james’s posthaven

Kim pointed up, exclaiming: “Look! Two raccoons in the tree!”

We were on a slow walk, circling Stow Lake in the center of Golden Gate Park. Approaching dusk in August, we rounded a corner underneath a few birch trees when leaves rustled above. I sauntered along until Kim shook me. We halted our strolling conversation, admiring the raccoons.

Cycling snowballed into a part-time job. I sacrificed late nights on Fridays, heavy drinking, all forms of smoking, junk food, and blocks of mornings and weekends. 4:30 am alarms became a regular occurrence–I would say waking up that early became peaceful, but it sucked. Entire weekends were spent riding fast or recovering from riding. 

As this part-time job picked up, I joined a new company at the start of 2016. Lesser known at the time, it had an ex-PayPal cofounder at the helm attracting smart and ambitious people. We worked hard, often into the night. It was thrilling with one pace: fast. There was a contagious excitement and electric buzz in the office. My team went from a few people to more than 30 in a few years. I grew from individual contributor to managing a team of 10 across multiple functions. It’s possible this is where I advanced from confused college graduate to a functioning adult.

As the company grew, so did the monotony of my cycling regimen–I craved diversity in my workouts. I took to running. Starting with short runs in the neighborhood and the local track, I then escaped to trail runs through Golden Gate Park. I thought I knew every nook and cranny of the park from countless bike rides. Yet, I found myself pausing during trail runs, in awe at a new area of the park. It’s an impressive feeling when you stumble upon a hidden gem. A stupid feeling when it takes several hundred passes to realize it was there. A peaceful lake, patiently sitting there all these years.

Affirm graduated to a late stage startup. Budgets expanded, people left the office on time, and the urgency from the first few years shifted. The pace became just comfortable. People I worked with started to poke their heads up for new opportunities, others left to start their own companies. I joined a new company with a shiny new role and heightened responsibility, but after a short stint I decided to pause for an extended break. 

After 4 startups in a decade, I left my job with no next steps. A fortunate position. Naturally, I get a lot of: “so what are you doing now?” 

Many things, but mostly slow walks.

Free from the next meeting or structured calendar, my days are scattered with grandpa walks, ranging from 15 minute jaunts to 90 minutes of lost-in-the-sauce meandering. A leisurely walk is a shower after a stressful day, except you don’t have to get naked.

On one walk, my mind wandered into pace and speed in life. It’s fast and exhilarating, a constant tempo, like drafting behind another cyclist. We tend to equate high speeds and pace with progress. Yet, there’s value in slowing down, sometimes to a full stop. Slowing down forces you to notice opportunities you would have glossed over as unimportant. It forces you to consider growing in areas that aren’t dependent on speed. 

I have no judgment about the speed at which you’re approaching careers, business building, and getting ahead. It is often a necessary sacrifice. For family and loved ones, there’s only one pace: a slow walk, often coming to a complete halt to inspect what’s directly in front of you. 

Make sure to look up, too, or you’ll miss the raccoons in the tree.

A version of this post was first published on Medium. 

I lay wide awake at 3am, exhausted by the whirring of my refrigerator. It seemed louder than usual. I couldn’t sleep. I tried using better bedtime routines, phone hygiene, and meditation. I tried a white noise machine and nearly all of Spotify’s sleep playlists. Nothing worked. Sleepless nights focused on the tune of a humming fridge started piling up. So I turned the fridge off.

I live in a tiny studio. It’s 196 square feet. If you’re one of the six people that have ever visited this apartment, you’ll know it’s plenty for solo living.

The one downside, as I’ve discovered over time, is that your kitchen is also your bedroom. My refrigerator hums a low noise at night. It didn’t bother me for almost 2 years until it got under my skin last August. Then, I started turning off my fridge during middle-of-night fits of rage. I would turn it off before bed, particularly on nights before an important day at work. Next thing you know, I started wondering what life would be like without a fridge. Turns out, it’s a strong niche (surprise, internet): this family did it with young children in the woods.
I don’t live in the woods, but I live in the sleepy Sunset district of San Francisco. Same thing.

So I left the fridge off and it’s been off for over a year. Friends’ jaws drop when I tell them about this, so I thought I’d share behavioral and lifestyle changes I’ve noticed. This is what I found:

• I did more trips to the grocery store, usually walking. Which means laboring a bag of groceries up a hill and sweating into my shirt.

• I only buy fresh produce for a few days since, well, I don’t have a fridge. As a result, I don’t throw away food anymore. There’s just not much to waste at home. Unless I screw up the cooking process.

• Surprisingly, I haven’t eaten out more. This one takes some discipline, but ordering groceries regularly has been my favorite forcing function. I use Imperfect Produce and they send me a box every week. They take "ugly" produce otherwise thrown out or wasted in the supply chain and sell it for cheaper. Everything is fine to eat, minus some funky looking produce. I order on Friday and I forget what I ordered by the time it arrives on Monday. If you want to sign up with Imperfect Produce, here’s a $10 referral code (I will also get $10 to buy popcorn).

• I’m more French. The best thing in Paris is people walking a fresh baguette in the morning. I regularly pop down to my local bakery for bread that lasts me a few days.

• I’m more European. I leave my butter on the countertop and not in the fridge, like it should be.

• I spend more time with my girlfriend. She has a fridge at her place.

• I still cook meat. I’m not a big meat eater, but I have a nice rib-eye most Mondays. I cook it that same night. Sometimes the next. It’s fine. Most delivery groceries come with a foil and icepack. That tends to act as my interim fridge for a few days before the ice melts. It usually keeps eggs, meat, yogurt, and vegetables fresh. For the concerned: the ice pack casing is entirely recyclable and the ice is drain safe!

• I batch cook everything. Most leftovers are good on your countertop for up to two days without direct light, low humidity, and sealed well. I’ve tried three days; it’s not a good result for the stomach or the toilet.

• Instead of the freezer for long term storage, I bought more canned and dried foods. Thank goodness for dried shiitake & morel mushrooms. They’ve improved canned and dried foods: clean ingredients without a lot of preservatives.

• Regarding snacks, more chips and packaged goods. This is a dangerous and unhealthy rabbit hole, exemplified by my long popcorn phase. After some adjustments, my dry pantry is mostly nuts, nut butters, and parmesan chips. Chips, the cleaner kind, sometimes.

• Some unhealthy snack habits are removed against your will. You can’t have beer at home. Do you like warm beer? What about melted ice cream?

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t some insane energy saving challenge–I just wanted some sleep. But since we’re on the topic, refrigeration tops the list of climate related challenges. 

According to Paul Hawken’s Drawdown Project, described as “the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming”, refrigeration is the #1 opportunity to reduce emissions. I was just as shocked.

Is there a world where we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Home growing fresh vegetables reduces the carbon footprint of shipping produce, whether through a small garden or using out of the box hydroponics from a company like LettuceGrow. Lab grown meat technology is improving every year and soon we'll have the choice of buying meat grown in a lab down the street or in your home. As excited as I am for reducing our reliance on 20th century mass food production techniques, we don't need to go down the techno optimist route for this. 

Refrigeration is not problematic due to energy consumption. The emission of refrigerants, which keep your food cold, are the issue. Nobody is suggesting we turn off our refrigerators (I’m the only idiot that willingly lives in a large city without one).

All refrigerators, including those in supermarkets and air conditioners, contain refrigerants: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). Remember that giant hole in the ozone layer? It turns out these refrigerants destroy the ozone layer. Once we discovered the hole was caused by these chemicals, we phased them out and instead used hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs don’t destroy the ozone (yay!), but instead heat up the atmosphere many times faster than carbon dioxide (boo!). The current solution is to phase out HFCs for alternatives (propane and ammonia), thereby reducing the impact of refrigeration. How we dispose of refrigerators using HFCs is critical and will require incentives for waste companies.

I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what refrigerants my refrigerator uses. I don’t expect anybody to think twice. Instead, this year-long experiment forced me to think hard during grocery runs, online or offline. An extra filter tested every object thrown in my cart. Will I use this in the next few days? Do I need this? Because if I don’t, I can’t tuck it into the back of the fridge. It forced me to strip it down to the essentials. The end result? Something we all strive to do: eating fresher food and not throwing it out. Food waste turns out to be the #3 opportunity to reduce global emissions. We have an opportunity to make an impact here. 

Coming to this conclusion after a year without a fridge seems awfully roundabout. I just wanted some sleep, but here I am a year later, telling you life without a fridge is easier than you think. Regardless, I’m ready for the fridge-less apocalypse.