Summer is slipping back under its own curtain call like smoke. The Indian Summer is over, the clocks have fallen back, it’s 5:12pm and the sky will be the color of a glass of Fernet within the hour. The change in the seasons means I’ve made it through a season, did the thing, made the drinks, just to end up at the head of the line again to get on the same ride. Time to change the menu, so we can be in a position to change the menu.
It feels significantly more like I’m not borrowing someone else’s clothes when I’m at work these days. I’ve developed my own rapport with our purveyors, and managed to get my margins better than anything the restaurant has ever seen. Having several months’ worth of data and concrete changes in your corner when the owner thinks the numbers are too good to be true is probably one of the proudest professional accomplishments I have notched to date.
I’ve been able to give my staff everything they want and need, and it feels great doing the exact opposite of my predecessor and living up to most of my erstwhile big talk as the outside guy looking in. I will admit to missing my role as an agitator and the squeaky wheel; it was something that seemed to fall on me naturally, and it was vocation I took a lot of pride in. That same pride definitely held me back, however, and a lot of it metastasized into some really foul cancerous shit I’m still finding at the bottom of the well I pull from every time I wake up.
How fortunate are the ones who are able to head into work with the expressed intent of improving someone’s quality of life, to see the smiles and softening of a world and society that seems to naturally sway towards cold and brittle. I have nothing to be resentful of, not anymore. My partner rightly pointed out a few months ago that even if I did fill out all the check boxes and did all the things that I have done, that didn’t entitle me to anything.
At the time, that really hurt, and not just because it was true. It hurt because I knew it was true, and having that placed on the table in front of me made me realize just how much all that resentment had spoiled my appetite. Here I was, with the job I set out as a five year plan less than three years ago. Ahead of schedule, dream bar, bells and whistles, the whole nine, and I’m squawking off Downtown (in one of my favorite parks, no less) ruining an otherwise perfect evening with complaints about shit that’s over a year gone cold, at the least.
That’s certainly not to say I have since ceased my caterwauling on the iniquities of the past, not entirely. Some legitimately fucked things happened to me along the way (in no small part because I am an agitator at heart and have never been able to suffer fools, especially not easily), and I definitely have sympathy for little angry J. circa 2010-15. He was right, and history has borne this out.
But fuck me if I would put up with the little shit head’s antics and histrionics now, and I’m occasionally a little embarrassed at the things I still won’t fully own. I still don’t know what other challenges this dream job has for me, but bridging the gap of resentful rage and this pseudo-zen state of bewilderment is definitely the next one. I can’t walk back my entire personality. I have to let it grow, and hopefully I have the foresight to prune the right branches. You get left with some mighty unsightly bits if you cling to the unhealthy and dark parts. Those are the uncomfortable moments you eventually have to own.
It can’t all be now-mythic yarns about the dive bar days; it’s apologizing and owning up after being a giant turd on social media. It’s making sure you mean what you say and then actually do it, because there’s always a squeaky wheel. It’s definitely passing on what I’ve learned, and it might even be encouraging wheels to be a little more unruly, within reason. Certainly, it’s not a prescription for everyone, but it’s worked for me.
The Fall and Winter cocktails are upon us, along with a season that begs quiet contemplation. The former is just another day at the office, and the latter, that’s actual fucking work.
Here’s to it.
86 composure 