Ok, so blogging about my life has not only been at the bottom of my priority list while i’ve lived in survival mode, it’s also felt wayyy to personal these last few years.

To think that there could be strangers out there reading about my life and pain…past friends and foe’s surely reveling in and laughing about it...hard NO WAY for me.

These days, I’m starting to come back to a place of rational thinking and i’ve been taking big action to change my circumstances, that doesn’t mean I woke up this morning with all of my problems solved but I’m starting to feel healed enough to share some things.

In February of this year I was hired at one of my favorite local spots to bartend and serve.

As far as restaurants go, it’s a dream job for me there’s pizza, there’s whiskey, I work with cool people (most of the time), I make decent money and i’m not being micro-managed, what more could I ask for, right? The only problem…I never dreamed of working in a restaurant. Please don’t mistake me; I am not shitting on the serving profession, which I have a lot of love and respect for; It’s just that for me, a person who’s been an empathetic introvert in the customer service industry since 2003…bro, i’m burnt t.f. out. Let’s back it up a little and look at how I got here for just a second.

I started my hairdressing career in 2006 after serving my way though beauty school. I was allllll in on being a stylist, I absolutely loved it. What I loved about it, I wouldn’t have had the words to tell you back then, but I think it was the ability to use my special skill to change someone’s perception of themselves. How powerful is that?! I got to use my two hands and brain full of beauty knowledge to solve people’s everyday bathroom-mirror challenges.

Now…after over 15 years in the beauty biz, I can tell you that not every day was rainbows and butterflies; some days were super shitty and really left me questioning the human condition and how people could be so irrational about….well a lot of things. The first 10 years of my career, I was on fire! I was very skilled, so skilled in fact that I was busy and in-demand all the time and I did the only thing that a busy hairstylist was told to do back then, I scaled up. I opened a salon, I filled it with people who I believed were of the same or similar mindsets as me, I provided education, marketing and goal-setting support. I tried my best, I really did, to do everything I could to provide value and create a mutually beneficial work environment for myself and other stylists to grow and thrive in. I was 25 and SO idealistic when I opened my first business. I truly believed that if I did my best for those stylists, that they would be happy to learn and grow with me for many years. It didn’t work out that way, but this isn’t a story about that so…let’s skip ahead shall we?

So, now i’m 36. I closed my salon down this summer after some really hard hits. I’ve learned a lot and grown a lot and thank the universe, because if I had tried to take my first crack at bartending say…even 5 years ago, I probably would have lost my shit on someone and gotten fired from this job (which I totally need right now to pay the bills).

I’m just going to say it, a bar is almost always going to be a toxic work environment at least some of the time…let me explain. It’s a BAR! People generally go to bars to drink…sometimes people who go to bars to drink have…drinking problems. It’s something that a lot of people deal with, including me in my past. It might sound dumb but I guess I never really thought about that part when I wanted to learn how to bartend. To be totally honest, I was really just thinking about the money, which I currently need to survive and maybe a little bit of the “cool” factor of being a bartender. I didn’t consider how the part of me that battled with alcohol as a coping mechanism for my crumbling life would feel being confronted with, and (kind of) contributing to, that reality in other people now. Little bit ouchie, right?

For the time being, I deal with that reality in my own quiet ways, which means…being a responsible bartender; I do not like to over serve and that brings up anxiety for me sometimes about cutting drunk people off. It also means that in my daytime hours, I stay the course and keep working really hard for the reality I want to create for myself; Which is really just a peaceful life doing things that make me feel happy and fulfilled. Some folks might scoff at that, but I know that’s because they’ve been wounded by life’s harsh realities too and they might not believe that kind of life can exist.

I know that it can, and I know that I have been given those gifts of my own rough experiences so far, so that I could be prepared to build my next chapter better and be more of service to people.

So yeah, like I said, I’ve learned some things and I’m grateful a.f. to be learning a new, marketable skill tending the bar.

I'm also learning some new people-dealing skills and making money after a long time of working in my own business for no pay. It’s cool to be around new people, from different walks of life, I love hearing stories and sharing knowledge with people from behind the bar and did I mention the best pizza in town? There are definitely things I don’t love about working in a bar. I don’t love the potential for me being a part of people’s alcoholism problems, the potential for drunk-driving problems, the widely accepted use and abuse of customer service employees as emotional punching bags for someone’s bad mood.

Those are the things that keep me pushing forward with the other, more beautiful things I know I can and should be contributing to this world. No shade, if you or someone you know struggles with alcohol please get help. I will link some resources at the bottom.

It’s always been important to me to be positively contributing to the community around me, let me know if any of this resonates or strikes a cord with you

Thanks for being here 💛