Last night, as a cold drizzle pattered the windows and roofs of Rainey Street, I clocked out and walked out of a bar for what I hope to be the last time. No need to speak in absolutes; emergencies happen, and pouring drinks and standing at doorways will always be there. To the best of my knowledge however, it's now time to start doing what I am supposed to be doing. That is not pouring drinks and standing in doorways.
Bars really are sad places. I initially landed there because I was young and in college and bars are great places to be young and in-charge and interested in the opposite sex while making good money, but all that goes away very quickly and you are eventually left with a lonely place built for some very sad specimens. Taverns have drawn this kind of person for centuries and have ruined a lot of things. There is something about human beings -- some deeply embedded weakness I suppose -- that make them want taverns and pubs and bars and cantinas in their life more than a few times a week. I was a part of this for a time, feeding the sloppy messes, and now it is a very good thing to be done.
I walked out last night, after a few goodbyes, thinking about that time a drunk guy told me to get a real job. All jobs are real, and all jobs teach you something, so I suppose there is a takeaway here too. Plenty of artists picked fruit, and drove buses, and this led them to some real human experience or at least a good story, but you come across a lot of people stuck in a cyclical trap, adding on years and reasons why they are still there and have not gone somewhere else. My time between the bars is done -- the cycle for now has been broken -- and I really don't want to ever look back.
Bars really are sad places. I initially landed there because I was young and in college and bars are great places to be young and in-charge and interested in the opposite sex while making good money, but all that goes away very quickly and you are eventually left with a lonely place built for some very sad specimens. Taverns have drawn this kind of person for centuries and have ruined a lot of things. There is something about human beings -- some deeply embedded weakness I suppose -- that make them want taverns and pubs and bars and cantinas in their life more than a few times a week. I was a part of this for a time, feeding the sloppy messes, and now it is a very good thing to be done.
I walked out last night, after a few goodbyes, thinking about that time a drunk guy told me to get a real job. All jobs are real, and all jobs teach you something, so I suppose there is a takeaway here too. Plenty of artists picked fruit, and drove buses, and this led them to some real human experience or at least a good story, but you come across a lot of people stuck in a cyclical trap, adding on years and reasons why they are still there and have not gone somewhere else. My time between the bars is done -- the cycle for now has been broken -- and I really don't want to ever look back.
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