That didn’t sound too bad.
Derek made me wait outside his apartment, which given the smells drifting out from under that door I was grateful for. He came back out a moment later and handed me a key and a piece of paper with a phone number on it.
“That’s the master key for the building,” he explained. “It’ll get you in any of the apartments if you need to like, check out something that needs repairs or something. But be sure to give the residents a heads-up before you let yourself in. They really don’t like it if you just walk-in unexpectedly.”
I chose not to remind him about him breaking into my apartment to use my fridge.
“And on that paper is the number for the repair guy. He can handle most anything, from plumbing to electricity. Just tell him to put the costs on my account. And if you come across an issue he can’t fix … I don’t know, we’ll figure that out then. Oh! But do be sure to confirm the issue before calling. It sucks when I got to pay for the repair guy to come out and it turns out someone just didn’t know how their light switch works.”
I couldn’t remember a single time Derek had confirmed an issue I had reported. Usually the ‘repair guy’ showed up while I was at work soon after I told Derek about the problem, and I’d come home to find the issue fixed. At least temporarily. Some of the ways things were fixed did not instill a lot of confidence.
“Got it,” I said, hoping to be done with this conversation before my landlord added any other duties to the pile.
“You’re going to do great, Kit. I got a feeling.” Derek had a giddy smile on his face. “Rents already been collected for this month, so you don’t got to worry about it. Only thing you have to do today is make that trip to the pool supply store for me. Order’s already been placed, so all you should have to do is walk in and pick it up.”
He kept me there for another fifteen minutes, which started as instructions on how to collect rent but quickly evolved into him telling me about an idea for a comic book he had involving busty aliens going around the galaxy in search of the best high. The human protagonist who helped them in their quest sounded an awful lot like Derek. I told him his concept sounded promising before finally breaking away to do my first chore as the building manager.
I hadn’t done any driving at all this past month, so I wasn’t even sure if my old Honda would start. It kind of made me feel a bit guilty. I had promised my car that I would fix it up when things improved for me, but now it seemed unlikely I would ever have the money for it. The Honda did not seem to share the same attitude around giving up as I did, though, and it started up right away without complaint.
The pool supply store Derek had sent me to was in the nicer part of town. My ancient vehicle seemed out of place when compared to all the nice a new models in the parking spaces surrounding it. The locks on the Honda didn’t work anymore, but the car was a piece of junk, and I didn’t have anything valuable inside it, so it hardly seemed worth it to fix.
The employee who I talked to for Derek’s order spent some time trying to upsell me on the latest and greatest in pool cleaning technology. Apparently, they had a little robot that sunk to the bottom of a pool and cleaned up any dirt down there. It also had a hefty price tag. Despite my repeated insistences to the employee that I was just picking up an order for my landlord and had no power in purchasing decisions, I continued to get cornered and be forced to watch demonstration videos from their phone. I was only allowed to escape after I promised I would speak to Derek about the robot and tell him how great it is.
Derek’s order itself was a bit much for me to carry on my own. It consisted of three large jugs of some kinds of chemicals, a box of filter cartridges, and a ten-foot pole which I assumed a net would be attached to for skimming debris. I probably should have made multiple trips, but I’d had enough of my time wasted that day and just wanted to get home.
When I got back to the parking lot, I was surprised to find my car’s door opened and a woman hunched over the front seat. So surprised that I probably stood there for a solid minute, heavy bundle in hands, watching her. Based on what I had seen in the movies, it looked like she was trying to hotwire my car. But why in the world would she want my piece of junk when this lot was filled with premium models.
I set my load down and calmly approached her, more curious than upset. “Excuse me.”
She jumped, hitting her head on the car’s roof. Then she turned to give me a nasty stare. “Hey, don’t startle me like that!”
“Sorry about that. It’s just … you’re kind of stealing my car.”
The thief looked to me, then to my car, then back to me. “Oh, this is your car.”
“Yeah.”
She folded her arms and leaned back in the driver’s seat. “So, what are you going to do? Try to drag me out? I’ll warn you, I can put up more of a fight than I look. Call the cops? I’ll be gone before they get here.”
I took a careful look over this audacious thief. She was young, at least several years younger than me. She was also small and petite. I wouldn’t consider myself much of a fighter, but I could probably take a girl who weighed less than half of me. But that kind of confrontation sounded like a huge hassle. Best case scenario, I get scratched up by her fingernails while I drag her out of my car, causing a huge scene in the process. Worse case, she’s not lying, and I get my ass kicked by this tiny girl. Neither outcome seemed worth the effort.
“Look, I don’t want to fight,” I said, holding up my hands in a show of surrender. “That sounds like a lot more work than I want to put in right now. I’m hoping you’ll just leave on your own volition. This car’s not worth it for you to steal, trust me.”
She looked at me suspiciously. “And you’ll just let me go if I leave? Not try to tackle me the moment I step out of the car?”
I stepped back from the car, giving her a clear space in which to get out safely. “I’m just trying to find the easiest way out of the situation. I got this heavy order of pool shit I need to get back to my apartment, and there’s no way I can carry it all the way home. You’d be doing me a big favor if you just let me have my car.”
A moment of silence passed between us as the thief seemed to be sizing me up.
“You’re an odd one, aren’t you?” she said finally. “Normally someone catches you stealing their car, they come in screaming, cursing, and punching. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone in this situation as calm as you are. I can’t tell you’re hiding something, or if you’re just that chill.”
“No reason to stress about the things you can’t control,” I replied. “All you can do is try to find the path of least effort out of the situation.”
The thief gave me a strange look before sliding out of the car. “Guess I can let you have your car back. It was giving me a tough time getting it started, anyway.”
“It does that sometimes.”
She started to step around me in a circle, keeping a stride of distance between us. “Well, it’s been an interesting experience meeting you, but I think I’ll be going – Oh, shit!”
Suddenly she sprang forward, closing the distance between us and pressing herself against me as if going in for a hug.
I was too caught off-guard to properly respond. “What … what are you…?”
“There’s a cop behind you,” she whispered. “One who knows my face. I think he’s here looking for me. Do not let him see me.”
“Hey, don’t drag me into you hiding from law enforcement!” I whispered back. “I don’t want to be made an accomplice!”
“Come on. A real gentlemen would cover for a lady.”
“The lady who just tried to steal his car?”
“I let you have it back. You owe me.”
I tried to push her away, but she had gotten a surprisingly strong grip on me. Switching tactics, I tried to pull back from her, but she had locked one of her legs around mine. That caused me to lose my balance, and I ended up tumbling forward. And I brought her down with me.
We ended up landing in the front seat of the Honda. I was on top of her. Somehow, I had wound up pinning her.
Her face was close to mine. I hadn’t noticed before, given I was distracted by the car theft in progress, but she was pretty cute. No makeup that I could notice, but she didn’t need it. Her short black hair gave her a tomboy vibe which worked for her.
I was acutely aware of how long it had been since the last time I was this close to a woman. I’m ashamed to admit, but it got my heart beating.
“Don’t be getting too frisky in public, now,” a stern voice behind me warned, snapping me back to reality. “Save that for the privacy of the bedroom.”
I didn’t need to turn around to know that the voice belonged to the officer that the thief was hiding from. Right now, my body was blocking her from his view, but it would be easy enough for me to get off her. I could tell the officer I caught her trying to steal my car and tackled her. The important bit of that statement was true. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about being a potential accomplice to a car thief.
But was that really the path of least effort? I quickly ran through the scenario in my head.
If I turned her in, the cop would probably want me to make a statement. He might even request that I go back to the police station to do it. There was a chance that they would take my car as evidence since she was inside it, and who knows the amount of effort it would take to get it out of impound. Then there would be further hassle if I was called to testify in court.
On the other hand, if I covered for her, there was a chance I got out of this by just telling a quick fib to the cop. While there was a risk of consequences if he didn’t believe me, I guess that was a risk I was willing to take.
I turned around carefully, ensuring that my body continued to fully obscure the thief. In this instance, being a larger guy came in handy. I came face-to-face with a serious-looking officer brandishing a serious looking mustache.
“Sorry about that,” I said, only having to half-fake my embarrassment. “Nothing gets me and my girl’s motors running quite like … pool supplies.”
“Uh huh.” The officer didn’t show much of a reaction. “Just keep it in your pants until you get home. Once you get behind closed doors, you and your missus can get freaky with your pool rod.”
“Yes, sir.”
The officer leaned to his side, as if trying to get a look at the woman still lying in my car. I casually leaned in the same direction, blocking his view. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to care too much.
“Oh, and be sure to double check you’ve locked your car if you’re going to be parking here,” the officer added. “We’ve had a rash of car thefts in the area.”
You don’t say, I thought.
“Thanks for the warning, officer.”
He nodded and then headed on his way. I watched him as he lingered around the lot, checking between the cars for anything suspicious. It wasn’t until he was out of sight that I finally turned my attention back to the thief.
She got out of the car and stretched. “Damn, that was close. I’m getting pretty sick of that guy. It’s like he’s stalking me.”
“Or he’s looking to arrest you because you’re a car thief.”
“I prefer the term ‘freelance repossession specialist.’” She grinned at me. “But I guess you’re right. I owe you for saving my skin. Don’t worry, I got just the thing to pay you back.”
Without asking, she rushed around to the back of the car and applied a sticker to the bumper. When I followed her, I saw that the sticker was of a cartoon stork wearing sunglasses.
“This will show that you’re a friend,” she explained. “This way, no one else will mess with your car. If anyone asks how you get it, just say that Kara vouches for you.”
“Great. Thanks.” Certainly having my car associated with a bunch of car thieves wouldn’t have any consequences. And I knew how hard it was to get those stickers off a bumper once it was applied. I doubt I’d be putting in the effort.
“Don’t mention it,” Kara said, taking my gratitude as genuine. “Anyway, I should get out of here before Officer Mustache gets back. I’ll see you around, maybe.”
As she began to walk away, I called out to her, “Wait a moment. Before you go, I need to know – why would you try to steal my car out of all the vehicles in the lot?”
She rolled her eyes. “Cause your car was the only one had its door unlocked, idiot. It’s like you wanted it to get stolen. You’re not the only one who looks for the easy choice, you know. Be more careful in the future. There are a lot of people who would be really interested in that classic of yours.”
Classic? What was she talking about? Unfortunately, before I could ask her what she meant, she was gone.
Well, clearly, she was mistaken. Not like she left the impression of a master car thief.
Though she did leave enough of an impression on me that I forgot to load up the pool supplies before I drove off. I got halfway home before I remembered and had to make a quick turnaround. Thankfully the supplies were still where I left them in the lot.
Eventually, my eventful first day as the building’s manager came to an end. As Derek had promised, there wasn’t much left for me to do, and for a little while I was able to return to my peaceful, contented routine.
But only for a little while.