progress

7/7/07

So I’m back at square one again. I gave the Fishmarket my two weeks notice.

Two steps forward and one step back.

I feel for bad leaving. I’ve grown attached to a lot of the people there. But on the same token, I feel like I’ve already got what I wanted to get from the restaurant. The mismanagement that I saw within the restaurant added upon the general inflexibility and frugality of the ownership, made the choice inevitable. In the end, I would find myself in the locker room after a long day at the bar, making hundreds of drink. Tired, exhausted, looking down upon a crumpled pile of one dollar bills and wondering really if this was all that the work I did amounted to.

I still couldn’t help feeling bad when I told the lady that hired me that I was terminating my employment in two weeks. She winced when the words left my mouth. I winced inside when I saw that. That is the part of me that forever wants to please. I guess I’ll never get completely over it.

But, in the end, I got to do what’s best for me. Me and mine.

I kind of have a job lined up already. I was drinking at a bar on Thursday and I got talking to the bartender upstairs. When my friend came, I found out that he was one of the owners of the bar. She then proceeded to ask him what it would take for me to get a job at the bar. By the end of the night, the bartender gave me his business card and his number and said that if I wanted a job to call him.

Two steps forward.

However there is a catch. I will not be working as a bartender immediately. He made that clear from the get go. Security, serving, bar backing and then bartending, if I make it that far. But I don’t know. I really want to work there. Just watching the owner of the bar bartend, you could tell that he had a passion for the business. He knew the story for every beer on tap, kept a bustling bar entertained but still managed to keep all of our glasses full. And he did something that no bartender has ever done to me. He cut me off. I was drinking a beer with higher alcoholic content and right as I was about to order another beer, he suggested that I drink one with a lower content. In no way was he demeaning or insulting about it, but he posed it as a mere suggestion by happenchance.

He was like a master maestro at work, and I, who fashioned myself similarly as a maestro behind the bar, just watched him work his craft in awe. It made me realize that I have a lot to learn about the art of making and handing out drinks to costumers that entered the hallowed sanctity of my bar.

One step back.

Thus I feel like I’m back a square one, no further down the path of where I want to go than I was four months ago. But, sometimes, I suppose not moving is still better than treading backwards on paths already blazed.

I had a random set of dreams last night. One of them had one of my ex’s in them. She looked different than I remember her as. Older. And hauntingly beautiful. Her countenance is seemingly engraved in my thoughts today. I wonder what it means. Are dream random synapses of an unconscious mind? Or do they hold a foreboding warning of future that is to come to pass or a past that is still unsettled.

Or maybe I am just lonely, and my memories lingered on the last time I had the companionship of someone that I loved and loved me, if only for so briefly a time.

I don’t know.

I am relieved that this chapter is over though. Only two more weeks at the Fishmarket. I feel empowered now for some reason; I’m waiting for a manager to cross me or chastise me or make my job any harder than it is. I’m waiting for the general manger, in all his pompousness, to come over and threaten my job over a trivial matter again. And then I would simply respond that I had already given my two weeks notice as a courtesy to the restaurant, and that I am not really obligated to do so. Then I would shout I QUIT before he can tell me I’m fired.

Juvenile, I know. But its still a good feeling knowing that I am able to do that if need be.