"You're a little young to understand, but it's not always about the money." This is what one of my new co-workers told me tonight. The job: Italian restaurant, great food, dirty, alcoholic-workaholic owner who is extremely non-threatening when he rages and flips over a plastic table in the fake grass courtyard. The business is STRUGGLING and has been for the entire year and a half of it's existence. I know I can make good money waiting tables and really good money behind the bar somewhere. I use this information as leverage when my boss (impressed because I do work without being told) asks how much I need to make to stay. I tell him an offer I can't refuse, which is based on a good server's wage. 40 hours a week, $15/hr. The head chef makes $13/hr. I think it's funny because I'm just some punk kid that's been working here for 2 1/2 days. The boss is squirming (I am actually starting to like the guy) but I know it's too late to back down. It's also logic too so simple to ignore. I tell him, "Either I make $15/hr working hard in a kitchen w/ a bunch of dudes or make $15/hr with a bunch of cute local chicks and hot tourists. I came to Key West to move a boat. The boat is far from being ready. Now I want to make money and get laid." (This isn't exactly the sole focus of my existence, but it's an easier and stronger point with which to argue.) He keeps saying we'll work it out, but mathematically, it's unreasonable. He can hire someone for a third of the price, but good help is hard to find. I would be OK w/ $500/week, but if I told him this I'd go home w/ $350. There's something about this place though. I get really good food whenever I want. Most people drink on the job, but I don't think it's a smart thing to make a habit of. I work in all positions (the Craigslist ad I responded to was for a jack-of-all-trades position): delivery, pizza cook, dishwasher, saute cook, server, even behind the bar. My schedule is whatever I want and I feel confident I could take off for 2 weeks to travel whenever I want. So there are some definite perks. Everyone is really cool including the animated yankee boss with his shenanigans. There is also the curious fact that 5 very well abled adults (retired surgeon, chef, D.O. of the busiest Panera Bread in the country, some cool surfer looking dude I don't even know about yet, and the business owner) have faith in this place. Makes me wonder.
The surgeon sees value in me and lends me his rental car on day 1 for the entire night to run deliveries and refuses to let me pay for gas. I have an interview tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday with three different restaurants. I've turned down 2 jobs already, have 2 days next week on a delivery company's schedule, and another 25 or 30 applications being shuffled through HR spiderwebs all over the island. The coolness of Key West will be another post. I'm not making any predictions. My next big focus is to enjoy life down here. This brings me back to the restaurant. Will I be more entertained at a normal restaurant, making pretty good money, easily, and meeting others doing the same or, take the challenge against odds and logic for the chance to build something. When I'm grey and wrinkly, which will mean more? Penstroke of genius: do both. 20-25 hrs at each place. This may be the answer. I believe you can have cake stockpiled while simultaneously gorging yourself on the same kind of cake. hmmm......
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Had a weird dream about my dad interrogating me about a low bank account. This is an unrealistic dream because I haven't lived at home in 8 years and he respects my ability to make life choices. But the emotions felt so intense, like a big rock sitting on my chest. In the dream, I started asking myself how much money did I have? How much do I have now? Did I spend it all on drugs? (which is strange because I think the last time I bought a bag of weed was sophomore year in college) Is my daily travel budget out of control? (we were in some foreign place with colors and physics that aren't of the U.S.) And I woke up feeling terrible.
This has been the downstroke of my new roller-coaster emotion set since I've been back in the States. There was about a 6 hour transition when I left Central America. I went through a very thorough security checkpoint in San Salvador, flew for 4 hours, and after a 45 minute line in customs, was talking to a guy who was born and grew up in Nicaragua. Sitting on the bench I began to notice the post-transition changes that had occured in my surrounding, like a thin, grey mist settling in a forest.
On the bus I felt it necessary to put blinders on, careful not to get caught in an eye contact fencing match. While in Panama and Nicaragua I found it strange that people always looked away after I noticed them studying me.
Am I intimidated by people near the place I grew up in? Am I triggering adolescent insecure memories? Or is there something in the American air? (I stopped differentiating between 'the States' and the American nations after enough canadians, and South Americans told me: everyone knows the U.S. as 'America')
I had just ended 3 1/2 months of total lack of ambition (from an American perspective) by laying around all day in hammocks. What I really did was a bit more. I stayed in shape, worked on photography, music, writing, worked enough to survive, read books, studied Spanish very aggressively, and attempted to unpuzzle the international social network. I stayed busy and my ambition was free to grow in any direction. Nobody cares what you do in Central America as long as you don't try to borrow money or get caught stealing. Getting by is an admirable trait.
Back at home, 'just getting by' is frowned upon. You gotta make it big or you wasted your life. It's rare to find someone who doesn't use this philosophical pressure on me. It's normally very subtle, but it's there. Some folks have no idea what I'm talking about. It took me only 2 days in Key West before I was out looking for a job. And then a second job. Now I feel guilty because I have to tell the third job that I can't fit it into my schedule. In the last 3 weeks, I've had 2 days off. I want to fix the boat I'm on to sell it, but just bought another 30' sailboat to do the same.
Today I finished my 2 weeks notice at the first job, not because they paid me well and treated me fairly (they did neither) but because I felt guilty. I nearly break my back carrying unnecessarily dense work loads to appease people who really don't care if I show up.
The thing that intrigues me, is I don't carry this mindset when I'm traveling (I did, however paint myself into a corner at The Bearded Monkey by working 30 hrs/wk at breakfast and 30 hrs/wk behind the desk for a while.)
I had an older Russian traveler named Felix, tell me I need to have a focus and goal to move toward. In fact I have several, but none of which are typical in a productive member of society. A loose deduction I've ascertained is the similarity between post and current global superpowers. Japan, Russia, and the U.S. share 3 similar traits: Isolationism, propagandising, and work-aholicism. I could not find an English speaking person on the street in Russia or Japan. (Germany has the same traits, but they generally speak English.) The other 30 countries I've been in, no problem. Japan and Russia don't learn English because they don't need to. They're self-sufficient. I went to a war museum in Tokyo that painted the Japanese to be the victim and savior in ever single skirmish. Sound familiar? Japanese and Russians are known for drinking and partying after work. If anyone works more than Americans, it's the Japanese. After work at 8PM, it's two hrs of heaving drinking and karaoke and then passed out businessmen on subways.
When I'm travelling I can dissect advice because I don't rely on it. Felix lectured me, I could easily see, at 50+ yrs, he still did not have it all together.
Back then I had all the answers. Now I depend on advice from locals to improve my life in KW. This is the dependent state of guilt inherent in developed countries. Now I'm gonna get a run and shower in before work. My advice: make room in your schedule to have time for yourself. But, the best advice I've ever heard: be wary of bad advice.
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I noticed a happy waitress last night at World of Beer in Key West. Mario and I were coming up with reasons why she might be so vibrantly elated.
The setting is not important but her appearance is for my argument. Dark, dark, tangled, long, nappy, warm hair, close but not quite to the point of dreading. Silver nose ring, thin enough to be invisible for the first 20 seconds of conversation. Mid-forearm leather wrist wrap with 3 or 4 silver bars in line with her radial bone. Many more rings and bracelets. Short shorts, lnog green and black striped socks.
I believe ther's a strong correlation between self-customization and contentment. It's not difficult to qualify a follower and the same goes for someone who leads themselves. For the last 3 weeks, tens of thousands of spring breakers celebrated their week of independence from tyrannical expectation. Most bought freedom costumes from t-shirt shops like the one Steve worked at.
This is the transparent facade I am referring to. Under the neon fabric and appalingly vulgar designs are conditioned souls not sure what to do with their limited limitless freedom. Clusters of early college students shuffle around daquiri bars and along the sidewalks of Duval St. generating random outbursts and checking to see if their friends are entertained. Checking for approval. Checking for permission to go further or stop the joke. Wondering if it's ok to act on one's own impulses. And each group has an alpha and/or zeta who decorates themselves for no other reason but to satisfy the mirror.
The waitress decoratres herself to her own satisfaction. This is the only aspect I could inpsect through visual obersation, but I bet she adjusts other viriables in her life to her own pleasing. She lives the way she wants, for herself. She's free. Freedom is what Jefferson and I believe is one thing that causes happiness.
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One of my neighbors asked me, "You're not one of those people that writes a blog are you?" I said, "Yea, sometimes I do." I started questioning my motive. Tennessee Williams summed it up pretty well:
"Keeping a journal is a lonely man's habit, it betrays the vices of introspection and social withdrawal, even a kind of Narcissism ... It has certain things to recommend it, it keeps a recorded continuity between his past and present selves, it gives him the comforting reassurance that shocks, defeats, disappointments are all snowed under by the pages and pages of new experience that still keep flaking down over him as be continues through time, and promises that this comforting snowfall of obliteration will go right on as long as be himself keeps going."
I write this blog to help being honest and because it makes me feel good. Information storage and organization is a bonus.
