Beer Epoch

  This was our first big holiday weekend at the brewery/kitchen where I've found myself.  It was crazy, but the kitchen handled it a hell of a lot better than we did in our St. Patty's opening weekend.  This weekend really solidified us as a kitchen, and we locked it in, even with being short a key prep cook, and I'm pretty proud of that.  I really felt like it was us against them for the first time here, while normally I just feel like it's me fucking everything up, one of my bosses venting at me, then me venting at the kids in the back.  To be perfectly honest, considering the amount of money we made this weekend, it wasn't even that hard, which is a completely insane thought to me, but that's reality for me right now: I am finally starting to understand things that have been way outside my element for a while.  I doubt anyone cares, or even noticed, where I was at in all of that, but everything worked, and I was a part of it.

 After my shift on Sunday, enjoying some beer that I helped make and taking a post-chaos deep breath, the wise, old brewer who allows me to follow him around very candidly and randomly asked me if he was teaching me all this shit for me to just leave. 

 I very candidly said, "maybe." 

 I will get a pretty good glimpse of my worth very soon, and the thought of that terrifies me, because I'm not really sure how much I'm worth to anyone.   I've always just kept showing up for work and done as much as I can, but I know there is more I can do; there is always more we can do, especially when trying to perpetually prove yourself to people who have plenty of applicants lined up who can do what you do, with a much better attitude.

While I feel like the Universe has given me plenty of opportunity to see that I belong here in my little mountain town, it also feels, to me, to be giving up on everything I've ever wanted, considering I've spent most my life trying to escape.  This job brings with it a bit of an identity crisis.  I love brewing, but I'm not a brewer; I hope to be.  I love cooking, but I'm not a cook; I can do without the stress of a high volume kitchen.  There are a lot of decisions before us.

 I am actually writing this with a lot of accidental sadness because I feel a little doomed; I am already thinking about heading out into the great question mark with my beautiful little family and having to start over again.  This place is comfortable for me, having spent most my life here since I was 12, and all the absolute shit that I've survived here.  I am not focused on the better that it can be, but it will always be a kind of mud puddle to the small pond of the greater ocean of possibility.  I do love this place, but, more than anything, I need to exist comfortably with my family.  Worse case scenario, I know I could get a job in any kitchen or brewery with the teachers I've had here, and I am incredibly grateful for that.  This sadness and introspection, this epoch and paradigm inquiry, is also a side product of my turning 40 in less than a month...so, there's that.

What have I done with my life?