CULT OF JAMES

Lunch break walk. Just under a mile around the office complex. July in Louisville — you step outside and your glasses fog up immediately from the humidity. Twenty-two minutes of fresh air before going back to the desk. Day shift this time. Different vibe than the night walks. More cars, more people, less thinking space. But still better than eating…

Fourth of July overnight. Shorter shift or shorter walks — either way, just over two hours and less than a mile. The fireworks were still going at midnight. Louisville doesn’t stop on the Fourth just because the sun went down. Walked outside and the air smelled like sulfur and cookout smoke. Even in the parking lot you could see them…

Night before the Fourth. NOC doesn’t care about holidays — networks don’t take days off. Almost five hours, mile and a half of wandering. Probably walked through the park more than usual since the building was dead quiet with skeleton crew. Somewhere out in the neighborhoods people were already setting off fireworks early. You could hear them popping in the…

Eight-hour overnight. Almost two miles accumulated across the shift. This was a busy one — I remember the long walks being the ones where something was broken and I needed to think without screens. The NOC had this fluorescent hum that got into your skull after a few hours. Walking outside at 3 AM in the Kentucky summer was the…

Another overnight in the NOC. Four hours, a little over a mile. Quieter night — fewer tickets, fewer calls. Walked the same loop around the building and through the park. Street lights and cicadas. Some nights you walk because there’s a problem to solve. Some nights you walk because sitting in a dark room staring at monitors for eight hours…

Overnight shift at the NOC. Seven hours on the clock, almost two miles of hallway and parking lot. This is what you do when you’re an Engineer I on nights — you watch dashboards, you troubleshoot circuits, and when you need to think through a problem, you walk. Louisville in July, even at 2 AM, still warm enough to not…

End of a summer day in Louisville. Humid enough that stepping outside felt like walking into a wall. Just a short loop around the neighborhood — less than a mile, no agenda. Sometimes you just need to move after sitting all day. The pace says “slow” but I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. Just out and back before dark. 📊…

The big one. Four miles across a nine and a half hour overnight. Must have been a busy night — more outages, more walking to think, more laps to the park and back while waiting for a circuit to come back up or a vendor to call back. Four miles doesn’t sound like much until you remember it happened between…

Short night or a quiet one. Under an hour of movement, quarter mile. Some shifts the tickets don’t come and the circuits don’t drop and you sit at the terminal watching dashboards stay green. Got up once. Walked to the break room. Walked back. Logged it anyway because if it counts, it counts.

Sunday overnight into Monday morning. Eight and a half hours, almost two miles of restless laps. Weekend NOC shifts are quieter — fewer tickets, fewer calls, more time alone with the hum of the equipment and whatever’s in your head. Started tracking these walks because the Fitbit was already on the wrist. Might as well know how much ground you…