All “business professionals” crawl under their desks to cry, their bank account overdrawn (again), munching candy that coworkers slide beneath the plywood desktop. We all decorate our cubicle walls with drawings by our children, photos of our families, and potted plants that we fail to water, then revive, then fail again. All of us place small plastic goats to the left of our desktops that scream when we push down on them—wild, ugly, depraved screams that fill the room, saying “I’m okay. See? I’m fine.” Screams that ease laughs from workers drowning in hyper-focus, drowning in code, drowning in editing edits.

I donned an orange safety vest and sparkling new hard hat fresh from its cellophane wrapper and trudged up the wide, steep incline under a blazing California sky. My gait was off-kilter, too much weight in the front of my steel-toed boots. The Sony camera slung across my body hit my back every step I took, like a stranger trying to get my attention. I shoved my small notebook and pen into my jeans back pocket and swung the camera around, securing it with my right hand. Up and up the bridge deck I climbed, all the way to the end, halfway across the San Francisco Bay.

I’ve driven by our old farm a few times, slowed down and leaned out the window to review what used to be. But yesterday was different - I pulled in. Waited.