A post about a favorite job.

One of my favorite jobs I’ve had in my whole life was when I was a delivery person. I’ve been a delivery “guy” a few times in different capacities. I have driven for Dominoes Pizza, Franklin Lakes Pizza, Broadway Pizza. These are the sacred trifecta of my pizza delivery employment history. Or as it says on my resume, a vehicular transportation and logistics coordinator of internationally renown culinary sustenance. Certified and licensed as a nationally recognized non-provisional heavy-machine operator.

I always enjoyed my ability to be on my own schedule (aside from when the orders came in).

The option to control my environment and being able to listen to whatever media pleased me made this an enticing entry-level job. This however is not my favorite job I speak of. This was also a delivery job but one that wasn’t a typical vehicular pizza delivery service. This job would involve delivering juices but on foot, walking!

I worked for a very bougie and elitist juice store. They served only raw foods and advertised themselves as being 100% plant-based, gluten-free, and all the fancy expensive trend words. Juices ranged from 7 dollars to 15. The juice store had several brick and mortar locations in Manhattan, this one was in the fashion district. It was a grab-and-go brick-and-mortar location that utilized a now dominant food delivery app called Seamless.

Seamless let customers order food on their phones. I worked in the brick-and-mortar store, but off to the side, where I’d be able to watch TV (a major life passion of mine, quality only though) until I heard a robotic voice announce. “ New seamless order” This would be my cue to grab the order from the printer, and then assemble the bag with different juices, smoothies., salads, and whatever else was in the order.

Then came the great part. I got to walk all through Manhattan listening to whatever I wanted on my phone. I got to see amazing buildings architecturally and learned many of the nooks and crannies of my Chelsea delivery radius. This gave me the time to explore and exercise to an unprecedented degree. There were many days where I would walk 12 miles. It is rare to have an integrated paid situation where you are able to walk for 12 miles a day. When I was doing so, I was extremely fit and still trace this period of intense walking as a vital component of a leveling up of my resilience.

This job went through the winter which is when the job had the potential to become brutal. however, I had lately ventured into the all-encompassing consumer category of “REI-ish winter gear”. For those of you unfamiliar, this is like camping, wintery, warm, “gear” type stuff. Like real obnoxious stuff. But tactical, efficient, and designed with specs to satisfy those with demanding needs and neurotic mental make-up. Enter Sherif.

Anyway, it was as a result of having to walk many hours in the New York City winter that began my exploration with clothing technology. From Heat-tech to interesting base layers, a sort of winter clothing education began. Seeing as my location was in Chelsea, the wealthy customer base would basically provide a nonstop fashion show.

When I began to notice the impressive and quality build, materials, and aesthetics in the winter coats used, my taste got more expensive. I started to notice details and viewed people in Chelsea as floating coats walking into the stores.

I began to learn a lot of new brand names of jackets and would find myself researching the brands on the work computers when the customer left.

This quickly resulted in a more materialistic relationship to clothing. I developed a bit of an obsession with jackets. I really loved many of the styles and developed an anxiety about being cold ever. So like anything, I went as hard as possible. I went on a non-ending quest to find the best jacket. Which involves tons of research

This is a deep hole. The individuals who write reviews on technical jackets that have specific functionality claims are another level of neurotic entitled demanding human beings. I will probably write a blog post on the reviews written about some of these products alone. I was both simultaneously disgusted by the level of detail obsessiveness, and life-changing-ly impressed.

How can it be both? Well, I admire the tenacity and attention to detail that lots of these reviews demonstrate. What does bother me about this is the degree of care which is shown towards such matters, but the utter negligence, indifference, and lack of investment when it comes to critical issues. While this may seem like a negative take on someone taking jackets seriously, I assure you two things. One, I take jackets seriously and I am thankful for such reviews. Two, there is definitely a disconnect from the level of meticulous research, investment and care people put into minor details of often frivolous or “optimization purposes” that should be somewhat diverted, or at least matched when it comes to critical issues of civil rights or social justice. This contrast is important to me! Both as a warning sign for how I’d like to make myself optimally secure, but not excessively so to the point of indifference, aloofness, callousness, and vanity. This applies to many health attaining measures and such. This is an epidemic in our society, but it is fueled by a plethora of competing for harmful societal traits.

I’m excited to get into all this one day soon.

Anyway, my cold stuff didn’t end there. I learned a lot about jackets, material specs, textile, fashion waste. Eventually, I began to research breathing techniques that would enable me to withstand the cold and optimize my ability to survive the New York Winter.

Suddenly, from being obsessive about winter jackets, I started leaving my house in 20-degree weather with just shorts and a tee-shirt. This came after discovering a now way more famous, Wim Hof. He’s known as the Ice Mean and I urge you to look up some of his crazy feats. The main reason being, human beings have been completely separated from the abilities of our bodies. We have stopped practicing certain abilities and working on certain components of our strength which has led to atrophy. This man is important because he trains people in his expertise and is not a special outlier case.

Wim Hof, doing the seemingly insane, through breath-work

Shockingly, I have digressed. Point is. I got to walk a lot, learn a lot about clothes, listen to interviews with comedians, podcasts, audio courses. I ended up giving myself an informal education. Many of the more prestigious jobs, gigs, and clients I would land would be founded upon discovering concepts and learning about them through this time walking. All the while getting to exercise, be and nature, be paid, and smoke a good amount of weed on the job. Not a terrible option. Sometimes detrimental or a hindrance though.

One last cool feature (there are many I’m not including here) of this job was that I got to enter a lot of fancy office buildings. I’m no strange to fancy office buildings. But it is rare that you would get to enter 30 from different fields of work in one day. I saw the interior designs of fashion houses or studios, tech offices, fancy new york douches. I’d deliver into some extraordinary circumstances, minutes after listening to Howard Stern interview some comedian will hitting the one-y. (Howard Stern is highly problematic but I’m a big fan of his interviewing and I’m excited to dissect Howard in future blog posts) If you don’t know what that means don’t worry about it.

I also met amazing people, customers, co-workers, and one manager who changed my life forever and contributed strongly to making me the person I am today.

This was one of the least prestigious jobs I’ve ever had, but it was one of my favorite. The quality of life was absolutely incredible. I’ll likely never have an opportunity to walk 12 miles a day while having it integrated non-invasively into my lifestyle. The co-workers at this place were actually all remarkable and eclectic people.

Wow. I left out the fact that being in this environment radically transformed my relationship to food, health, consumerism, and the world. My life changed irrevocably (due to my amazing co-workers and especially my life-changing manager!)

I learned a phenomenal amount about my job, myself, and what I wanted. It also taught me a great deal about massive blind spots, my experience, and quality of life in this phase, coupled with what I learned… altered my life trajectory. All the while, my biggest life goals remain the same but have shifted.

PS this is my current jacket. One of the best I’ve ever owned (I have design ideas that would have made it better lol, 4.6/5, incredible jacket)

My favorite Jacket, so meticulously well researched, a 4.6/5.. Logo removed because they’re not paying me and I’m not advertising!

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Thank you for reading. You being here means the world to me. Please comment or share or anything! I can’t wait to make this even better for you. I want to get better at being raw and sharing well. This will be more organized and focused in the future. I’m gonna keep showing up. I always wanna do better. I have a lot to share. … If you wanna hear my take on a specific topic. Leave a comment and I’ll write a blog post within 10 days about it.