The Bartender Bond

I wasn’t actually tired today at work, oddly, even though I barely slept last night. I guess I was too busy chatting up all the guests, knowing that I won’t be doing that anymore after one more Sunday. I’m leaving my job as a bartender for good. I’m not even going to moonlight on the weekends anymore. I’ve moved on. The extra time I had in early 2020, while the whole world was shut down and everyone was freaking out, gave me the opportunity to study constantly and get current with the changes in technology. I was forced to realign my priorities and that led me straight back to my first love: database work. This is the end of an era and a long anticipated return to myself, for which I am truly grateful, but it has been a fun ride.

I’ve really come to like a lot of the regulars. So many of them are truly fascinating, highly intelligent people who are very powerful in the community, people with whom I’d most likely never have had occasion to otherwise bond. I will miss them. I will miss our conversations. I will miss feeling like they care about my life; I will miss caring about their lives and somehow feeling like I’m in some way a character in a vastly different world. In that environment, between #bartender and guest, people don’t feel pressured or weird and they will just share their lives with you. It’s actually pretty awesome.

I’m seriously, once this whole pandemic thing gets under control, going to have to force myself to do social things now, because left to my own devices I will stay inside my apartment all of the time and literally never, ever, talk to a human in person. Maybe I will become one of those people who goes and eats at a restaurant bar by herself and orders sparkling water and tips well and maybe I will meet interesting people that way. Shrug. There aren’t many of those people. People who don’t drink alcohol don’t stay long enough to form bonds typically. I don’t even know if I’d feel like talking if I was on the other side of the bar. Maybe not.

It’s weird how if you put a bar in front of me I can talk to anyone and I actually really enjoy it but in normal circumstances I tend to choose not to. There just doesn’t often seem to be occasion for me to speak to people without that setting. Small talk kinda annoys me in general. It feels awkward to initiate and may not be well received, especially if you don’t seem like people who would normally talk to one another. Unless, of course, you are behind a bar and the person is on the other side of it. Then, all the rules are different.

work schedule, publisher acquaintance, God in Atlanta

Last week I knew I had been scheduled for a double on Sunday. That was part of why I gave my morning Sunday shift to MW. It’s true that I was still sick but I would never have opted to give that shift away if I hadn’t been planning on working that night’s shift. When I came in on Sunday night and saw that I wasn’t scheduled, I was confused. I went along with it for a few reasons: I didn’t feel like arguing, Duane was there managing along with Jessica and I did still feel a little sick anyway. However, I was fairly certain that I had been on the schedule. When I looked, tonight, at my picture that I had taken of the schedule, I confirmed that I had been scheduled for Sunday night. Maybe I had taken a picture of the schedule before it was posted. I suppose that is possible. I should try to be more aware of that in the future.

I really want to get a car soon. Now that The Shelter has closed, I will need a car to have any sort of a social life. I am going to see Queensryche in a week and I don’t yet know how I will get home from the venue. It is at Center Stage, so I could walk, but I will have to bring walking shoes. Hopefully it won’t be too cold, so I will have that as an option.

I also want a car so that I can be going back and forth to storage more easily. I could be going through stuff and getting rid of things, but I just don’t have time to bother with all of that when I have to waste so long in transit. I also want to be able to go to LA Fitness more quickly. At least I still have the other gym membership.

Speaking of getting a car… I recently met someone at work who owns a publishing company in Conyers. He is also some sort of a spiritual leader and author. I waited on him last week. He asked me what I wanted to pray for this year. I mentioned that I wanted to get a car. He said he would pray for me.

I notice it when people hold hands and pray and I think it is a very beautiful thing. I remember, when I first started coming to visit Atlanta, someone on either the plane or a bus to parking or something told me that there were some really great churches in Atlanta. At the time I had thought that was a somewhat strange thing for her to be telling me. That was totally not why I was coming to Atlanta. (It was either for the alternative scene or for work that I had been coming to Atlanta at that stage of my life.) The interesting thing, however, is that she was so very correct about the presence of God here. Were it not for such a strong presence of God, I might not have been so successful in my recovery and I might not love Atlanta as much as I do. I cannot help but constantly referring back to that lady’s conversation with me. I wish I could remember more about it. It is always interesting to me to notice the things that we choose to remember from life. That lady couldn’t possibly know that I would be musing about her statement some ten to twenty years later.

Life never ceases to impress me. Goodnight.