Drama

While sitting at my desk the other day at my annoying and painfully boring office job, my friend/co-worker checked out my blog for the first time.  Her reaction shook me up a bit.  She blurted out, “You haven’t written anything in a year?!”   I checked.  Ugh.  She’s right.  Insert rolling-eyes emoji. 

My excuse was that my blog was about the restaurant industry and that I hadn’t worked in a restaurant since April of 2015.  Clearly, I’ve written a few closure pieces since I retired my server apron, but that was still a year ago.  And that shouldn’t be an excuse to quit altogether.  And a good writer can always find something to write about… right?

No more excuses. After almost exactly one year since I haven’t written a damn thing for Serving Humanity, I’m diving in … deep… once again.

Stress comes with practically every job imaginable around the world and back…. aside from maybe a tollbooth operator on a highway no one drives on.  But I imagine most don’t deal with the type of high-stress servers deal with when they are waiting tables at a very busy, very demanding - and poorly managed - corporate restaurant, every single time they clock in.

Picture Deadliest Catch… but without the Bering Sea and all of that crab.  I spent way too many days in the industry when the entire serving staff felt like we were about to enter a menacing hailstorm with 40-foot swells and would have rather dove right into the frigid waters than face the shift ahead of us.  “You want me to take a VIP twelve-top AND a full section??!!”  Or perhaps, “So you’re telling me I’m on the patio today when we only have ONE busser on this beautiful sunny San Diego Saturday??!!”  Or this very traumatic common scenario, “You just triple sat me right when all four of my other tables need wine service?!?”  I’d rather walk right up to the bow of the boat, swan dive into the North Pacific and die of hypothermia.

Alright fine.  Maybe crab fishing during a hailstorm in the Bering Sea in 100mph winds is slightly more stressful than waiting tables on a sunny Saturday when you’re down two bussers.  I will say, however, it can feel like you’re on the Northwestern entering a fierce extratropical cyclone because the anxiety and intensity has got to be damn near equivalent.

Why am I writing about stress and the Deadliest Catch?

I vented about how stressful the hospitality industry can be in my last post, which makes me realize something very important.  Stress parallels drama.  Drama makes life exciting.  I must miss the excitement.  I know I miss the drama!  And apparently, this means I miss the stress too.

Really?  I do?  I can hear my Mom, “But office jobs are so stable, honey! It’s time to quit that serving job!”  This next statement pretty much sums up how I feel working in an office 40 hours a week:  Captain Sig! I’m diving in! Don’t try to save me!

Life without a little stress gets very boring.  I realize now it’s better for me to have some stress in my career than to sit at a desk all day and stare at a computer screen typing countless emails, making sales calls and obsessing over the fact that I’m going to need glasses any day now.  No, Mom, it’s not my age.  I swear it’s the desk job making my eyes go bad!

So what now?  Return to the hospitality industry to free me from boredom and to save my eyesight? Am I clinically insane?  Well, if you know me, you might say, “Perhaps.”  But what’s not insane is the idea of changing your current navigation to a direction that makes your heart beat a little faster and gives you that rush again.

So if you want to throw your alarm clock fiercely at the wall every morning Monday through Friday like I do, it’s probably time to do something about it.

Funny… I had zero intention of writing a pseudo-motivational career-changing-themed blog post today, but it seems that’s where my head is.  And I owe it all to my friend who called me out at work about not writing anything in a year. 

Looks like I have way more to think about than what to write for my next blog post.

Until then, my weekdays will consist of being depressed about by newfound blurry vision and daydreaming about crab fishing with Captain Sig … or perhaps I should contemplate a career a little less dangerous, but irrefutably just as dramatic.

Guess I should also be contemplating a brand new blog altogether...

~ HK ~