I don’t really have very good control over my whims. I am pretty good at setting 5 year goals and meandering my way toward that, but on the day to day I have a really hard time controlling or even feeling like I have control over my life. It feels too much like I’m at someone else’s whim, and I don’t know who that person is. “The Man” or perhaps “The System”. Whoever it is, they are a motherfucker.
I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of structure in my life, working at a startup with very few concrete goals where my contributions are vital. Yes, I make decisions and yes I have action points, but for the most part it’s help out where help is needed. So when I look at my goals, I feel like I’ll get to them when necessary, but that means I don’t make any effort unless it’s vital.
There have been parts of my life where the goal completed itself because I made rules that forced myself to get them done well in advance. In grad school I wanted to have a thesis that was a publishable collection of poetry. I did, and The Blank Target was published three years after graduation. I knew that if I could do it once, I’d have the knowledge and skills to do it again if I wanted1. After I graduated and decided not to teach, I made a list of things I want a job to be able to do, engage my body, mind, and have some education/outgoing aspect to the job. I landed a job at a winery where I would make wine and teach people about wine. It fulfilled all of those requirements and set me on the path I’m on now.
So I made the goal and took a step and that’s what happened. With this newsletter and really any writing endeavor I’ve had in the last few years, I’ve had a hard time following through. One goal hasn’t led to success or even an accomplishment. I think part of it is a fear of failure: I would rather not do it than to do it and fail.
This brings me to my new studio space that my partner has so graciously let me split with her. I’ve set a few rules for myself while here, mostly because she has done the same. It’s about routine, regimen, but also about setting myself up for success down the road. So, with that I give you my rules:
always start with a drink. Right now it is Glenmorangie 10 year; it’s a middling scotch on the bottom end for an age statement, it’s a nice golden color with a sweet nose, slightly syrupy for a single malt, and a nice spiciness that will cut the cool fall nights.
I work on writing here at least two nights a week. I’m working on this, and dabbling with a bunch of other stuff. Poems about nature and love, National Novel Writing Month where I’m writing a Young Adult novel about a post apocalyptic prep school, and some other miscellaneous writings.
Read. I’m going to start and end with reading. I’ve got a few books that I use to end my time: The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, The Great Book of American Idioms, and Alchemy and Mysticism. Doing this allows me to compartmentalize a little bit, but also helps me jump into my next project with a little more force.
Hopefully make other not literary art one night a week. I’ve dabbled for years in art making and I’m going to keep the dabbling but hopefully focus a little more thoughtfully and intentionally.
Anyway, it’s a good move I think and something that I needed to do to really get moving with my writing projects. It’s not just about the goal, but also having a more aesthetic place to create is also more inspiring. Having a good set (my rules) and a good setting (this beautiful space), will hopefully shape the work that I’m doing.
This space also throws me back to other places where I’ve done some writing I’m proud of. In grad school I lived in an adobe building dating to the 1850s that was a hotel at one time. When I lived in southern Colorado, writing for an alt weekly, I lived in the second story of a brick building from the 1890s overlooking main street. Now I’m in a studio that is a former pajama factory, now filled with artist studios and small businesses.
I’ve also decided to rearrange the order that this newsletter comes out and what I’m going to focus on. It’s going to come out on Fridays from now on, and will lean more into meta-journalism type stuff and more on the job search type stuff because it’s really interesting to me.
As soon as I have a paid subscriber I’ll start doing cocktail recipes and pairings, so please consider doing so. There’s a huge backlog of that kind of stuff that I’d love to get into.
What I’m reading…
Currently I’m reading A Cook’s Tour, which so far is basically a written version of Anthony Bourdain’s popular travel documentaries. There’s even a tv show version of the book, so I’ll probably watch that when I’m finished reading. I love and miss Tony. I always dreamed of running into him on the street when I was regularly delivering beer in New York, and I still imagine what he’d say about the places I eat.
Jobs of the Week:
It always cracks me up in some job listings when you search for “Brewer” you end up with jobs in Brewer Maine, or maybe for a coffee brewer at a hotel chain, or something kind of random. This week is a job with the Milwaukee Brewers as an Assistant Minor League Athletic Trainer. Doesn’t really sound entry level, or beverage industry related, so no one reading this is likely qualified, but it is funny that it shows up when searching for “Head Brewer”.
Then there’s a job advertised through a recruiting company for a head brewer in Charleston, South Carolina. It seems legit on the surface, until you get to the finer parts of the listing where it says, “work life balance; 45-50 hours a week”. I don’t know about you guys, but that sounds like more work than life to me. If I’m on salary and working more than 40 hours a week, I better be getting equity or some other serious perk for me to consider working more. Regularly going over 40 hours a week when you’re an overtime exempt, salaried employee, is wage theft in my book. Don’t do it. I have half a mind to apply to jobs like this just to tell the potential employer this in the interview.
It’s really getting to the slow season for brewery hiring (breweries always ramp up in spring, and I’ve noticed the biggest/best jobs come mid-summer after that spring shake-up), but there are still a few cool job opportunities. George Lopez’s brewery is hiring a Brewery Operations Manager. It would be cool to work in upper management for a celebrity owned brewery, I have no idea about the organization itself (because it is a crazy meandering corporate structure), but the chance to have your rich boss be George Lopez would be rad.
I haven’t published a poem in years, mostly because I haven’t written many poems, but it’s also an intentional act of creating space and listening to the community. I still regularly read poetry and engage in some discourse here and there. Hopefully I’ll publish again and I’ll share the news with you all then.