Kevin, 36

I left my work phone at home today. That's the first thing I want to say because it feels like the biggest decision I've made all week. My personal phone is with me but my personal phone barely rings. Nobody from work has my personal number except my boss and she's in Greece.

I'm sitting in Bryant Park. It's Saturday, it's like 68 degrees, and the trees did the thing they do where they go from bare to fully green in about four days and you miss the part in the middle. I don't know when it happened. I came here two weeks ago and it was still winter and now it's this. I'm going to enjoy it before it becomes July and everyone is miserable again.

I got a coffee and a croissant from the little kiosk and I'm just sitting. That's the whole activity. Sitting. There are kids running around and a guy playing chess against himself and a woman reading what looks like a romance novel with a shirtless guy on the cover. Good for her. Honestly good for everyone here. We all figured out that today is the day.

I've been thinking about retirement, which is a weird thing to be thinking about at 36, but I've been running some numbers. If I keep saving the way I've been saving and the market does roughly what it's been doing, I could probably stop working at 55. Maybe 53 if I moved somewhere cheaper. I'm not going to move somewhere cheaper because I like it here, but it's fun to know I could. 55 is only 19 years away. I looked it up. That's the same as the distance between now and when I was 17. 17 doesn't feel that long ago. Maybe 55 won't either.

I'm not sure what I'd do with retirement honestly. I think about this sometimes. I don't have a big passion project I'm waiting to get to. I like my job fine. I think I'd just want more afternoons like this one. More Bryant Park. More leaving the phone at home. If that's the goal then I don't really need to retire at 55, I just need more Saturdays.

A pigeon is eating a piece of my croissant that I dropped. I'm letting him. It's his park too.

I might walk over to the library after this and look at the lions. I haven't done that in years and I used to do it all the time when I first moved here. I don't know why I stopped. Probably because I started thinking of things like looking at the lions as things tourists do, which is a dumb way to live in a city. The lions are great. Everybody should look at them.

Okay. Going to go look at the lions.