I accidentally deleted my Day 4 post.

I actually did write a post on actual Day 4 of this exercise, but accidentally deleted it. Now here we are, several more days later. Let’s not dwell on this. I’m going to try to get back to the grocery store observation, which is that there are more people who are clearly buying groceries for someone else via InstaCart or something like that.

They have their phone out, and are grabbing things with a certain speed and body language and they usually have very full grocery cart. It’s all business.

And, frankly, it’s usually a South Asian man in his 30s that I’m noticing. The same demographic that is usually e-biking around with an Ubereats bag on their back.

Across the street from me, a store is going to open soon - something called Aisle24. A “cashierless convenience store".

How far can we get from what sustains us (food, human interaction…), and get it as quickly as we can, 24hrs a day?

No, that’s not true, I get it. The reason I noticed the delivery people in the grocery store is because it reminded of the period when I had meal kits and fully made meals delivered to me. I was feeling very busy and couldn’t seem to get to the grocery store or take the time to make a meal for myself, and this seemed like a solution. Not only that, I had the thought of - oh, I guess this is how I sustain this level of busyness (which I think is good?). (ie. I think this means I’ve arrived?)

The thoughts in brackets were vague feelings that went with the actual thought I had about busy-ness. My grocery delivery period was in 2021 - I was busy pivoting my productions. Not making a lot of money with my toiling, but saving a lot.

There are a lot of places I could go in these paragraphs, I know I’ve brought up a lot of potential topics here, and nothing that hasn’t already been written about way more wisely than me. But this is about living in Toronto, and the hustle here that I just don’t understand.

Recently (in the 4 days I already neglected this exercise), I had a conversation with a curator who said “Toronto doesn’t deserve to be this expensive”.

And I have to leave it there bc you-know-what just went off, but this is essentially what I want to understand here.

Ok, talk soon!