#2 - SadDeskLunch.com

Every once in a while you'll come across a website that will make you want to be a better person. Not often, mind you. Most things I see on the internet make me want to be a cat inside of a box or a turtle eating a strawberry. (They're. So. Happy.)

But Sarah showed me SadDeskLunch.com and it made me want to take lunch outside, every day, for the rest of my life.

Thanks, SadDeskLunch.com!
I am not by nature an outdoor kid, or at least I haven't been for the last 16 years (about the same time I got my first computer... interesting), but I write to you today from the concrete benches on the corner of Market and Pine using an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard.

I can feel the sun, and it's terribly confusing. There's a bare-chested skater, and a woman who takes awkward steps because her huge handbag weighs down half her body and her choice of footwear has effectively hobbled her. She pauses for a clove cigarette. Three white guys walk by me with all of the variations of posture, like a moving illustration of the evolution of man.

I'm not sure, but this might be what it means to be happy.

Oh right, SadDeskLunch.com. So basically, people submit photos of some of the saddest lunches ever eaten at a desk, then there are some excellent captions to go with it. The meals all have these thrown together, leftover, no thought of presentation feel to them. They are food in the most efficient sense of the word. They are fuel, eaten quickly, so that you stop feeling hungry and can go back to work.

Yep, I've been there.
And as I flipped through dozens of these photos, I realized this was my life, and I didn't want it to be. So I took my leftover teriyaki chicken and walked three blocks down Market, to sit among the pigeons who look like serial killers. (Why don't they blink? What do they want from me?!)

But the crazy thing about being outside is that you can't stop paying attention to things. Time never slips away from you like it does on the computer. For me, desk lunch consists of mindless web browsing in a pose that's indistinguishable from when I'm working. I blink, and it's an hour later. I've been out here for what seems like my entire life, and it's only 30 minutes into lunch.

What is this mystical power of the outside that slows down time and unlocks the secrets of immortality? How did I manage to bang out a blog post, soak up some winter sun and narrowly avoid getting shanked by a pigeon, all in under half an hour?

So here's to you SadDeskLunch.com. It's a rare website that makes me want to become a better person, and this is probably the only one that has ever been successful.

-Ezra

2/1000

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