Category: Uncategorized

New Life in East Nashville // The Man From Boston

Well. There are many things I want to say. So many, many things. My perpetual problem plagues me once again, has been plaguing me. I have so much material for writing, so much content that I am completely overwhelmed, and feel unable to write any of it. I have old material, that I am revising, I have material that I am working on, have worked hard on, New York writing, and I have a little novel idea that I already have made progress on as well. I have the entire book in my head, and just have to actually write it, but that’s the part that takes the time, and the time, as we all know, is precious, and limited. It is the reason why everything I ever want to write about has not been written. And here we are, I want to write yet again, but with so much to say, and never enough time to say any of it. The thing to do in this case, I know, is just write anything, and whatever comes out, that’s it, and at least something was written. At least some of the story was told, and some of the story is much, much better than none of the story. So here I will tell you, on this fine morning in March, some of the story of what’s going on here now, in East Nashville, a true paradise on Earth for many of the East Nashvillians, although I guess just because it’s America, there are still people here who are not living their best lives. But for me, in general, I can’t believe the absolute paradise I have just teleported into, from the horrible Hell and Misery that I was previously a part of. To be able to step outside, into grass, into trees, and the singing of birds, into my very own yard, to sit at a nice picnic table and play my guitar, to hear the clicking, high-pitched grinding of squirrels devouring big nuts, to open the blinds on the window of my room in the morning, sunlight streaming in, and to see directly in front of me a handsome squirrel going bananas on a big, tough nut, my God it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen from a window, and it is my window, and my yard, from my room. (Well, it’s rented, but hey. It’s mine right now.) A room that I have decorated with my things, my books, my guitars, my Squishmallows. I guess I am particularly happy today, but I am happy every day that I’m here, that the sun is shining, and I can look out into my lovely yard, and hear the birds chirping, and see the squirrels frollicking. We have mostly clover in our yard as well, which now has hundreds of incredibly dainty, small flowers, that still attract all of the pollinators, tiny bees and flies, and they hover all over the clover field, which to them is I’m sure a magnificent forest, a huge bounty of food. They are grazing, in a way, just like cattle, scouring the field for the sweetest, tastiest nectar, sucking away at the sugary goodness.

I don’t have much energy because I woke up early this morning, and went to bed late (I thought about saying “bedded late”, I have been reading the ancient tomes), but I am not upset. I would gladly wake up every day in this way, and sacrifice sleep for it, because what woke me up was an incredible thing, that I have never seen as of yet that I have been here, for one month now, and that was, Nick Harding in the kitchen, making breakfast, at 7:50 am. Still, it is surreal to me, that we are in fact both awake at this very moment, going about our business, now 10 of the clock. I felt like I was dreaming. I heard his movement, and I walked out into the living room, and he immediately looked up at me, like he had been caught being a naughty boy, and whispered, “Sorry!” And I said, in my underwear, still half-asleep, “It’s alright.” I thought it was Josh, because although Nick had been hinting that this was coming, and had been trying for a few days, and had told me of his new plan last night, to not stay out all night, and come back early, and take a powerful sedative, to wake up early and restart his sleep schedule, I knew this was coming, but to see it in reality is another thing. Someone says, “It’s coming, it’s coming,” and it finally comes, and you’re still shocked, even though you knew it was coming. Nicholas Harding, the entire time that I have known him now, has been staying out, later, and later, and later, a creature of the night, and sleeping in, later, and later, and later, waking up with an hour of sunlight left in the day, and watching it disperse through a crack in his bedroom window. He has been as nocturnal as the Count himself, and the only way you would have ever seen him in the “morning” was to wake up early enough to catch him before he retired for the day. I would spend all day, many, many hours of the day, living my life, before Nick Harding had risen from his tomb, to begin his night. So to see him, standing there, in the kitchen, cooking bacon and eggs, in his hat, sweatshirt, sweatpants, morning sun streaming in through the windows, birds chirping, and his cat, Brady, out in the living room with him, also shocked and clearly very pleased with this new development, at 7:50 in the morning, was understandably, totally surreal. It took me many minutes to process that this was happening, that it was in fact reality, and that I was not dreaming. I kept repeating that I couldn’t believe this was happening, and Nick said, “You think you’re still dreaming, don’t you?” We had a great morning chat, in which he told me his new plans for life, taking the week to get his sleep schedule in order before he goes back to work, getting back into morning gym workouts, and, of course, very soon he was telling me “I’ve made a decision. (A famous Nick Hardingism.) I’m back on the dating apps.” To which I replied, “You got off of them?” (It felt like he had been on just as many dates as ever, which was, nearly every night. But now that I think about it, he had been having a lot of boys’ time.) He said, “Yeah I was trying it out, trying to date more organically, but…” (This phase of organic dating can’t have lasted for more than a week.) In short, he’s looking for real love now, which I would say is a great and noble thing to be searching for. I went back to my room then, Nick to his, to watch The Patriot with Brady, I think because just yesterday we had been talking about, if we had to fight in any war, any kind of military conflict, what we would have wanted to fight in, and Nick was for certain, the American Revolution, which I thought was a very good choice. We talked more about it this morning, when I went into his room, to behold the most incredible scene, that I still could not believe I was seeing, that was Nick, cozy on his bed, watching a movie, with his window curtains actually open, with his room not dark and cave-like, and not lit by the harsh overhead light, but by in fact, true, real natural sunlight, and with a candle burning, with photos of his family now on the windowsill, and with Brady at his feet, in a state of perfect contentment, he looked like he was purring his soul out just being alive in that moment, I still couldn’t believe that this was really happening. And he had so effortlessly switched, like he had been doing this every morning of his life. And he did comment, “I’m good at switching.” We rekindled our war discussion, as he was watching The Patriot and I could hear the sounds of battle, and I said, “You wish you were there?” And he laughed, and said, “Dude… I’ve been thinking more about it.” And his answer was still Revolutionary War, OR, to be in the Roman Legion, infantry style, because then if you die, you die with your boys. He said the worst thing would be to die alone. I mostly agree with that, except I would not want to die in an absolute maelstrom of chaos, which would unfortunately be very likely. I would rather have a picturesque death, in battle, and with some time to say my last words to one of my comrades who had really gotten to know me, and who would promise me that they would kill the bastards who did this to me, and win the fight, and carry on, and stay alive, and tell everybody that I loved them, and all of that stuff that you say when you’re meeting your untimely end in war. I would not want to just be blown up by a mortar as I stormed the beach, too loud to hear anything from the bombs and the gunfire, with my guts out.. wow, umm, anyways.. where were we. Well, basically, that’s it. My answer was still in medieval times, and if I was a common man, I would want to be an archer, but of course if I could choose it I would be a knight. To which Nick replied, “Oh of course, if I can pick I’m going to be George Washington.” And I said, “As in you would want to be George Washington himself, or you as in Nick Harding substitute for him?” And he said, he, Nick Harding, which I said, that is an incredible amount of responsibility, and do you think you can do the job? And he laughed and said, “F*** no.” And the whole time, the fact that we were having this conversation here in the morning, still, that the sun was out, not to set anytime soon, that it was in fact the beginning of the day, for me and him, I still could not believe.

Other things I could write about include having a moustache, having already been infected by Southern culture, where people do in fact have moustaches, and now hardly without meaning to, I now have one too, and I have also been infected with Squishmallow disease, as have I have learned, all three of us masculine men in this household, via women in our lives, and how I am beloved at my local Kroger Starbucks because I only order black coffee, (“This guy’s a legend!” one of the baristas recently commented to his manager.) When I first ordered it, he told me he loved me. He said, after understanding that I just wanted a small black coffee, “Man, I love you.” I guess that nobody orders just a black coffee at Starbucks. Or at least, not at this particular Kroger Starbucks. It is a kind of crazy thing to do, I guess, like not having a smartphone, which is also continuing to win me much renown. Both of my roommates have commented that they have talked about me having a flip-phone, Nick to his therapist, and Josh to his friends. Also, I will just say I have full permission to write anything and everything about Nick, who told me, when I asked if I could write about him, “Yeah, you can write about me. You can use my social security number for all I care.”

Some of the other things Nick has said to me:

*In all seriousness* “I think about them all the time.” (Them being first editions of books.)

“Whoever it is, whatever I did, I’m sorry.” (Him telling me about getting a random call from someone who knew him from high school and would not reveal their identity, and started accusing and shaming him. He said he knew that all they wanted was, what’s the word, to be heard. (I can hear a flute playing in the background right now, some martial tune from The Patriot. I feel like this is something like having your kid home from college.)

When I went to talk to him about kitty litter. I said, “I need to talk to you.”

“About what? Is it gay?”

“A little gay.”

“Ok, carry on. Pro-ceed.”

This is at midnight, Nick only returning home for a brief respite. And something about the way he said it, especially, “Pro-ceed” putting his little twist on the pro like that, just killed me.

I was there to high-five Nick the moment he had received his award from Tinder for being in the “top 20% of profiles”. He said, looking up from his phone, “Guess who’s in the top 20% in Tinder profiles??” We high-fived. Then he said they shouldn’t be telling him that because his ego would go through the roof. I can’t remember his exact words, the way how he described how his ego would soar, but they were good.

I was showing Nick the second mattress that I had bought, in the midst of my failed mattress adventures, raging about how it was a piece-of-garbage sponge cake, and he had come in and was sitting on it, and I showed him, that I could easily bend it at a 90 degree angle, I showed him this and said, “This is not right. Look, I can easily bend it at a 90 degree angle. That’s not right.” And he stopped mid-sentence (extremely rare), having then fully processed what I had said, and laughed and looked at me and said, “What a f***ing test though.”

I mentioned again about writing about him, and he said his step-dad was a writer, and he had written about Nick before, and that he (his step-dad) had said to Nick’s mom, “I only married you for Nick.”

I could keep going. This is effortless for me. It is just as effortless for Nick, to say all of these incredible things. Nick told me about killing beavers, killing beavers for his step-dad that were destroying their special pond on their hundreds of acres of property in Vermont, and how his step-dad had paid him for each beaver he slayed, $100 a beaver, and he got $350 dollars, because he killed four beavers, but the fourth he shot in the water, and it sank and he couldn’t get the body. This story was a short segway in a conversation about a woman who was a hunter, who told Nick that she could dress a deer in 10 minutes, that Nick was currently seeing. On some of our very first nights together in the house, Nick was fretting over sending a message that he felt was too romantic to this woman who he was I think not supposed to be falling in love with, as that was not what she wanted, but he didn’t want to lose her at all.. Something like that. He was telling me about this, and he said, he knew women very well, growing up with two sisters and watching Sex and The City with them. “Everything I learned about women I learned from Sex and The City. There’s four types of women….” And, to this hunter girl he was seeing, he had said something about, “I’ll have to be careful about riding alone with you in a pickup truck on the country roads.” Or something, because I guess that’s a thing they say, or a song, about falling in love with a blonde girl while driving in a truck on country roads, basically what I just said (I don’t listen to country music, I don’t know about this stuff.) And he thought that was too much, and he was in great despair, putting his head in his hands, groaning, saying, “She’s not gonna’ text me back. 100%, she’s not gonna’ text me back tonight. If ever get a text back it’s not going to be until after this weekend.” And she did text him back that night, in only an hour, which was extremely relieving for him, so relieving that he texted me and said, “She texted me back. We’re good.” (Because of course I was also so invested in this) and said that she was in the shower or something. In the meantime, as he fretted and tortured himself, he commented on the chess set that is the only piece of decoration or homeliness in our still-barren living room, on the standing counter of the kitchen sink, and he said he had always wanted to learn chess, to which I replied, “You are a 31 year old man and you do not know how to play chess?” Excuse the stereotyping, but I mean, come on now. And he went to prep school??? (Well. So no he didn’t. It was revealed later that this enigmatic and fantastical man was full of lies, and a general ne’er-do-well. That may be something of a spoiler, but.. it fits, doesn’t it.) So I taught him, easing him into this, because I knew it would be a lot for him, in this moment, a lot for him to handle, and after starting with the pawn, and then moving on to the rook, then the knight, finally the bishop, he says, “Ok, hold on. Let me run this back.” And then he took a deep breath, and said, “God, I have to think. I haven’t thought in so long.” And he was being completely genuine. This man was, and generally is, but particularly so at this time in his life, in those first few days that I had known him, operating on pure, primal instinct, animal energy, running off adrenaline, testosterone, caffiene, nicotine, and mango-flavored White Claws, of which he downed one in the middle of our game of chess. He stopped and said, “Hold on, I need to do something.” Getting a large 16, 20-ounce White Claw out of the fridge, and saying again, “I have to do this.” And I knew. I knew what was about to happen here, but still I had to confirm it, and I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “What are you about to do?” And he laughed, and he said, “That’s a great response.” He said, “I’m going to chug this.” He said he could chug it “really fast.” His best time being seven seconds or something. I said, “Let’s time it.” He pulled out his phone, and he said, laughing, “What?? I’ve had my timer on this whole time??” And the timer on his phone had been running for nearly 10 days. It was approaching exactly 240 hours, it was on 238 hours and 40 minutes. And I said, “Dude, screenshot that, that is insane. In an hour you’ll have it at exactly ten day-“

“It’s gone.”

“What?”

“I deleted it on accident.”

He then handed me the timer, and crushed the White Claw, in 7.8 seconds. We then resumed our chess match, for the eleventh time that we had put it on pause, because during this match we had stopped many times, for him to review the mistakes he had made in messaging this woman, for him to put his phone on silent to help him get away from it, then deciding that was not sufficient, and turning it off, putting it in his room, then going back to get it, turning it back on because he “needed to know if his friends texted him” but he put the woman on silent (apparently you can do this?). He was also constantly vaping, huffing and spewing vapor throughout. After him crushing the White Claw, we had now “played” for about thirty minutes, what felt like an eternity (actual game time being only about 3 minutes), I just had to end it. Actually, the universe conspired to end things at a proper and natural time there, because somehow the most amazing and effortless checkmate showed itself to me, and I figured, even though we had actually only played about 8 turns in this chessmatch, that was enough for now, and so I took it.

I think I was even talking about this because of the phones, and displaying his primal instinct, but Nick has a terrible addiction to his phone, which he “just realized” recently. A few days after our legendary chess match (there have been no more of those, by the way) I was up to go to the bathroom in the wee hours of the night, or morning, around 4 am, and the bathroom is right next to Nick’s room, and he keeps the door open for Brady to get in and out, and I heard what sounded like two shows, two audio streams happening at once, and the next day we were talking, and I asked him about that, saying “Were you watching two shows at once?” And he said, “Oh, 100%.”

I must confess that I could write for many more hours on Nick, and our relationship. He is an incredible goldmine of writing material. The man is a living, breathing, treasure trove of content. Truly for a writer of the type such that I am, I could not have found a better roommate, and I still can’t believe my good luck in how this has panned out. (And even wilder than I could have ever imagined, in these glory days, the downfall that was coming. For Nick Harding turned out to be lying about just about everything in his life, and was stealing, and forging, and was with high probability what was formerly called a sociopath, and now termed anti-social personality disorder, which seems shocking, and it was incredibly shocking to discover at the time. I would say it was even somewhat frightening, as I felt that I had become intimate with him, and thought I knew him well. But so is the art of sociopath, the confidence man, the fraudster. And perhaps some part of me wanted to believe all of his fantastical tales, his recounts of wild adventures and his deep well of fabricated knowledge, as it was so entertaining for me. I didn’t care so much that it was true or not, I just wanted to keep hearing it. He probably knew that about me, too.) From the very beginning this Nashville business has been fated to be, it seems, blessed or at least destined to be. I don’t know how long this chapter will last, this magical new bromance I have found myself in (only a few days ago Nick walked in on Josh and I and said, “Boys, I have some bad news. I might be moving out.” Which was absolutely shocking and also completely crazy, because he had not paid rent in a few days, and the landlord, his friend, was pissed, and then of course in several hours he had made the payment, “a friend giving him some money” (now in the future, we know that that could mean anything at all), even though he has much money himself, as he has, he told me this, “gold and silver bars” in a Nashville bank, that he brought with him, as well as expensive watches, in the bank, that are investments. And he just came back from a trip to Boston with ten of the most beautiful suits I have seen. He took them all of his bag, one by one, sometimes with matching pants, and showed them all off to me, telling me about each one, the style, etc., which was incredible fun for both of us. So how this man comes into my room and says, “I might be moving out.” because he couldn’t pay his share of the far-less-than-New-York-rent rent, completely baffling. Every day with this man is a new adventure, and other days have started off with, me answering the door, bright and early at 7 am, to a group of no less than 11 firefighters, and just a few days ago, waking up to having no water in the house. I will have to write more of our adventures together here soon.

(From the future.) You know… Knowing what I know now, this paragraph and writing seems to be so full of red flags. And yet, at the time, it didn’t seem that way. He was so artful in his reasons and excuses and explanations, and I also am (well really, was, because I don’t think I will ever be taken in by someone so easily again) trusting and honest myself, and so I really didn’t suspect anything for a long time, and believed him when he told me any of his never-ending explanations and excuses for the strange things that happened with him. There is more to this story, and I should tell it, so that you can hear the full arc. That’s where it really gets good.

Osaka (F*** League of Legends)

The only stain from my Osaka days was my League binge. Please never forget, everybody, fuck League of Legends. Fuck Overwatch, fuck competitive gaming, fuck video games. Fuck Fortnite. Fuck all of that shit. Fuck vice. Read books, lift weights, play guitar, write a novel. But, there is no doubt, fuck competitive gaming. I can’t just say fuck video games because some games are really cool and rewarding to play. Samorost 3, Pikmin, Zelda, etc. But the modern competitive video game that cares only about stealing your time and attention and money, only about getting as much as they possibly can from you, fuck them. Fuck them so hard. Don’t ever think that they are not trying to fuck you over. They are.

*Depressed at the cubicle. There will only be two more days of this.*

The other day, I threw my mouse in the trash. I’m thinking about that right now, because I’m somewhat hoping that my roommates haven’t taken out the trash, in which case I can dig to the bottom of that full can, get my mouse back, and play League of Legends tonight. That’s what I’m thinking about this morning, now, at 11:37am, from my cubicle. (And you know what? I fucking did it. I pulled my mouse out of the bottom of that jam packed can, covered in celery juice and coffee grounds, and I wiped it off, and I played six horrible games of League of Legends. Filled with idiots, filled with trolls, with people being angry, people being mean, people being sad. I played until 2 in the morning, spent 4 more hours on the computer after a full day of being on the computer, and then went to bed watching someone else play more League. The League formula is so powerful that it made me pull my trash mouse out of the trash. That’s addiction. That’s an addict relapsing. Fuck you League. I will never play you again. You suck asshole, and you people who run League, you fucking suck too. You never get any more of my precious time again. I will never say the words again, like He Who Must Not Be Named. The Game That Must Not Be Named. That is what you are, now. You have achieved Harry Potter supervillian status. The Game That Must Not Be Named. The most hated enemy. And I will never play any game like you. I will never touch a multiplayer competitive game for as long as I live. I don’t want to. I have no interest in it. And I will not. 1/24/2024. Remember this day. The final day, the last day I was a slave. The last day I allowed myself to be taken advantage of. When you play these games, you are not the player. You are being played. (Oh, that’s so good.) January 24th, 2024.

I’m sitting here, and after having gone through a period of just straight up depression, probably from a lack of sunlight and any social interaction or physical movement, basically there has been no joy yet in my day, except when Mr. Shimoyama had a few words with me, and a moment on the train where the train lurched forward and I slipped in water and did a little ballerina pirouet, spinning exactly 360 degrees in one second and somehow perfectly catching myself on the railing, to which I made a witty comment and not a single person of the many people around me on this packed train had any response to at all, and I now have some energy, having had some coffee, and am waking up. I am waking up, and I am waking up in my cubicle, which is something of a desert of the senses, you could say, and am now once again retreating into the oasis of my mind for my mental water and dates, that are entertainment and stimulation.

I don’t really have a pressing task right now, I already managed one. And the problem with these computer tasks that require no creativity is that they are not going to provide you any kind of juice, or gas, to get you going, and inspire you. Conversely, they require energy and motivation. But right now, I’m out of that. The tank is empty, you can say. And so, I daydream.

I was thinking about my time in Osaka, actually. I was thinking about the time I spent at Tully’s Coffee, at Tennouji Park. When I think about Osaka, the two months that I spent there, living in Toyo Hotel (which was really more of a hostel), I think about a lot of things. At the time, I did not appreciate how transformative of a period of time that was, but the more that I go back to those memories, I see how precious they are. Like Thailand, they cost me so little, and are worth so much. I didn’t really know what I was doing in Osaka. Actually, that’s not true. I had just been in Hokkaido, trying to force myself into a life that wasn’t working for me, and after forcing, and scheming, and carrying out plans that just weren’t working, I gave up on the game, and relinquished myself of that vision. I left, and I decided that I would now simply give myself up to the river of life, for some time, without planning, as that only seemed to get me into trouble, and cause me trouble, and I did that, and ended up in Osaka. I went to Osaka because I wanted to be somewhere else in Japan, and I wanted to try a big city, and my Japanese friends told me I would like Osaka more than Tokyo. They said it was more of my style, and when I did a little Googlin’, and found a Tokyo vs. Osaka post, and saw that Tokyo had in its corner, “History, food, art, entertainment, anime culture, sports, etc. etc. etc.” (basically, everything ever) and then on the Osaka side, only one thing, “Comedy”, I knew Osaka was for me. I have so many stories from these two months in Osaka, so many good stories. I was a completely free man living in hostel with international travelers, mostly young people but there was a mix of everybody, longer term students living there (Mao and “Miss Tiger”, Yuko Woo, Chinese girls), a teacher, half New Zealander half Canadian, who had been there for four years who was exactly a modern day hippie hobbit (short, hairy, always barefoot, and with long dreads)(and just to give you an idea of the level of swag that this man was at, he wore the Okarina from The Legend of Zelda, Okarina of Time around his neck, 24/7).. and there was.. god what was his name, KEN, it was Ken, Ken was a real character man. I don’t even know what the hell Ken’s story was. I can’t remember where he was from, I think he was from Arizona, and what the hell he was doing at Toyo, I have no idea. When I first met Ken, I have to say (sorry Ken) I thought he was cracked. He was always asking questions and I almost felt like he was a little nosy. But very quickly Ken grew on me, and I saw that he was just goofy and easygoing, and always in a good mood. You know, with people being so complicated and moody and difficult, anyone who is always in a good mood is a winner in my book. That’s a person that is so welcome in my life. I need it, because I’m fucking moody sometimes. I’m not one of those people, and that’s alright. The happy people, the people who are always having a good time, who keep things in perspective, and are not overly preoccupied with all of the many great horrors and injustices of the world, who are always grounded in the here and now, who are up for talking about anything, who keep it light, they are winners in my book, and they are very valuable to me. Ken was one of those people, and so was the other guy, and they were buddies.. Noah. I have to remember these names. Noah, my god man, what a character. I also thought he was just a total goober (I’m sorry Noah). I mean, you have to be a little crazy to commute anywhere six hours a day, which is what he was doing in Australia, to his college. He said that was normal, but man, that can’t be normal. There’s just no way that’s normal. That’s pretty fucking insane. He would drive three hours every morning, and three hours back at night. You would think he was making that up right, but I swear Noah wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t even an exaggerator. He just actually did stuff like that. He had big square glasses. We both showed up at Toyo at about the same time, and he was looking to become an English teacher, and he got a job while I was there, and was working out of the hotel. I remember his first interview, he told me that he was interviewed by a anime cat, and he couldn’t take it seriously. I thought that was hilarious. I could never have taken it seriously either. I mean, if someone decides to have an interview with you, and they use an animated cat to do it, you don’t take that seriously, because that’s not serious. That’s a dumbass company right there.

“Miss Tiger” Yuko Woo was one of my favorites. We had a special bond. She was hot for me. She was like my old Chinese wife, in a way. We just acted like an old married couple. We had really great banter. She would just give it to me straight, and you know I love a woman who gives it to me straight. She once asked me, “Why you wear glasses? You look like nerd.” And took them off of me. “That’s better.” That was Yuko Woo. Her Zodiac animal was the tiger, and she was talking about it one day, I can’t remember why, I think because we had a Chinese New Year’s party together, and that year it was the Year of the Mouse, and she said she was a tiger, so I started calling her Miss Tiger, and it was really very fitting for her, and then she asked what I was, and I told her boar, because that’s what I am, and then she started calling me “Mister Pig.” And I told her many times, I am not a pig, I am not born in the year of the pig, that’s a different Zodiac animal, no, I am a boar, a mighty boar, with tusks, roaming the wilds and goring things, and she would say, “Ok Mister Pig.” Yuko was into partying every night, or on most nights at least, and I was always disappointing her, because I almost never went out, and at least not with the big group, or whoever she was going out with that night. I did still go out, because it was the first time I had ever lived in a place with a real nightlife, and I experimented with that, and I gotta say in the end, it’s mostly just not for me. I’m just not the type, I guess, because most of the times that I went out, I didn’t really feel like it was ever really a success, or something that was good for me, even with all of the meeting people and the seeing things, but I did get stories, and those are always worth something. I did go out with Woo a few times, and every time I did, she would just get drunk and dance, and she would do a little wavy dancing, kind of just standing still and waving back and forth, like kelp in the ocean, just vibing out.

I’ll save my going out stories for later, I guess. I haven’t talked about Mao yet, who is the last of the main characters of Toyo, the main residents, who were there for the entire of my two months. You see, I learned from the hippie hobbit Matt, that you could actually live at Toyo, you could become a resident, and they would move you up to the top floor, the resident’s floor, and you had elevated status, and paid a monthly rate that was even cheaper, and the hotel was already so cheap. This hotel was so popular because it was so cheap, it was notorious for being cheap, because, I learned after I was there, from the hippie hobbit Matt, that we were living in the worst ghetto in Japan, called Nishinari. It was a famous place, and Japanese people knew the name, and when I asked some of my Japanese friends about it, they were like, “Eeee? Nishinari no?? Nande?” (“What? You’re in Nishnari? Why?”) And it’s funny, and I think about this a lot now, because I lived in the worst ghetto in Japan, and it is incomparable to New York City. The worst ghetto in Japan is by comparison the most blessed and greatest paradise on earth compared to New York City. That’s no exaggeration. I saw only one homeless man in Nishinari, and he was doing great. He had a fort of boxes, he had a nice spot on the curb, warm clothes. He wasn’t begging, he wasn’t bothering anybody. I passed by that man almost every day, on my walk to Tully’s, and Tully’s is the reason why I’m even writing about this at all this morning. Tully’s Coffee at Tennouji Park is the best place in Osaka, or if you want to include the whole park, Tennouji Park is the best place in Osaka.

I was thinking about Tully’s Coffee because this morning, I put a Tully’s coffee cup into our office Keurig machine. I fantasize about some of the best moments when I’m in shitty places, like a cubicle, and the New York City subway. So you can understand why I fantasize about Thailand and Japan almost every day that I’m here in New York. And when I think about my time in Osaka, and all of the things that I did, and everywhere that I went, the purest, most joyful memory I have, which is almost a physical sensation that I can feel when I conjure up the memories, is me walking around Tennouji Park, in the clear, blue winter sky, with all of the smiling, happy Osakans, and hanging out at that Tully’s Coffee. It was only a short walk from the Hotel, and I went there almost every day, in the mornings, for most of the two months of my Osaka stay. There was one period of time where I fell into the void that is League of Legends, where I completely forsook the outside world, and fully assumed the identity of Kindred, Lamb and Wolf, the hunter, and it was not worth it, and fuck League of Legends, but that’s what I did. And I knew I had given up on the physical world when I stopped making my Tully’s pilgrimage, because that was a very important part of my life then. It was a routine that brought me great joy. It was a sacred place for me, a place for me to be. And what was so special about Tully’s, and Tennouji Park? Nothing, really. That’s the magic of it. It was just an ordinary place, an ordinary park, with happy people, some futsal courts, some park events, a michi-no-eki with the local produce, a zoo nearby, a nice Italian restaurant, super popular place, and Tully’s. The nicest coffee shop in the world. This Tully’s was big, and the walls were all glass, so you could see outside. You could watch all of the people in the park walk by, smiling, living their lives. The coffee shop was always packed, probably 30 or 40 people could all be in there sitting at once. There was a table with plastic dividers, for covid, that could seat up to 8 people, and that’s where the computer people, the people that were there to do business, would mostly hang out. Next to that, there were six armchairs, with small square tables in between, for sitting across from a friend or with a group, and chatting. There were then all along the back and on the other side, small tables with two chairs across from each other, lining the store. And in the very back corner there was a low table with two couches on opposite sides. There were three ways in or out. The front main entrance, and then one entrance to the left side. The one on the right, nobody came in that way, but you could leave through it. The park itself was like a giant rectangle, with a large grass area in the center. Man, there was even a roller rink and a small dog park. I mean, when I really think about it, that park had everything you could want. It had just about everything for everybody. And surrounding the park was the greater Nishinari area, that had all of the shops, huge malls, the shoutengai (the covered, long outdoor malls, with rows and rows of shops), the zoo, Shinsekai to the west, and the tower, in the middle of Shinsekai that was like a small Tokyo tower, a giant Don Quijote, a huge, multistoried onsen facility.. Man. I miss that like crazy. It was this sprawling, exciting microcosm. To the north of the park there was a stately art museum that was unfortunately closed while I was there, and a Japanese garden, a big one. So, you could take your pick, where you wanted to go, what you wanted to do. There were so many places to play, just in that little few square miles of Osaka. And then we were right on the train line, the subway, and not far from Toyo and the park, you could ride the faster rails, that could take you the farther places, like Kyoto and Kobe and Nara. Those trains ran on the dime, they ran on the money, they never failed me once, and I rode them often. They never failed once. God, I hate to rag on New York City, I really do. It just makes me depressed. But, this city is just so fucked compared to Osaka. So fucked compared to Japan. I just can’t help but think about it.

I didn’t tell you what I paid to live at Toyo, either. It was 30,000 yen a month. Do you know much that is in dollars? I’ll tell you. It’s like $220. That’s how much I paid, in a month, to live there at Toyo.

I would go to Tully’s Coffee almost every day. If the weather was particularly bad I might not, but I would still try. The best memories I have of Osaka are of walking past all of those happy people in the park, seeing the soccer players, and the couples, and the parents, the kids, the groups of young guys and girls, living their lives, and then going into that Tully’s, paying my 300 yen for a coffee, and taking a seat amongst the Tullians. I was a regular for sure, and the staff knew me. I am charming, you know, and make small talk, and generally like to have positive interactions with people, so it wasn’t long before we were chatting, and they were regular friends to me. There were four staff members that I would regularly interact with, but my two besties were the manager, who was almost always there, a woman in her 30’s or early 40’s, and Kento, a young guy who lived in California for a year and had amazing English. We would always have a laugh together, over anything at all. He always had something fun to say to me. I remember he said to me once, that I was confusing the other staff girls, because I would sometimes speak in English, and sometimes in Japanese, and they didn’t know which was which. It’s common to speak in both languages when you’re both familiar with them, but for a low-level speaker of one of the two languages, the switching is quite confusing. The other two members were younger girls, who I never could get much out of, but they knew me, and they knew what I wanted, which was always a medium black coffee, until I realized that the medium was just too much for me, and I switched it to small, which was I remember a momentous decision, that I’m sure was talked about by all of them, when Kento said, “Medium?” And I said, “Make it small this time.” I’m laughing so hard writing this. It’s actually true though, that’s how it went. And he was like, “Oh!” I would always ask what kind of coffee they had today, and they would just start telling me, so I didn’t have to ask. It’s the little things, you know. I felt like I had really reached a certain status, it was like a badge of honor, when the manager came over to me one day, when I was sitting in the back, and she told me that one of the seats at the 8 unit table where the Tullians went to do their work sat, she told me one of those seats was available now. She knew that I always liked to sit there. She noticed that, you know. She knew my habits, she knew me. That was sweet. It’s really the little things.

They ran a perfect ship. It was always clean, people were always taken care of. That Tully’s was so popular for a reason. And they always played jazz, good jazz, like jazz trios, jazz quartets. That’s my favorite kind of jazz. I remember they were once going through a jazz Harry Potter CD, for maybe a week or two, they were playing Harry Potter jazz. I loved it. I mean, jazz, coffee, nice, happy people. Not hard to see why Tully’s Coffee was my favorite place to go. It doesn’t take much. And you could find anybody in Tully’s. There were often other foreigners. There were Japanese moms, girlfriends, couples, students, families, businesspeople, old friends, kids. Everybody was there, hanging out, living life, having a good time. Always good conversation and smiles. One of the young worker girls, she didn’t have much English, and was a little on the shy side, and I remember once walking in, and walking up to the counter, and there was a foreign family there trying to explain to her their complicated order with all these bells and whistles, and I could see the girl was having a tough time with them, and I thought, This is my moment. Leave it to me. And I stepped in and saved the day. The mom said, “Thank you so much, we’re from Hong Kong, I thought Japanese people would speak more English!” And I translated their complicated order with the bells and whistles, like no ketchup on the wiener, that kind of thing, and everybody was happy, and the shy girl was grateful, and I felt like I had performed a great service. It’s nice when you get to use your language skills to actually help people. It’s a very satisfying thing.

The only sad thing about Tennouji Park, and the Tully’s – the only problem with it, was that it wasn’t my culture, and it wasn’t my people. The Japanese never intentionally made me feel that way, but the language barrier did. And, I never felt this way when I was in Ozu, or in Kumamoto at all, because it was rare that I was ever surrounded by masses of people. I was usually in smaller groups, where I would be, you know, 5% of the population at the least, but I also had a role, like in the classroom, I was a part of it, being a teacher. I think that was actually the biggest difference, because while I was in Kumamoto, I had a role, and I had an identity, and that gave me a reason to be in Japan. There was something I was doing that tied me to Japan, and made me a part of it. But once that was gone, I felt that there was nothing now that really bonded me to Japan, and I didn’t have a place in it anymore. And I started to feel that when I would hang out in the park, and at Shinsekai, and at the mall, and on the giant circular crosswalk in the sky on the intersection between the park and malls and giant buildings, and I would be surrounded by Japanese people, hundreds of Japanese people, and then there would be me. Just me. And I would feel it, then, that I was different. It was like, wow, this is a lot of Japanese people. In fact, every one of them is Japanese. And, I’m not Japanese. I’m different from them. Sometimes that’s a fine feeling, and it comes with a lot of perks. Most of the time, really. It’s fun to be exotic. It’s just that, eventually, you don’t want to feel that. Or, you don’t want to feel that way all the time. You want to be exotic, of course, but you also want to just be normal. That sounds like something that celebrities could really relate to. You just don’t always want to stand out. Sometimes, you just want to be like everybody else. And when I wasn’t thinking about how I wasn’t Japanese, which was actually 99% of the time, the language barrier would often remind me, because even with the level of Japanese that I had, which was that I could have a conversation with anybody, I wasn’t nearly fluent. I would still make mistakes, I wouldn’t understand what they would say, I would have to ask them to repeat themselves, all of those things that just get in the way of normal communication, clunk things up, and remind you that you’re different. Those little, passing interactions, are very important for relationships. The fleeting interactions. You may have just a small moment to make an impression, to say what you have to say, to show some personality. Being unable to do that, it’s hard. Having something you want to say, but not being able to say it, right there on the spot, or trying and failing, it’s just hard. I had just been back to the US for the first time in years that fall as well, and I remembered, or really, I learned for the first time, that feeling of just being so easily enmeshed in a culture, of existing so easily in it, being able to understand everyone and everything, knowing what they’re going to say before saying it, being able to handle every interaction nearly effortlessly, was just so.. refreshing. So easy. Like being a fish in water again. That was really the only problem with Tennouji Park, with Tully’s Coffee. By extension, that was the only problem with my Japanese life, then. Otherwise, it was just about perfect.

Man, I really miss Japan.

It’s weird to say this, and it’s weird that I feel this way, but I do. I have very few regrets in life. I actually might only have one, and it’s this. They say you only regret the things you didn’t do, and so far for me in this life, that holds true. I wish I would have told my Tully’s friends that I was leaving Osaka. I didn’t tell them goodbye, I didn’t tell them I was leaving Osaka. And when I think about it, it feels like I just disappeared into the night, vanished without an explanation. Time passed, they wondered where I was, if I would ever come back, and then eventually, stopped thinking about me. I wish I would have taken the time to tell them goodbye, and thanks for everything. Thanks for running a great store, thanks for the friendly conversation, thanks for caring about me, thanks for giving me a place to go, a place to be.

When I think about Osaka, it’s those moments at Tully’s and in Tennouji Park that come back to me, but there was another place where great memories were made, and that was in the Toyo common room, where I made so many friends, encountered so many characters, had so many great conversations. I really did make so many friends. Genesis, the German med-student that failed her med school exam and was taking a haitus, Jean, the French beatmaker who quit his engineering job and was looking for a new lease on life, Ben, the Scot, the sustainability expert, Thal and Roy, the Israeli guys who had finished their mandatory military service and were now doing the customary world travel, all of the main crew of Toyo, Mao, the Tiger, Noah, Ken, and Derek, the photographer from Illinois.. there was a crazy Pakistani man, a guy from Florida, who, when we were talking about crazy Florida people, told me a story about a guy who taught his parrot how to say, “I consent” so that he could have sex with it, and when I said that there was simply no possible way this way true, no matter how crazy Floridians are, (because let’s be real, it is anatomically impossible to have sex with a parrot), and he Googled it and said that ok, it was a fake story, but he believed it because that’s how crazy the Floridians are.. Man, so many characters.

There are many stories here. There was a mystery man. In the lobby, in the common room on the first floor, where we all hung out, there was a guitar. It was a piece of garbage. It was mostly broken, but it had strings. You could make some sounds, but you didn’t play that guitar. It was mostly for the comfort of guitar players, to have a guitar around, and to look at, even if it didn’t work. But one day, after I became a resident, and they moved me up to the 5th floor (and I remember asking if I could just stay in my 2nd floor room so that I didn’t have to “move all of my stuff” (insert crying laughing emoji)(because I had like two suitcases) I started checking out the upstairs, and found a nice roof, and a secret lounge that no one was using. Inside of this secret lounge, there was a guitar, that was nice and actually functional, and I adopted it. I never saw anyone in the lounge, after hanging out in there for some days, and I figured that this was just a left-behind guitar, and started keeping it in my room, and somehow, Aya chan, one of the Toyo staff, a wonderful gal, knew that I had the guitar. A few weeks later, she asked me if I had the guitar, and if I could leave it in the lounge, because the owner had been looking for it, and I said, “The owner???” She said he used to live there and still comes around sometimes to play in that room, and he was glad that someone was using the guitar, but still wanted to play it too. So I left it in the lounge, and wondered about this mysterious man. Not long after that, when I went up to the lounge to play, as I walked up the steps to that 6th floor, I heard something. I heard music, string music, but it wasn’t guitar. It was something else, something like a sitar, some Middle Eastern sound. I walked up to the door and listened, and what I could hear was absolutely blowing my mind. Whoever was playing whatever in that room was a complete genius of the instrument, and I knew that must be the mystery man. I stood there in awe, listening to this master, getting a private concert, and waited. I didn’t want to disrupt him, obviously, but I needed to know who he was, and so when he finally stopped playing, I opened the door, and there he was. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the mystery man, a Japanese man with long hair, playing his mystery instrument, made out of a gourd, with 20+ strings. (Google tells me it’s a kora, 21 strings.) I said, “Sugoi.” (Wow.) And then we became best friends. I apologized for taking his guitar, asked him about his instrument, he played some crazy stuff for me, told me all about the kora, asked me to play some guitar for him (which I was so embarrased about and have never felt more humbled) but he was encouraging and said I had a lot of feeling behind my playing. I felt like I was meeting a rare character, a magical being, like a unicorn, or Tom Bombadil from The Lord of Rings, something mysterious and ephemeral. I saw him outside of that room, once. He was a young man, but he had some problems with his legs, and walked with a cane. We met several more times, and played together, and talked about music, in that secret room, in a private space, outside of time, away from the noise and chaos of the world.

The ability to get away from the rest of the world, to have such a private, personal, untouchable space, both in that lounge, and in my room, was a truly amazing thing. And I had complete freedom at this time, with no one to answer to but myself. My time was entirely my own. Another rare, and powerful thing. But that’s a very precious thing, and you have to be careful with it. In the throes of winter, in this Toyo Hotel, I did for some time disappear into the void of League of Legends. It’s almost no different than if I had been sucked into an opium den. I disappeared from the lobby, I disappeared from the world, and I entered that magical, fictional world of the Rift. I hadn’t played in years, prior to this, I had nothing to do with the game. I was an addict. And I went back in. I had to relearn the game, a lot had changed. I had always been a jungler, a king of the jungle, killing monsters, surprising opponents, dictating the flow of the game, supporting the strongest members of my team, shutting down the enemy movements, controlling vision, territory, and objectives, and I gravitated to that role again, choosing as my character a new character, Kindred, Lamb and Wolf, a deadly archer with a spiritual wolf companion. I had to relearn the game, learn the new characters, learn this new character, her ins and outs, as she was a totally new concept, being a ranged hypercarry, but in the jungle – with no way to immobilize the enemy, easily killed, but a killer herself. Highly mobile, with an incentive to invade the enemy jungle, with the ability to mark targets for death, and hunt them down, growing stronger with each kill – she could fight early, she could fight well, if you knew how to handle her, and what fights to pick, but she couldn’t fight everybody. That didn’t come until later, when she had grown in power, and was completely unstoppable. She was conceptually entirely new, with a steep learning curve, and with massive potential for payoff, which made her fascinating to me, and that’s what I did. Day in and day out, for a week, for ten days, I hardly left my room, and mastered this killing machine. I will never forget one of the last games I played. Of course, I knew this was a problem, that I was playing League, that I was again disappearing into this void, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all. I was in. And in that last game, the final fight is burned into my mind. I had now mastered Kindred, I had perfected the killing machine, I played the entire game flawlessly, with no missteps, and in the end my total dominance from start to finish was complete, as I single-handedly cut down every member of the enemy team and ended the game, while my own team watched on. I decided that the game was over, and so it was. It was a flawless victory, my mastery was complete. After that, what do you do? Where do you go? Was I going to keep playing, to climb the endless ladder, rise to the top of the ranks, spending more precious time that I don’t have? I already didn’t have time for this. No. It was enough.

It was rare that I ever had anywhere specific I actually wanted to go, as I was mostly just hanging out, going to Tully’s, and enjoying the company of the other Toyo people. They gave me plenty of things to do, they all had their own itineraries, they were full of ideas, and I could join them if I wanted, or just let them go out and do the excursions, and get the report when they came back. It’s fun talking to other backpackers this way, because everyone goes out, and they do their things, and then you all come back to the hostel and talk about it, sharing stories, sharing ideas, inspiring each other. Sometimes, you find someone you really like, someone has an idea that you want to get in on, and you do it together. You can always find someone to go out to eat with you, if you want it, either in the common room, or going out somewhere. You are like a little family, for the time you’re together. I was happy to go along with others, and for that time I was something of a tour guide, because I was one of the few in the hotel who was actually a Japan resident, and spoke Japanese, and knew about all of the things that they were learning about for the first time, and so I could introduce them to new things, show them some of the more interesting aspects of the culture, and I became a little bit of a local expert, and could take them to places that tourists might not get into. Most casual tourists, probably very few came to Nishinari in Osaka at all, and so you got a different and more adventurous crowd, more world travelers, more experienced travelers, and people who wanted to experience deeper elements of Japanese culture. Well, on one excursion, that was wholly my project, I convinced some of the other Toyoans, that was photographer Derek, French beatmaker Jean, and the Scot, Ben (his name is not Ben but what the hell was his name), to join me on an expedition to the Tower of The Sun. I had been enamored with it since I discovered it in a pack of famous-Osaka-things cards that I got in a vending machine. I still have those cards, and what an incredible purchase. That pack had all of the Osaka gems, all of the local treasures, everything to do, everything to eat. In a pack of cards. And when I flipped through them and saw The Tower of The Sun, I had the feeling that I had seen it before, somewhere in Toyo, and I started walking around and checking the walls, which were all covered in art made by the guests and staff, until I found it. There on the wall in the main lobby was an image of the Tower of The Sun. And so I looked this thing up, and I knew I needed to go there. It was kind of far though, about thirty minutes or an hour away, and I didn’t want to go alone. I pitched this trip in the lobby, and Jean, Matthew, and Derek signed up for it, and so we planned to meet the next morning, not too early, just something like 9:30, and all go together. And at this time in my life, I had no phone, and one of the biggest inconveniences about not having a phone, and you wouldn’t expect this, is that you actually don’t have an alarm clock anymore. I usually wake up early, and so I was sure it wouldn’t be any problem, but for some reason that morning I slept in. I woke up at 9:45 or 10:00. The day of the big expedition! Shit!! I called my friends on the Line app, no response. I rushed down into the lobby, but I didn’t see them. I wavered on what to do, and decided that they must have just left without me, hoping to see me there. So, I grabbed my camera, and I made the trip myself. The Tower of the Sun is an enormous art installation from the 1970’s world art expo, that was held in Osaka. The outside is basically an enormous, 100-150 foot tall concrete and metal cone, with two arms, and with a giant hybrid sun/moon face, with a quirky sun face painted on the front, and a quirky moon face painted on the back of the main tower. It’s like an enormous, modern, Japanese totem pole, in reverence to the sun and the moon. (Then you get inside, and it’s totally not what you would expect, and I knew you could go inside, but had no idea what was in there). It’s amazing. And it’s part of a huge, many-square-miles-large park. I took the train there, walked to it, and looked all over – but my friends were nowhere to be found. I went inside and picked up the four tickets that I had pre-ordered, and wondered what to do. Could they have gone ahead? Were they already inside? Did they give up on the trip? Did I somehow get ahead of them? Should I wait? And these are the fun kinds of questions you have when you don’t have a phone. These are the fun little riddles you have to solve. Because obviously if I had a phone, I would know. They would have told me. But I didn’t, just like the olden days, and I had to wonder what happened. This best part of the story wouldn’t have existed if I had a phone, so when people ask me what it’s like to not have a phone, remember this story. I asked the girls working at the Tower’s reception if there were already three young male foreign men in the Tower, and they said no. I didn’t know what to do, and I waited around for some time, probably fifteen minutes, and walked around the park. I think I had a time set on my tickets, that I was supposed to use them within a certain timeframe, from 11am-12pm, so there was some time pressure. After waiting, and explaining my situation to the nice girls working the reception desk, I decided that I wasn’t going to be finding my friends, and I should just give the rest of my tickets away. I went back outside, and saw a couple with two young boys entering, and offered them my tickets, but they already had some. Same with another guy walking in. I walked up the entrance ramp, and went out into the park. Nearby, there were three young girls, high school aged. I tried them. As soon as I started talking to them, they were shy as hell, giggling and alert, as this is a very rare occurance, having a wild gaikokujin start speaking Japanese to you, and I offered them the tickets. They were very apologetic, and thought carefully about it, but they had somewhere they needed to be, and wouldn’t take them either. So after that, I just said, well, I tried, and I went back into the tower. I updated the reception girls, and told them after all that I couldn’t find anyone to give the tickets to, and was just gonna’ have to go in alone, and they were sad to hear it, but shouganai! It can’t be helped. And then, not a minute after I had gone in, and was looking over the initial design sketches for the construction of this magnificent tower, one of the reception girls came running over to me, saying excitedly, “Sumimasen! Sumimasen! Tomodachi ga kimashita!!” (“Hey, your friends are here!!”) And I ran out, and there they were! And I said, “What the heck!” And they were like, “We were in the lobby the whole time!” I couldn’t believe it. Somehow I had just missed them. And so we went in together, and had a great time. And it turned out, externally the Tower was all about the sun and moon, but inside, it was The Tower of Life, and the thing was filled with giant sculptures of paleolithic creatures, protozoans, early man, dinosaurs, jellyfish, spiraling up to modernity, from the ancient times. The entire interior glowed red, and there were spiny things everywhere, and there was a whole section at the beginning that was just crazy tribal masks. Then, afterwards we went to a nearby mall, and gorged on amazing udon. God, I love udon. And while we were loading up our udon with all of the goodies, Jean was standing next to me at the counter, pouring the fried crunchy crispies into his bowl, and this whole time we had been speaking English, and then he says something to me, and I was like, “Bro, was that French?” Because I couldn’t understand him at all, and he was like, “Was it? Oh, sorry, my brain is so tired.” He was so tired that he had just defaulted back to French.

To be continued??????

A Nice Bit Of Diary Writing From Starbucks

*This is some old writing I was just rereading, I wrote on the day of December 15th, 2025.*

Context: I’m sitting at the Starbucks I work at (now worked at) 4pm on a Monday.

It’s time.

To do some writing.

I planned to type but this wifi is terrible. This Starbucks wifi. That is, my Starbucks wifi.

I’m sitting here at my Starbucks writing and hanging out. I’ve already been here and done my duty, and I’m back because I got home, threw my feet up on the bed, got comfy, and discovered that I had brought the magic building keys home with me. My first time doing this. And it’s funny because when I had been given the key, I looked at it and intentionally said, “I have to give this back.” And still that didn’t work. It was fated.

There are Japanese people sitting next to me speaking Japanese. That’s kind of rare.. The wacky guy has shown up again, this time telling KB all about his identity being stolen. He went through the line and is now going back to ask for his receipt. What a pain. I’m looking down so that he doesn’t notice me. I really don’t want him to talk to me. Not looking for new friends right now, no thank you.

He probably won’t recognize me because I’m in civilian garb. I’m not taking chances.

Katarina just coughed. That deep, double cough she’s had for three weeks now. Andrew was here ranting and raving about it last weekend, as we were all trapped behind the bar together. Now this weekend, he’s out sick. “He thinks he has covid.” Look at that. I probably already had it. Rachel has it now. Stacy has something now, again, because she already had something about a month ago that made her so sick she had to leave work early. That tells you it was something serious. She is a tank. Not much can stop her.

As you can probably imagine, Starbucks is a fountain of content. A deluge. I have probably 50 notes from the first weeks when I had started and everything was particularly new and exciting. But even now, 4 months in, as the novelty has faded, the developments don’t cease. Nothing is static, here. Always new faces, new characters, new situations. I was told today that my promotion date was now going to be after Christmas. I had already heard this yesterday from Queen, and now heard it from the big boss today. This is the fourth time –

Cori just scared me. I smelled her. Then I looked up and she was sitting right across from me.

Money just asked me, “What are you writing about?”

Apparently I’m colorblind because my hat is “green” and my pants are “grey”. I thought my hat was brown and my pants were blue. Money said, “Yeah if you were trying to color coordinate today it ain’t working.” I totally thought I was color coordinating.

It’s like being told you’re seeing ghosts. You can’t trust your eyes anymore.

Cori said I have a mental illness. I can’t remember why she felt the need to say that, maybe about the color blindness. I said, “But what is it? Many people have said that but no one can diagnose me.”

That’s right, she said it because I was writing. Money asked me why I was writing. Cori said, “He has a mental illness.”

Oh no. Crazy guy is talking to the customers and making them uncomfortable.

I’m uncomfortable.

He’s still talking to them.

Just plunged the toilet.

Cori tried to give me $20. Not necessary. Took me 30 seconds to plunge. 30 seconds to plunge. Like 30 Seconds To Mars.

My pen is dying!!!!

Went and grabbed a new one. (The color of the ink has now changed from blue to black, as proof.)

My phone. Left in the car? Definitely left in the car. Called sis.

Nice time talking with Money. She showed me photos of her family. I was wondering why she wanted to do that. I tried to show her a photo of somebody on my flip phone, and then discovered the no phone. Just like the old days.

It’s a gloomy winter day. We are approaching the longest day of the year. Then it’s only uphill.

Witches and Warlocks

February 18th, 2025

I can do some brain dumping for you. Let’s see what comes out.

This is for your entertainment. So it better be entertaining.

Jaz told me today that her family is full of witches and warlocks. Her exact words were, “My family is full of witches and warlocks.” That was absolutely an incredible thing and I immediately had to go and write it down. Jaz has Jamacian ancestry, or perhaps Haitian, I must confirm this, but Carribbean at least, we can say, and so she was not joking. She said, “I’m not joking.” She knows about voodoo, and she said she used to practice, and knows about the techniques, for hexing and cursing and etc.. That she comes from a line of practitioners. And she told me a story of putting a dead trout in her roommate’s air vents, to get her worthless roommate to understand what it was like to have a stinky house, because she would never take out the trash or do the dishes. She served her roommate up with a problem so unbearable that she would be forced to actually deal with it. If I had been consulting with Jaz this whole time, or if Jaz had lived in 805B, I don’t think Wisdom would have lasted two months. Jaz knows about being petty. But the main thing, that was so incredible, was that she said this statement, after mentioning some things about voodoo, in full seriousness, in the year 2025, and that was what was so incredible. To say, “My family is full of witches and warlocks.” In seriousness, and mean it, and I know that you mean it, and are serious about it. What an incredible thing to say.

I’ll tell you about the mug. I just went and took a sip out of it, and was reminded about my mug, and I need to tell you this because I need to give you some good things, to compensate for you reading my rant.

I bought a mug from the store, a cute lime-green mug, in the classic coffee mug shape, with an interesting series of purple and pinkish-brown lines across the middle of the mug, and also in the middle of the handle. When I rang it up, it was listed in our system as the “gradient mug”, to which I told Juanito, and who said, being a smart boy that he is, “What! That’s no gradient! You call that a gradient?” I actually think, from my web dev days, that it is a gradient, and that Juanito is just plain wrong, but I’m not going to do any Googling to confirm this. I’m just going to assume that I’m right, and that it has something of a gradient on it. This mug caught my eye from the moment I saw it, I was immediately charmed by it, and it is an unusual item to be in our merchandise roster. We have many more interesting items, things way more exotic, but something about this simple yet unique mug stood out to me. In the color scheme and the gradient. My brain did not really attach words to use to describe the mug, or why I should like it, as it goes with things that strike you in a visual way, you just like them because you like how they look, but when I was considering buying it, because it was now 50% off, having survived about a month and still, sat there on the shelf, I admiring it from behind the counter every once in a while, I was considering buying it now, only $8.65, and I of course first consulted with every single other employee, my trusted advisors, to gauge their reactions and also because I was curious what they thought about this strange mug, and I asked them to rate it out of 100, to which Juanito replied, something sarcastic, I can’t remember exactly, he said something that was not out of 100, and then someone gave it a 40, I think that was Jessica, and then I think it was Katerina, who said it was ugly, but kind of cute, and that I needed to buy it, and that’s when I knew I needed to buy it, and she was right. Katerina has phenomenal judgment and especially because, when she described the mug as being cute and ugly, I felt that she had a similar understanding of what was special about this mug, she saw it in the same way that I did, and I also felt that it was like that, cute, but ugly. Because the colors, as someone said, green and purple, they didn’t really go together well in this way, they could not have been the most obvious choice, and yet somehow, it worked. It was actually working. It was wonky enough to be interesting, and ugly, and yet cute. So, I bought it then, immediately ringing it up, and then drinking coffee out of it, and that was about the first thing that happened that morning. I spent the first thirty minutes of that day in such a jubilant mood, and having purchased the mug, and so happy to be working again with a team who was in good spirits, that I had to ride that out for as long as possible, as it was also very necessary for my mental health and spirit (this was now four days ago, I would say), and I just walked around with my mug, after the successful purchase, and enjoyed my coffee, and chatted with everyone and made many jokes and said stupid things. I went over to Queen sometime later, after having done some work, and was holding my mug again, so charmed and happy to have this wonderful new mug, that I had now been able to buy, and had already said to her soon after I had bought it, that even if somehow my mug disappeared or I broke it, and I was only able to use it for this single day, it had already brought me so much needed joy and excitement that it was worth the purchase, and then about an hour later or so, I was again sipping coffee from this mug, and she was sitting down at one of the cafe tables taking her break, and I walked over just to talk to her, and was talking, and she said, “Enjoying your new mug?” And I was absolutely enjoying it, should could obviously tell, and then I realized that me holding the mug then, in that moment, and sipping on my coffee, and wearing the Starbucks apron, I felt so absolutely relaxed, like I was in my living room, or a hotel, in my slippers and a robe, which my apron was giving me the feeling of having like a lounge robe on, and I realized that I had felt exactly that way, which I told her. And we had a good laugh about that. Somehow, through this assortment of cues, the new mug, just the act of holding a mug of coffee, and my feeling, and then the apron was truly somehow making me feel that I was in a robe, or some pajamas, made me feel that I was just chillin’ in my living room, enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the paper. It was a great feeling, and Queen asked me if I was going to keep the mug here at the store, and I joked that if I did, and it made me feel this way every day, Stacy Hamilton was going to hate it to the maximum. And, remembering how comfortable Charlie would look, holding his cappucino that he had made first thing after showing up and clocking in, and how much she hated that, and how Charlie lasted only two weeks (RIP Charlie), I decided that I should just take the mug home. And the advantage there is that, I have a little piece of my store at home, a small link to my Starbucks world, that I can enjoy and reflect on.

I think this is a good story too because it makes me feel the positive side to acquiring an item. I feel that we know that we make purchases that we shouldn’t make, but here is an example of a purchase that does good. You really can buy material things and they can bring you happiness, and function as well, because I haven’t really had a good coffee mug, that I loved. I bought a pig mug from Goodwill for $1, that is a large mug in the shape of a pig, that is cute and special, but I realized the problem with it as soon as I first tried to enjoy a cup of coffee out of it, which is that there is no easy way to drink from it, because the shape is weird, and so that completely ruins your drinking experience.

That’s the mug story.

My friend Mister Ethan Beller of Atlanta, Georgia recently called me and praised my outstanding guitar riff that he had seen me play on Instagram. He had recently seen this video I had posted, of me playing Creeping Death, and was very impressed, and said “100 out of 10 guitar riff, Steven san.” I said, I know, and then I realized that he thought that that was my riff, and I said, do you think that’s my riff, and he was like, yes, and I had to laugh so hard, because he definitely thought that that was all my work, not even one riff but the three main parts of the whole song, and he had no idea that that incredible guitar music was from one of the greatest metal and Metallica songs of all time, that is Metallica’s Creeping Death. But I thought it was also amazing because it goes to show that good music is good music, and he wasn’t swayed by thinking it was special just because it was Metallica or because other people said it was an amazing song. He thought it was mine, and he recognized it as being incredible. And he said, “I guess I should listen to some Metallica.” And I was like, yes, you absolutely should. I’m thinking about this because I’m sitting down to practice this legendary, masterful work on the guitar once again. It is 214 beats per minute, and James Hetfield plays with only downstrokes, which means that the song is played at 214 bpm and only with downstroking, which if you don’t know about BPMs and downstroking, let me tell you that it is not very easy to do. At least, not until you can do it. Then you can do it easily. I was struggling with 160 bpm, then it was easy, then 170 bpm, and now that’s a cakewalk, and now 180 bpm, which is doable. And that’s how it goes. But how long until 214 bpm? Let’s see what I can do tonight.

180 is possible with mostly no mistakes. 185 is not possible, doable with many mistakes and some collapses. So there ya go.

Today a cute girl came into the store, her name was Katie. Katie had mobile ordered, and we knew she was coming to get a Penguin Cookie, which is a sugar cookie with a cute penguin face on it, that we had in the winter, and we didn’t have them any more, and we were going to have to break the news to her. So, I was standing out in the lobby area, not having anything particularly to do, but needed to get farther and farther away from Andrew, in this moment desiring freedom, now needing to get so far away that I have to leave from behind the counter, because even that is too close, and Katie walked in to get her goodies, amongst which is the Penguin Cookie, and as she stepped up to the counter, I approached her and told her that we had good news and bad news, yada yada. At this same time, Andrew approaches, because he cannot ever let anyone do anything by themselves, and must intrude on all affairs, particularly me, and my affairs, because as Jessica would say, he’s in love with me, and so Katie is now somewhat flanked, and Katie is looking at both of us, but mostly looking at me, as I am the lead and initiated this interaction. So, Katie asked if we had cake pops, and went with the birthday cake pop. And when we had gone over to the register, which, I don’t know why we even did, because she didn’t have to make any transaction, and I said, “You like the Penguin Cookie, huh?” And she said she did, and that she had been getting them since high school, and she figured we wouldn’t have it, but she saw that it wasn’t marked out on the app, so she thought she would try and go for it. Andrew of course had followed us over to the register and was now standing very close. The Penguin Cookie was nostalgic for Katie, and I thought that was cute, and also shocking that Starbucks has had the Penguin Cookie for that long, and then she got her birthday cake pop and left, and I was standing there at the register, thinking about how Katie had loved her Penguin Cookie, this little Christmas cookie that she had some attachment to, and then I thought, why could she order the Penguin Cookie? She shouldn’t have been able to order it anymore through the app, because it was seasonal, and it has been phased out, and we don’t have it anymore. So, I went into our POS system, into the seasonal items, and found the Penguin Cookie button, and saw that it was not marked out as being unavailable, and I went to mark it out, and it was then marked unavailable. So at least, if Katie ever looks, or if anyone else looks, they will not have to be disappointed. I then tried to mark out the other seasonal items that were not listed as unavailable, but the system told me I couldn’t do that, because they were unavailable already. These are the small technical glitches that happen in the POS system, of which there are many. But I was able to mark that Penguin Cookie out. I felt that I had done something useful then. For Katie and the Penguin Cookie lovers.

They say that one of the best ways to make friends with people is to see them regularly. Any time you regularly see someone, you will have a higher likelihood of becoming their friend. People who live in apartment complexes make friends with people on their floors, etc. Well, that’s definitely 100% true. I have so many friends now through my job at this Cummins Station Starbucks, only because I see these people every day (most of my coworkers) or every other day, or every week (the regulars). And in almost every case our friendship and closeness and familiarity that we now have, where we know things about each other and have some idea of what is going on in each other’s lives, is only because we’ve seen each other repeatedly. It’s not because we have had any kind of special connection, although there are always going to be people that other people bond with. Everyone has their special friends. It’s interesting to see what baristas, what members of our team have befriended what regulars, and what customers, and who has positive interactions with who, and in what way, and what they bond over. One person I think about in particular right now is a woman named Katharine, who has a small dog, Lambo. Katharine is a regular and is in the store usually at least once a week, and I see her walking all over downtown Nashville with her extremely cute Pomeranian fluffball. This dog is one of the cutest dogs in existence, and is an extremely special dog. Katharine knows this and you know that this dog is living like royalty, or better. It is obvious. You could almost say that Lambo owns Katharine, actually. It really feels that way. Lambo is the king. Well, I remember that Katherine and I had a funny interaction from the very beginning, that we were sharing laughs, I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember that from the beginning, that she was funny. And that was about six months ago, when we first opened. Well, here we are all this time later, and when I come in on my off days, if Katherine comes in she’ll sit by me, and we’ll talk about life, or if we’re slow, I’ll chat with her over the counter while she sits there with her incredible dog, and talk about guitars, or her pilates class, or Starbucks, or the weather. And every time we talk, or every other time we talk, we learn something new about each other. But, the friendship, a friendship like this, is not based on anything but pure social joy. There is nothing transactional about it, it is just pure friendship. Nobody wants anything but to have a laugh and a good conversation. That’s very wholesome.

I have a similar relationship with many of the people from the Gibson Garage. I learn about them, learn a little more each week, acquire a new fact, and add it to the list of facts and stories I’ve learned about them. Just yesterday, Whitney came in, and I knew that she had been wanting to buy a new guitar, we had been talking about this for a few weeks now, and she was excited to tell me that she had bought her new guitar, her first Gibson, and it was a light-blue Gibson Les Paul, and of course she had to show me a picture, and I was like, oh my god that’s a beautiful guitar, outstanding.

This is the joy of working in a coffee shop like this. You can get so many stories and learn so many things about people, and the happenings of the world. For example, about world happenings, two days a lady came in, asking when we had opened, because she came here every year with her husband, because he goes to a yearly conference here in Nashville, and she hadn’t seen us here before. I told her that we had opened in August, and I asked her what the conference was (we get many conference attendees because we are right downtown by the Music City Center, I think that’s what it’s called, that hosts large conferences, with like, 30,000 people, and they all stay at the hotels right in the area) and she said it was a healthcare conference, and she told me that security was really tight this year, because of, you know, the shooting, she looked at me, and I said yes I did know about it, and she said that she knew people in the conference and she was usually allowed to enter and talk to people and mingle and hang out, but that this year they weren’t letting guests in, and they had metal detectors and etc. So she had to find other things to do. And I thought that was a good example of hearing about world affairs and the happenings of the world, and we could say as well an example of how the news is real, and that there are really events happening, and changes resulting from them, and here was an example of someone impacted by an event that had happened recently, that we all knew about. Because Luigi Mangionne killed Brian Thompson, this healthcare guy’s wife couldn’t go to her husband’s conference anymore. That’s what I mean.

You can learn a lot about someone, more than you ever wanted to know about some people, when you have even 15 minutes of free time to talk to them. They can open up, and they can tell you their entire life story, or you can read about them on Wikipedia, if they’re famous, or something like that, you can read about them in the news, or whatever. But when you meet someone over the register, over the counter at the coffee shop, you don’t have a lot of time. You have only thirty seconds, even. If there’s no one in line, or you particularly want to talk, you can manage to have more of a conversation. You could talk for even 3 or 5 minutes. But eventually, something is going to happen, someone is going to walk in, someone is going to ask me a question, or their order is going to be ready and they will be called, and feel the need to go get it, and you will be pulled apart. And then, if you see them again, if they come back, you can talk again, and then if they keep coming back and are a regular, then you can do this, over and over, and then each time, or every few times, you learn something new, in your conversation, they reveal something, and you accumulate facts and knowledge about this person, and you get to know them a little bit better. And in this way, over the course of weeks and months, the person is slowly revealed, and continues to be revealed, and you learn more and more about who they are. But still, it happens slowly, it can be just a trickle of information, and you never see them in their element, really, you only know them from the coffee shop, only know what they’re like and how they act within the confines of the coffee shop, and don’t know anything about their entire life outside of the shop. You only know about it from what they tell you. And similarly, they only know me as being the Starbucks employee. They don’t know about my entire life outside of it, they don’t know what I look like outside of the uniform, they haven’t been there for any moment of my life away from the Starbucks store. They only know me in this role.

Some little information that I learned today about Jared – he is a salaried employee. Jared works for the Gibson Garage as a Sales Pro, and is a younger guy, probably about my age, from Florida, also been in Nashville for a year, and is extremely good at guitar, has played for like 17 years. See, I know about this guy. I have now had many of these small interactions with him, learning something each time. And today, we had another one, and I learned a new thing, that Jared is a salaried employee. That’s a small fact, a small single fact, but I didn’t know that about him, and now I know.

One of the most recent times I was in the Gibson Garage, Jared showed me the fancy, expensive, real Gibson Explorers, and let me rock out. I was really impressed with and loving the Lizy Hale Explorerbird, that just felt and played amazing, and sounded incredible. So heavy. He had asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to play, and I had been playing the Epiphone Explorers, and liked those, and had been too shy/not bothering to ask anyone to unlock the expensive ones for me, and let me try those out. So he took me over there and let me crack in to ’em. And now that I’m thinking about this, I actually have this story somewhat wrong, because this is what happened. HENRY was the one to ask me what I wanted to play, and took me over to the Gibson Explorers and let me crack in, and he showed me an incredible thing when he took the guitar down for me, which was this: that all the expensive guitars have a “lock” on them, that prevents you from taking them off of the rack without help from a Gibson Garage employee, but he showed me a trick, which is that the lock is actually kind of useless, and only requires you to twist the twisty-part with your fingers, to get it to unlock, and the special key that they have for the lock is basically just for show. But, this whole time that lock had prevented me from taking anything down, because you know, as like most people probably do, you see that something is locked, and you think, well, it must be locked, and I can’t get through a lock, so I’m not even going to try. But this lock was extremely easily foiled, if you just tried. With two fingers, you can defy these locks. I thought that was amazing, and Henry was very happy to show me that. Henry and I are cool, I should say, and I’m sure he’s not just going around and showing everyone how to foil these little guitar locks.

Seeing how easily these locks could be defied, but how effective they actually were at stopping me, just because they were there, made me think about something that I had heard before, that I don’t know if is true or not, but I had heard this once, that elephants kept in captivity were, when young, bound with chains, so they couldn’t actually escape when they tried, but then when they grew up, the elephants would be tied with rope instead, which they could actually escape if they tried, but when they had tried to escape the chains they found that they couldn’t, and so they stopped trying to escape at all. I felt like the same thing had happened with me and these locks. And if I was an elephant, and another elephant came along and showed me how easy it was to break my rope, I would have been just as shocked.

General December Writing – Philosophy Thoughts, Starbucks, Invasive Species, Personality

It’s December 16th or 17th, 2024. This pen has dried up and is too scratchy.

Did I fix it?

Whatever. There we go.

I have not been doing much writing these days, no writing for sharing. All writing just for me, because I am writing nearly every day. But I haven’t written a piece in months, and I am inspired to write one now, with so many topics and themes and developments I’ve been stewing on, and I just picked up Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, last night, and for some reason that’s inspiring me. Maybe because Hamilton was a prolific writer and reading his writings about his life makes me want to write about mine. It’s generally a good thing to do, and I have mostly not ever regretted taking the time to really go for it and write about anything. So here we are again.

In a way, it’s like writing a letter to a friend, but that friend is myself, but also whoever wants to read this, because for some reason I like to share this kind of thing. Well, that’s what blogging is. A lot of people do this.

Here’s the status report.

Starting small… I’m 146 pounds. Lean and wiry with almost no body fat at all. I eat light but healthy, and have taken to running because weight lifting is boring and I am.. can’t be bothered to try and arrange tennis matches. But for awhile I was having a good time playing tennis with Nicholas Harding of Vermont, who was a sociopath (what they now call antisocial personality disorder) and generally crazy, delusional, a thief and grandiose narcissist and liar, so we had to kick him out. I wrote a bit about the new roommate…….

I’ve arranged my furniture so that my desk is over again facing the window, where I’m sitting now. My bed is next to me, the couch fitting perfectly into a space by the door, opposite from the window. This is possibly my final arrangment. It’s a fun thing to do in the winter. I don’t usually care so much about how my room looks, but when you spend enough time in here, and you get bored, you start having ideas. Having my desk back at the window where I can sit here and look out at my small yard and contemplate the meaning of things is definitely the way to go. The only major lifestyle change I’ve had to make as a result of this new arrangement is that my record player is now on the floor. Of course at first I thought this wouldn’t work, but you quickly get used to things, and actually it makes sense. Right now it’s one of my most precious possessions, so it being front and center in my room is actually exactly where it belongs. And I can lay on the floor, or sit on the bed, or sit lotus style, and listen with the headphones. The cable reaches long enough that I can do all of those.

Yesterday I bought three records. I walked on over to The Groove, to see what I could see. I had a feeling that they would have Nevermind. The last time I was there I scored In Utero. Well, guess what? They had it but it was overpriced, and I didn’t really want to listen to it anyways, yesterday. I wanted stuff that was not Nirvana.

Eh. This part is feeling too diary-esque for me. If I write all of that kind of stuff, I’ll run out of steam before we get anything good.

Since time and energy are limited, what are the best topics, for you and I, that I could write about?

Well, I have now volunteered twice removing invasive plant species from the local park. Our last session was attended by a crew of enthusiastic veterans, and so we did damage. The two main plants we removed were Bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet. And I’ll tell you about this.

The first time I volunteered to do this removal, my main focus was Chinese privet, and that’s what I learned to recognize. I came home and saw it everywhere in our yard, and then pulled 10 or 15 plants. This time around, I solidified my ID skills of privet, and can now ID Bush Honeysuckle, and as with privet, when I came home, I immediately spotted it in the yard. On my run yesterday, I saw it everywhere. Bush Honeysuckle is even worse – just as bad as privet. And it is everywhere. Both of them can get quite big. As big as small trees, 8 feet tall or taller. They’re large and proliferate rapidly, and at Shelby you could clearly see the effect that Bush Honeysuckle was having on the forest. By being a solid plant on the ground, vines are able to grow across the tops of the honeysuckle plants, and they fan out, and with the vines on top, suddenly where there is supposed to be clear, open forest, there is an impenetrable mass of vines and bushes and these small trees. Choking the forest. Not at all what it’s supposed to be.

So we tore it out, and it was hard work. Using handsaws, weed wrenches, and mattocks, which was the best and an incredible time. The mattock is like a pickaxe that you can use for mining an embedded plant out of the ground. You can pick in and get under the roots, and then pry the whole root ball out. There was one Bush Honeysuckle that Eve and I double-teamed, with me picking away the dirt surrounding the thick roots that were holding the plant down, and then Eve taking the loppers and severing them, one by one, until we could finally get the thing out of the ground. It was an enormous root ball, and we took a photo together, holding it like it was a prize fish we had just caught.

The ground was soft and wet because it had rained last night, so the conditions were perfect. You could pull most of the privets out of the ground, just rip them right out, with no tools, and I was running around ripping them up like I was playing whack-a-mole. I was really in hog heaven. It’s not often that you get to do demolition, to chop, hack, and destroy, which is at least for me, totally very fun, and then it was also a fun winter outdoors activity. It’s harder to find fun stuff to do outside in winter.

Running around the neighborhood, I now see privet and honeysuckle everywhere. Our crew leader CD Paddock had once said, “Once you see it, you’ll see it everywhere.” And it’s so true. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I think it is a clear and obvious metaphor or example of how knowledge opens our eyes and our minds to new things. These plants have been all around me, but I never noticed them or thought much about them. And now, suddenly, my brain is aware of them, and trained to spot them, and I see them everywhere, and think, you. You do not belong here.

Language is another example. Looking at the sake bottle on my desk, I see written on the front, むら。And I know now, of course that’s mura. But once upon a time I did not know.

I’ll take a break.

I’ve taken a break. I think that the writing bug has been scratched. That’s how it goes. But there is much much more to be written about. For what purpose? A good question. Well, does everything have to have a purpose? And, does everything have to have a purpose that you can understand? Many things are happening with purposes that you do not know about. Including your own actions.

That sounds like some Buddhism stuff right there. Pickles is currently barking like a savage maniac. What the hell has gotten him so triggered? Or her. Patrick must not be home or he would have yelled by now.

The Buddhism thoughts… I will say that I have had some Buddhist type thoughts in my head recently, and in my conversations with Rachel recently, I seem to have hit on some Buddhist principals principles. I can’t believe I just spelled that wrong.

In no particular order.. One thought I’ve been having recently is that, probably inspired by my reading The Republic, everyone has to come to knowledge for themselves, and only they themselves can unlock it. Even if it has already been discovered a thousand times before. You see this on Reddit, I saw just last night, people say things like, “Now that I’ve quit YouTube I find that I’m having more time for thoughts.” Or, now that I’ve stopped watching/reading the news I feel more peaceful. Or that connecting with nature makes you feel more at peace. This knowledge, about anything, in this case about mindfulness practice, is already out there. These thoughts have been thought many times before, and people, some people are already very aware. But there was a time when they learned that. Everyone must learn everything themselves.

Some things are instinct, and inborn, knowledge. But understanding on a higher level, grasping with the intellect, must be done on one’s own.

This is actually a serious statement because it means that you can’t just give someone knowledge, like you can give them $5. You can’t just give anybody knowledge. Not knowledge that they will really feel and thoroughly understand.

It is difficult and requires work. Possibly even certain mental capabilities that are beyond some people. But everyone is capable of learning.

I think what I really think is interesting about this fact is that it means that… Jesus that’s a long load of nothing. It means that even if someone were to attain true, perfect knowledge, if you could have such a thing, there is no guarantee that anyone else could ever have it again. No one else might ever be able to reach it, even with it all laid out and explained by the one who had achieved it.

Everyone is making a journey in their lives, of learning, of discovering, every person must do this, and it can’t be inserted or implanted in anyone else. Every person, every new human is a chance for a renewal of thought and a fresh outlook. That is the positive side of it. And then the negative side, if we can label it as such, would be that everyone has to suffer into the same knowledge, the “perfect, true” knowledge, over and over and over.

Let’s go for a walk.

I walked over to Walgreens and picked up a 9V battery to use with the pedal that my Dad gave me. The price tag wasn’t quite right, and I thought it would be $10.99, and it turned out to be….

Diary writing.

I reflected on mindfulness and Buddhist-type thinking on my small adventure just now.

I want to write more.. but I’m tired.

The sun is setting. I’m not ready. Well, bring on the night. Let’s get to creepin’.

Some creepin’ has been done.

Since I’ve been here, soon on arriving at 805B N 12th Street here in this duplex owned by Sir Michael Shields, I discovered the joy of candles. I never really knew about candles. That I myself could buy, light, and enjoy candles in my own home. I just didn’t know about that. I had never done it myself. I only write this because I have recently been enjoying candles to the fullest amount, now that it’s winter again.

I enjoy candles, records, books, and writing, and have a flip phone. I made one major step in moving away from the digital world, further distancing myself, when I decided to stop streaming music, and just go in on records. And I have found like I do whenever I have done these experiments that I am pleased with the results.

You know what’s really crazy? I think if people from the past could come here now and see Smosh sitting on the couch watching Tik Toks, see Taloya at the ovens with her phone out, all these people so disconnected and in phone world, they would be shocked. I know that people used to think that books were doing what phones do now, that people would be buried in books. There are always parallels. But think about this – how within a generation, something like 15 years, there is now a prevalent and normal, completely normal and commonplace behavior of being out in the world and holding a screen to your face and watching TV. Or being home and holding a screen to your face and watching TV. Or being 3 years old and holding a screen…. you get it. I guess I’ve really opted out. What’s also interesting about this is how things, how decisions feel to you at the time of you doing them. Going without a phone felt like a momentous decision, but only for me in the past, when I hadn’t done it. Living with a flip phone, with no smartphone, felt crazy and revolutionary. And now? I don’t think twice about it. I had all of these thoughts and revelations about it all, and now when people ask me I just say, “I like the flip phone better, basically.” Which is the truth. And that’s about it for me.

I’ve moved on. But I see those still enmeshed in phone life, smartphone life. Smartphones being very much a core part of their lives.

I am surprisingly popular. I am not writing this to stoke my own ego. I swear. You can never be sure that I’m telling the truth. I can’t even know. Of course I like being popular, but it’s not like Arianna Grande’s character in Wicked, who craves it. I don’t care either way. It just turns out that I am. And I’m writing about this because I am reminded about it almost every day. Like today, once again. Jessica commented once again that “Everybody likes Steven.” To which Stacy Hamilton quipped, “Not everybody.” And I said, “Who doesn’t like Steven? Let me find out.” Stacy said, “I’m just playing around!” Jessica says, “What are you gonna do? Give them that?” (This is some slang Jessica uses that means, you give them that, as in they say, Do you need that? And then hit them.) I said, “I’m gonna’ whoop on that heinie.” And that had her laughing. Not hard to make Jessica laugh. Just have to say something ridiculous like that. Chris K. said he misses me when I’m not there. He’s said it many times. Emily has said the same thing, that “I bring her joy.” Even Stacy has said, “He’s alright sometimes.” That’s a big deal. And I heard Jessica say today that Stacy has actually spoken the words, “I wish Steven were here.” When I’ve not been there, which, if true, is an absolutely incredible fact. I have had two work wives, Leah (my first wife), and now KB. The remarriage was instantaneous, more for KB’s sake than mine. Sorry Leah, but if you come back you will be my wife again instantly.

Leah may have been pushed out by Stacy. Having her hours reduced until it’s not worth it for her to stick around. That has been happening. Stacy does some scheming, I think. She has some presumptions and perceptions about the team that I don’t think are totally accurate. But she also has preferences, and one of her preferences is to minimize the fun and shennanigans. This is where I have been running into trouble, and recently much more frequently, because I have been recommended by my fellow maties to be an honorary shift supervisor. I wonder if Stacy groaned as she realized that I was the one to be picked. But Stacy has one great shortcoming, I would say, that she is too easily frazzled, and is too tightly wound. The stress is terrible for her. And just last week she said that she felt her heart beating in her chest. I was legitimately concerned for her life. She could straight up have a heart attack at Starbucks. She’s 62, overweight, a frequent imbiber of alcohol, and stressed out to the max. Me writing this is kind of showing me how possible this really is. I am often concerned for her health.

I’m tired but want to keep going. I was just lying in bed and my brain was firing away at a much faster clip than I can possibly keep up with in writing. I will continue with me being popular, an interesting point, and I bring it up because this whole Starbucks venture has been an interesting environment for me, a foil to learn about myself, which is always interesting to do, but also is a hot topic because I am a hot topic. You can tell I’m tired now because I’m writing all this and saying very little. I’m trying to say that being thrown into this new environment and mix of interesting personalities and learning how to work together and all that has shown me some things about myself, or clarified them or made them more obvious to me.

I write this as you know I am interested in human psychology and personality, and have enjoyed taking personality tests and etc., even when you know it’s all BS, because it’s fun.

People are notoriously bad at self-perception. So to have external comments made about your person and personality can be very useful, assuming that they are correct. For example, if you’re playing dumb, or acting a part for some reason, people will draw false conclusions about you, obviously. And all of these people, my coworkers, new friends and comrades, never knew me before. So they’re seeing me and taking me in with fresh eyes, as I am now.

You are lucky to be able to live this life. You have many luxuries. Sake. A guitar. Coffee. Blankets (kind of essential actually.) Books. Many luxuries. A camera. A laptop. Nice clothes. Pens and paper. A room with a view. No disease or illness. Records. Very lucky you are.

Starbucks The Novel

It is 6 pm, I am home for the night, still wearing my work attire. A perk of the job being that my work attire is comfortable enough that I don’t feel that I immediately have to change out of it when I get home. My feet are a little hot and moist, however. That’s from the Dr. Martins. And from standing all day. As you can see, I’m not going to hold anything back here.

The day started off interestingly enough, right out of the gate. I walked into the back to find a massive mountain of trash. I immediately proceeded to make the mountain even more massive, by going around and collecting all full trash bags and adding them to the pile. The single roller trash can that we keep for trash in the back was hardly visible anymore, the mountain was so large. It was completely engulfed.

I was immediately told by CJB (Jessica), that Stacy Hamilton desired that I would go to the Margaritaville Starbucks and see if I could procure two bags of cold brew coffee beans. “At the least, one bag.” I did not particularly want to do that, in this moment. I was feeling more thoughtful and not yet in a very active, ready to deal with Starbucks business kind of way. I had woken up early this morning and had gone to the store, cracking open my laptop and writing about CJB and reading about “State Capture.” So being immediately asked to go drive to another store, I was not thrilled about. However, it is fun to get out into the world, and I had just been on a run to the Margaritaville Starbucks, and it wasn’t far, and I was going to return some warming bags while I was there, that we had just borrowed. First, I wanted to handle the trash, and then I figured I would be ready to go.

My caffeine for the day, I decided, first of all just to have caffeine, because in the last two weeks I’ve been cold turkey and then using very sparingly, as it has been increasing my anxiety levels, which is not good during stressful times, but today I felt that I wouldn’t have much stress, and would benefit from the energy/mood boost. I had what I’ve been getting recently, a grande blonde Americano. I sipped that as I did my trash business, and then set off to find a dumpster.

We have to cross the entire building to go get a trash dumpster, then bring it back all the way across the building, load it with our Starbucks trash, and then bring it all the way back down, to the loading docks and dumpsters, and throw it all in the giant dumpsters. It’s a process, and recently we’ve been walking all the way down there to get the dumpsters, and not finding any, because the janitorial team has them all squirreled away somewhere. So I wasn’t sure if I was even going to get one today. They like to say that our building is as wide as the Empire State Building. Making a big deal out of how far the walk is. I never thought it was that bad. But it’s annoying to walk all the way down to get a dumpster, or the flat cart, which is the real struggle and source of frustration, because there is only one single flat cart for the entire building, and it’s almost always in use. I have to tell you a story now about this, even though it will be kind of long and a good chunk of writing. Stacy Hamilton once sent me to fetch the flat cart, which we had at that time learned that it was usually not to be found, and I had a feeling again that I would strike out, having walked all that way for nothing, and I said so to Stacy, and she said it would be there, and go get it. So, away I went, going all the way down, and spying no flat cart, and finding it nowhere laying around or in use on the way back. I reported this to Stacy Hamilton, who was immediately enraged. She forgot all about me, and said, as she started marching down the hall, “Motherf*****s. I told them to leave the f***ing flat cart…” She was out for blood. I’ve seen her angry before but never this angry. I didn’t really know what to do, but I felt that I was a part of this quest, and could get in trouble if I wasn’t there for her. Of course, the risk is also that if I’m around when she’s blowing up, I could get yelled at. I have gotten good at reading Stacy, so I opted to go with her and see if I could be of use. And I wanted to know what was going to happen. We walked down the central hall on the main floor to the halfway point, where the main entrance is, a security desk, and the freight elevator, that I learned today is exactly 73 years old. (I will tell about this soon.) Clark was manning the security desk, a laid back cool older black guy, who I thought for the first three months that we were open was named Hank, I was 100% sure of it, and I would always call him Hank and he never said anything about it, but one day he came in and Stacy was at the register, and he had paid and she said, “Thanks Clark!” And I said, after he walked away, “Isn’t his name Hank?” And she said no. And I said, “Are you sure?” She was 1000% sure. But I really thought his name was Hank, I could have sworn it, and so the next time I went down to the security desk, as I pass by it every time I go on a trash run, which is not as often these days, because I am a mighty shift supervisor, and that’s grunt work, but I said, “I have a question for you. Is your name Hank or Clark?” He said Clark. I said, “I thought your name was Hank.” He said, “Nope. Where’d you get Hank from?” And I told him I called him Hank this whole time and he said he never noticed. That’s how laid back this guy is.

Anyways, Clark was manning the security desk, which was perfect for this little shennanigans, and Stacy came up to the desk and asked him if he had seen anyone with the flat cart pass by. He says no, but he says he can try to find it on the cameras. So Stacy and I moved to the side of the desk, and this was the first time I got to get a good look at what Clark was cooking with, with his security cameras. He had about 16 or 20 screens of action in the building, all the halls on all 5 floors, and whatever else, and we were all looking, and he said, “There it is.” And pointed. “They’re taking it to the loading dock.” Stacy is still very pissed, and immediately moved to go take an elevator down to the basement, where the loading dock is. Now, I decided here that I did not really want to stand in a confined space with a furious Stacy Hamilton, and I wouldn’t be of much use here anyway, because it only took one person to pull the flat cart, and she might have chastised me for hanging around being useless, so I decided to let her handle it from here. I also didn’t want to be there when she found the poor unlucky construction worker who had carried off the flat cart. It was a man, we could see from the cameras, one of the many construction workers in the building. Clark said, “Man, she’s mad.” I told him what was going on, and then we watched, saw her get off the elevator, and start walking down the hall towards this construction worker pulling the cart. The hall is long enough that there are multiple cameras that cover it, so first they were shown on separate screens, but we could see they were getting closer, and both Clark and I were watching intently, knowing that they were soon to meet. It was like watching two trains about to collide. I could only imagine what was about to happen to this poor construction worker, and they were on the same screen, and she was walking right up to him, and then something incredible happened. She walked right past this man, and the flat cart. She didn’t even so much as turn her head. I couldn’t believe it, and I said, “What???” Clark says, “She walked right past him!” I said, “Did she not see him??” I couldn’t understand that, but I knew that if Stacy Hamilton came back without a flat cart and I was anywhere near her, especially if I was discovered to have just been at the security desk watching her on the camera this entire time, I was going to be flayed alive, and so I said to Clark, “I have to get out of here now.” And ran back to the Starbucks. Stacy Hamilton returned some time later with the flat cart, having calmed down a bit, but still having residual anger, and she said, smiling her scary smile that means she’s pissed, “The construction guys had it.” I don’t know if she really did just walk past it that first time, that would be insane, if her rage somehow made her literally blind. But thank god she found it in the end.

These days, we’ve completely given up looking for it. And anyways, that was a very long tangent to tell you… What, exactly… That I was going down to take out the trash, fetching a dumpster, and there were, to my great satisfaction, all of the four Cummins Station dumpsters, lying there for my choosing. Having such an enormous mountain of trash and cardboard to dispose of, I picked the largest dumpster, which is like a small whale, that I knew could do the job in one go. As I brought it back, I had made it to the freight elevator, which is the second hurdle in our Starbucks trash runs. The freight elevator often has some issue that you must resolve in order to use it successfully. It is an old elevator, that requires you to manually open and close the large gate that you pass through, and is called by a buzzer. Sometimes on Sundays the elevator is not even turned on, so you can buzz and buzz and buzz and it will never come. Sometimes the buzzer button doesn’t buzz, and you just stand around trying again every 30 seconds until something happens. And sometimes it buzzes and doesn’t come, which means either someone is using it for a long time, or someone hasn’t properly shut the gate, which means the elevator won’t budge, and you have to physically track it down, and close the gate yourself, and then escort it to where you want it to be. Today, once again, I was buzzing and nothing was happening. However, I could hear some strange clunking sounds, and some buzzing that was being done by someone else that was on another floor, so something was clearly going on. I was still not very interested in handling Starbucks business at this moment, so I stood there buzzing even though I knew it wouldn’t be any good, just because I didn’t want to do what I knew I had to do. In the end I accepted my fate, and I went up a floor, stepped out to the security desk, manned again by Clark, and discovered that the elevator was undergoing maintenance, and so was definitely not going anywhere. I thought it would have been nice to have put a sign up on the other floors, but actually the people who needed it probably already knew… Idk. But I was then very interested to see this man tinkering with an extremely old freight elevator. He was standing on top of the elevator box, so you see the gears and cables and whatever, and he was shining his flashlight around and inspecting things. I told him I was sorry for all of my buzzing. He said it was alright. I asked him if he worked on many elevators like this one, and he said, “I don’t work on any elevators like this one.” Because it is so old. Clark got involved in the conversation, coming over and checking things out, and was asking about how old it was, and the mechanic guy said, “Let’s find out.” And shined his flashlight over to some labels with info about the elevator, and you could barely make it out but the imprint of the date seemed to end in 52. So the elevator is 73 years old. They kept chatting and laughing as good ol’ boys will do, and I left them to continue on my trash quest. I was so uninterested in doing Starbucks business and so annoyed at having been once again stymied by the freight elevator that I just left the dumpster by the elevator entrance in the basement. I didn’t even bother to put it back. I figured I would be back down there soon, and that was a correct assumption, because Jessica told me to take Elevator B, and that you could fit an entire dumpster on there, and I said, “Are you sure it will fit?” And she said, “Yeah, Andrew says he does that shit all the time.” So that’s what I did. I went back down, got the dumpster, brought it to Elevator B, took it to the 2nd floor, brought it to Starbucks, loaded it with an entire mountain of trash, Jessica commenting that I should’ve just brought the dumpster into the back of the store to save myself all of the trips between my mountain of trash and the dumpster sitting outside of the store (this is of course impossible), and then having loaded it all up, brought it back to Elevator B, took it down to the basement, and then to the loading docks, and out to the giant dumpsters in the back.

I actually like doing trash runs because you get some precious alone time, and you get to go for a walk, and most importantly, you get to stand on a ledge and hurl trash bags into a dumpster, which is definitely always a good time. And you get a breath of fresh air, while you’re out there. So I’ve never minded doing a trash run.

After returning from my quest, successfully, it was about time for me to go to Margaritaville. I had to do it, and I looked for ways to stall but met with none. So, I drank most of the rest of my americano, and off I went. I did ask Jessica if she would take my car and go there. I think I just said, “Wanna do something for me?” And she said, “Take your keys and drive your car to Margaritaville?” But then I said, “Can you do it?” Or something like, “Are you allowed to?” Because I didn’t think she could even drive, and I still am not sure what the answer is. Actually, I learned from several stories and anecdotes and facts that she proceeded to tell me, that she can drive but doesn’t have a license. So, I was the one going to Margaritaville. I grabbed some of the warming bags to return to them, and off I went.

… TO BE CONTINUED

The Margaritaville Starbucks is only a few minutes away, a hop skip and a jump. I walk in and as I am wearing my Starbucks hat am immediately recognisable as a fellow agent of the Siren, and find that the team is there waiting for me, all four of them at attention, with nothing to do. They must have just been shooting the poop, as they say, and the leader immediately greeted me, and we handled the business, I scoring one bag of cold brew coffee beans, not two because they were running low as well. The interesting thing that happened here was that, while the gal was in the back hunting for a bag of cold brew, I noticed that one of the crew was wearing a Nirvana shirt, that I had never seen before. I could see the iconic font of the word Nirvana, in between the loops of his apron, and when he turned around that confirmed it, because I saw the In Utero angel. I thought, because this was a special shirt, not the casual Nirvana shirt that everyone wears with the smiley face, that you just know most of the people wearing couldn’t tell you more than 3 Nirvana songs, at least I suspect so, but because this guy had a rare shirt on, he must be an actual fan, just like me, who has a rare Nirvana shirt. So I said to him, “So you must be a real Nirvana fan?” And he looked at me, laughed, and said, “No. I just like the shirt.” The girl then walked back out with a bag of cold brew, and I thanked them and left, but honestly, I was pissed. More like, I was having a.. What do you call this exactly, where something activates you, and you go on a rant? Because now I was feeling that way, thinking, Even this guy, this cool looking dude with a rare Nirvana shirt, even he doesn’t really like Nirvana! Even he isn’t a real fan! So, who is?? How can I find them?? I was so confident that he would be something else. That he would be, like me, a real fan. But no. He just liked the shirt. (It was a really cool shirt.)

So then, believe it or not, on my short trip back to Cummins Station, with this in my mind, what do I spy but another Nirvana shirt? Two guys at the 8th S and Demonbreun intersection, looking to be in their 30’s, and the one guy is wearing a blue crewneck, with the In Utero angel, that said “Live in ’93.” I think it was ’93. I looked at that guy, and I thought, This guy, is he a real Nirvana fan? He’s wearing a rare crewneck. I’ve never seen it. It says live, did he get it at a live show? But no way because he wouldn’t have been old enough. And then I had a very strong urge to roll down my window and shout, “Hey! Are you a real Nirvana fan??” I was so close to doing it. I was very close. But even if he shouted back, “Yeah!!” We couldn’t have really known. I did meditate then on the power and influence of a rock band like Nirvana. The scale of the reach that these bands have, that all this time later people are wearing their clothes, here in Nashville, that it’s so ubiquitous, and they don’t even know about the band.

I told this to Stacy Hamilton upon my return. I tell her many things that I know she is not that interested in hearing. I just have to get it out. I don’t even need a response. She understands. She will generally reply with something very short and generic, but spot on, and then direct me towards the next order of business.

I have picked up the Hamilton biography again recently, and I came away from it feeling strongly that Stacy Hamilton is like George Washington, the leader, and I am Alexander Hamilton, the aide de camp, running various missions and errands, and handling business on her behalf, and making reports. I think about this often and do enjoy being this kind of an aide.

After this Margaritaville expedition, nothing particularly extraordinary happened for some time. Taloya did ask me for some advice regarding some loan of hers that had been passed to a collection agency. I was having a hard time nailing down exactly what seemed to be going on because it seemed like she didn’t even know, but basically it seemed that she had had a student loan that she didn’t know about, and it was like 8 years old, and had been passed to a collection agency who was now gearing up to collect from her. So I said she needed to contact them and find out what was going on. You may be thinking, sounds fishy, but from what information I could gather it didn’t seem to be a scam. She immediately set to work handling this business from her smartphone, as I would see her in the back filling out various forms and typing away, as I passed by her to do my Starbucks business.

Jessica did secure for me a particularly special gift card, that was in the shape of a rabbit. I have been collecting gift cards, and have asked the team for their help, and it has now become a fun activity for everyone, to score used gift cards and bring them to Steven, which everyone is happy to do, and I am happy to receive. It has become like a little game, and is definitely just better than throwing them all away. This is happening because I had the idea to collect them and make an artwork, because they are nice and it seems so wasteful to just throw them away. My plan is to make a collage. Cut them up and rearrange them. Jessica had scored for me a rabbit gift card, that I knew was very rare, and I checked the date, and it was from 2020. It was an oldie, in mint condition. Juanito scored one for me later in the day, with an illustration of a penguin sledding down a mountain with a basket of fish on the front of his sled. Another great card.

When I had first started this collection, I had about 9 cards at this point, and somehow every card I had gotten was unique and with art, as in not a generic basic white gift card, and I had just spread my collection out on the counter to peruse it. I was at the register, when two pretty girls walked up, beautiful brunette women, I must say, and they made their orders, and when the one girl went to pay, she pulled out a gift card, that caught my eye immediately, because it was a deep purple with an orange striped design, and I could tell it was awesome, and I immediately thought, I really hope I get this one. Well, she scanned it, and I saw that it had more on it than what she would have to pay, so I wasn’t going to get it. They paid, and then started to walk off, and then the girl turns back around… No, actually what happened was that the girl said, “How much do I have left on the card?” And I said, you know, $3.58, and she said, “Is that enough to get one of the cake pops?” And I said, of course, and so she got one, which then brought her card balance to $0.12, and I could then see she was thinking about what to do with this gift card, as I’m praying that it comes to me, and she says, “Umm, should I just, give it to you and you can give it to the next person who orders? Like, pay it forward?” And I said, confessing, “Actually, I was really hoping that I could get your card. I’ve kind of been collecting them..” And I patted my apron pocket to show them, but they weren’t there, and I remembered I had spread them out on the counter, so I gestured to them, where they could see my entire collection beautifully arranged, and they beheld it in all its glory and were clearly quite impressed, and I said, “When you pulled that card out, I saw it and immediately thought, I need that card, so I would love to have it.” And they laughed, they loved that, and she said, “Okay, it’s for you then!!” And she gave me the card, and I was extremely overjoyed, having ended up getting this special purple orange “You’re Awesome.” card, and from these beautiful brunette ladies. And as I stood there thrilled with my success, Jessica, after making their drinks, came over to me to report gleefully, that they were saying, “He’s so cute!” And immediately we were both making the same joke, that were they saying that I was cute like how I would want them to think I was cute, or were they saying I was cute like how a puppy was cute, or an autistic kid. Jessica was dying over that. It has been a running joke by Jessica that I must have some kind of mental illness, something must be wrong with me, because of all the unusual habits and life choices and all of the crazy things I say. We’ve taken some tests together, of which of course I aced all of them, in the good way, because I know all the right answers. So something could still be wrong with me, we just don’t know what it is. And whenever Jessica says now that something’s wrong with me, I say, “Yes, but what? What is it?” No suitable answer has been given.

I thought that there were some interesting guest interactions, but today, not much. The next thing that I can think of was that I had a particularly great joke. Juanito had made a nutella chocolate cake, that after several attempts by multiple people made to give me an opportunity to try the cake, I still wasn’t able to get a bite, and I told him that he would just have to make me another one, to which he replied, “No! I’m not making you another one. Not just for you. It’s too much money. And nutella day is over.” To which I replied, “There’s a nutella day?” And he said yes, and it’s over. And here I said, the great joke, and I said, “You know, you keep saying nutella by the way, but it’s actually nut-ella.” And I said this, and I heard Heather lose it, from all the way across the counter, and that’s how I knew it was good. Heather doesn’t have much of a whimsical sense of humor really, but the absurdity of someone saying “nut-ella”, just the sound of it, that immediately got her. And Juan said, “What! No it isn’t!” And I just kept finding ways to repeat it. “Nut-ella! Of course it’s nut-ella! Why are you saying nutella! It’s not nutella, it’s nut-ella! Like Cinderella! Nut-ella!” That was too much for Juanito.

Juan is a smart, witty, mild-mannered 20 year old string bean. He can take it and he can dish it out, but mostly he just takes it. It’s just so easy to mess with him. And he is always cracked out on espresso shots. There is a running joke that is really a running truth, that he is addicted to caffeine and really should stop chugging so many espresso shots. Then he gets flustered immediately, and has small crises, hundreds of small caffeine-fueled crises a shift, that I can’t help but to exacerbate, by saying things like, “Are you stressed? It’s okay Juan. Just take a deep breath. Just don’t panic. Everything will be fine.” I say this over his shoulder as he makes a Venti Iced Coffee, light ice, 2 pumps sugar free vanilla, Strawberry Cold Foam, which all definitely stresses him out.

Ah, I just remembered. Juan really likes to go tell people at close that we are closing. For some reason he enjoys doing that. I don’t particularly, so I’m happy to sic him on them, so that I don’t have to. But today, we had a young lovebird couple who were going hard on each other. I didn’t see it, because I didn’t want to see it, and I’m not watching, but Juanito was disturbed by this, and couldn’t look away, and said they were “French kissing” and Heather was implying that we should say something, but I didn’t care and figured they would stop soon, and it wasn’t bothering me anyways, but after Heather told me that maybe we should get them to stop, I had the brilliant idea to go over to Juan and say, “Hey Juan, if you see them getting real friendly again, why don’t you go over there and say something?” Knowing that he usually likes to do that kind of thing. But this time he immediately protested, crying, “No!! You do it!! Why should I do it!! You’re the shift supervisor!!” That brought me great delight.

Luckily they did stop soon after this, Juan saying they’ve “cooled down” which was great because I really didn’t want to go over there and say something, although it would have been funny. “Hey kids, can you like, stop putting your tongues in each other’s mouths at our Starbucks? That would be really great. Thank you.”

The only other thing I really have to write about here, and my hand is starting to hurt, is Lexi. Lexi is a beautiful blonde headturner that works in the building and frequents our store. She is tall, absolutely gorgeous, and fair, like a Swedish princess. Like some kind of princess. I recently learned that her last name has something of an r that you roll in it, so maybe she’s Eastern European, her name almost sounded Russian.. you know what, she could actually be a Russian princess. But her and I have had many interactions now, and of course I flirt with her, such as when I commented on her nice brooch, and she said that she was really into pins lately, and so as she was sitting there drinking her little evening doppio espresso, I brought her one of the extra Christmas pins we had, that says, “Cheers To You!” and I said, “A gift for you.” And give it to her, and she said, “It’s so cute!” I have learned many small things about Lexi from our interactions, such as that she is a musician with fans, because she had a gift card that “a fan” had given her, and that she plays piano, because I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her for Christmas this year, and she said she didn’t really need anything (great) but that she wanted piano lessons (incredible).. But she really impressed me when she was once perusing the wares, our incredible array of Starbucks merchandise that seems to rotate every week, she was taking a look over it all and when she came over to the register I said, “I see you were perusing the wares.” And she replied, “Yes, but you know, I don’t think I’ll buy anything, I’m trying to be less into consumerism.” And when she said that, she really had my attention, from that moment on, because we then had a conversation about being anti-consumerist, and embracing minimalism, and then she wasn’t just beautiful or musical, but intelligent. And she does wear glasses sometimes showing a more.. a nerdier side. Lexi is a catch and a special girl for sure, and I say headturner – she literally turns heads, mine included. She often wears cowboy boots, that make some noise when she walks and plus with her striking figure.. I was at the register once, and Lexi walked in, and there were exactly 3 men in our Starbucks, in the lobby, seated separately, and I saw all 3 of them look up, in unison, to check her out. It was incredible. Since that moment, I’ve thought of her as being literally, a head turner.

Jessica was talking about Lexi to me recently. Jessica has been looking for a girlfriend for me, and has had Lexi in mind. There has been something that has made me hold on making any move on her, something that I was getting, that seemed to me like she’s just been keeping a little distance, and not becoming too friendly with me, if you know what I mean. Well, Jessica discovered a week ago, that Lexi is married, and I think it must have just happened, because I swear I never saw a ring on that finger. Jessica came up to me and said, after I had been with Lexi at the register, “That girl is cute. Really cute. Is she taken?” And she spied the ring on her finger. Taloya also said that I needed to “get on that.” Her exact words, “Steven you gotta’ get on that.” But, she’s married.

I wasn’t suprised to find that out. I had a feeling she was taken. With a girl like that, chances are very high, when every guy in the world is falling over her. So today, she came in with her husband, and I wasn’t at the register, and I didn’t get a good look at him, and I didn’t make his drink, but I checked him out a bit, and he was a pretty classic, masculine-looking man. Short hair, muscular, beard, tall, wearing a flannel and boots. But you know, I have never been a jealous guy. They sat together and had their drinks, I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, but they seemed happy, and I was happy for her. I was happy for them both. I’m always like seeing a happy couple.

Lexi and I still managed to have a cute little interaction though. I was at the espresso machine nearest the customer pickup area, the drink handoff area, and Lexi came over and said, “Hey, do you think I could maybe get some cream, if that’s possible?” She is really very dainty and sweet, for someone who is that much of a bombshell. I said, “For you, you got it.” And she said, “You might need to pour a little of that out. To make room for the cream.” And there was already room, so I said, “Oh, you like a lotta’ cream!” And she laughed, and I poured some out, and then brought the cream over, and she was still holding the cup, and I said, “You hold the cup and I’ll pour the cream. Just tell me when.” And I started pouring, and she said, “When!” In a very small and cute voice. And she said thank you, and I had just put the cream away, when I was thinking, I wonder if she knows that we are now having customers pour cream themselves, that we have a container sitting out? And if she does, that the container is empty? You can see how with this incredible deductive reasoning skill I have risen up to being a mighty shift supervisor. And I looked up and over to the container, over at the trash station by the front door, and saw Lexi holding the container and kind of looking my way, and she said to me, smiling, “I didn’t know that you guys were doing this now!” And I smiled and said, “I was just wondering if you did!” And she said, “Now I know!” And she set it down, and looked at it for a second, and there was a little bit of a pause, like she didn’t quite know what else to do, and then she looked back over at me, smiled, and said “Well, have a good one!” And walked out.

I think that what made this special, if not conveyed in the writing, is that in that little aftermoment, both of us were thinking about that cream container. And we came back to each other over it. She was feeling a little silly I think, and I was thinking about her and if she had known about the cream container, and then she had discovered it, and she wanted to tell me about it. It was definitely, very cute, and made me feel good inside.

Also great that for this moment, her husband had already left the Starbucks, and was nowhere to be seen.

Do we have something like a Jim, Pam and Roy scenario going on here? Only time will tell. Writing this, that’s definitely what comes to my mind.

… TO BE CONTINUED

Today I bonded with Katerina over Russian literature. This has been a major source of bonding for us in recent weeks. It started with me bringing in a book of short stories by Anton Chekhov. I was getting so bored at closing that I was losing my mind. So it wasn’t before long that I brought a book in, and I had the perfect book for the job. My cousin had gotten me a book of Anton Chekhov short stories, as we both like Russian literature, and I was having a hard time handling such fast paced, condensed stories, some of them being only three pages long, and the book is full of these, and I had just read Don Quixote, which is over 1000 pages long. But I thought, this light reading is perfect for downtime at Starbucks, when you have 5 or 10 minutes to do something with, and that’s after I’ve exhausted the nearly endless list of tasks to take on, because when you really get into it, there’s almost always something you can find to do. Stocking, cleaning, tidying, arranging, checking up on things, fixing some small problem that’s been neglected, hunting for small problems that haven’t been noticed… But sometimes you just don’t feel like doing all of this extra stuff anyway. So that’s where my Anton Chekhov was going to come in handy. Well, lucky for me, on our team we have a real blood and bone Russian, 24 year old Katerina from Kazan, which I can remember because Kazan means “volcano” in Japanese. And Katerina is pretty much liked by everybody because she is of a very rare type among the Starbucks crew: quiet, hardworking, smart, and causing no drama. That is a very rare type, that has made her respected and beloved. Katerina is quiet, but as it goes with many quiet people, it’s not because she doesn’t have anything to say, and I have had many good conversations with Katerina. She has a good sense of humor. You just have to give her space and time to respond, and ask her questions. She also has to work around the language barrier, and I know exactly how hard that can be, and I think that’s why I can have more of a connection with her. Well, that’s one source and an early source of bonding between us, because I understand what it’s like to integrate into another country and culture. It’s hard. So I try and have tried to make her feel welcome and comfortable. To try and remove that distance and that feeling of otherness that can happen when you aren’t seamlessly a part of the culture, and struggle to understand the people around you because you don’t know the slang, don’t get the references, can’t understand the dialects. Even on our small Starbucks team, you have a seriously diverse range of slang and accents being used, some regional, some racial, some generational. Southern, Black Southern, Midwestern, Gen Z, Millenial, and Boomer are all present, and they all have their own set of pronunciations, vocabulary, colloquialisms, etc. And then you mash all of this up, and that’s the kind of talk you’ll hear behind the counter at our Cummins Station Starbucks. I know that Katerina is just lost a lot of the time, which is hard. Excluded by default. But anyways, Katerina does have a good grasp of English, but still that bar for fluency is so high. She has only been in the US a few years, here on political asylum, I actually just learned. Her and her husband. So, I brought in the book of Chekhov, somehow not even thinking to talk to Katerina about it, and she asked me what I was reading, and I told her, “Russian literature.” and she said, “Who?” And I didn’t know that Anton Chekhov was famous, or a big deal, but Katerina told me that he was, and I said, “You know him?” And she said, “Of course I know him.” And she said that they read Chekhov in school, and I asked her if pretty much everybody in Russia knew about Chekhov, and she said yes. So I learned about Chekhov from a real Russian, which I think is awesome, and she kept telling me I needed to read Kashtanka, which was a story that they would read in school, and it was in the book. Well, she kept asking me, and I kept disappointing her, and I had then fallen out of reading the Chekhov because the stories just contained so much drama and arguing for me, and they weren’t really holding my interest, even though they were good, and I didn’t want to just skip all the way to Kashtanka, which is in the middle of the book. But last night, I had nothing to do, and read some Huckleberry Finn, and then I wanted something else, and I thought, you know what, let me read Kashtanka. And I read it, and it was actually genius, and exactly what I needed to read right then, in that moment. Actually I thought it was so brilliant and so evocative, my mind able to capture the story so entirely and conjure up the images with such clarity, like I was watching a movie, that I nearly had chills at the end. And that night I knew that, the first thing I was going to talk about with anybody tomorrow was that I was going to tell Katerina what she wanted to hear, that I had finally read Kashtanka, and that it was genius. And I told her, and Katerina asked me what I thought the moral was, which is a great question. I said I didn’t think that there was a moral, but Katerina, in her wisdom, replied, “There is a moral in every story.” And she said she needed to reread it, and then she would tell me what she thought the moral was.

… TO BE CONTINUED

Today I did not expect to do any work for my special Cummins Station Starbucks. Yesterday I had gone in, and had ended up doing a very small amount of work, taking some boxes down to our storage room, which took me about 5 minutes of easy labor, and for which Stacy Hamilton rewarded my very light efforts with a command to go on over to Wild Wasabi and buy myself some sushi. I almost protested at this, because I felt it was so unnecessary and that she should know that I would have done this small task out of the goodness of my heart and out of my love for the store, but I knew that she already knows that, and that she probably just wanted to buy me sushi, and so I was not going to refuse. So, I took her $20 bill, after carrying this light load of boxes, and for the first time went and bought something for myself at Wild Wasabi. Wild Wasabi is mostly a Japanese restaurant, with sushi being their core offering, and it’s at the other end of our long sideways Empire State Building building. It’s right next to the Gibson Garage, which is my special, magical place, like Santa’s Workshop, full of shiny and expensive toys that you can’t have until Christmas, or in my case, until I’m not poor anymore… And usually when I head down to this part of the building, it is to go to this magic Santa’s Workshop. So now I was excited to have some business with Wild Wasabi, and I actually thought, as I was leaving the restaurant, how incredibly lucky it is that I actually work in a building that contains establishments related to some very core loves of mine, which are guitars and Japan. And then, I get to work at a coffee shop, and a nice one, and live out my coffee shop dream. That is pretty incredible, so thought I, walking out of the Wild Wasabi. But not much happened inside, as there was nobody really in there, and I didn’t want to spend too much of Stacy’s money, and I am really a vegetarian, so I just got 8 measly veggie rolls. I say measly to no offence of Wild Wasabi’s, I just say that because they’re veggie rolls. Who’s thrilled about a veggie roll? Nobody’s thrilled about a veggie roll. But they were fine, and importantly, I had quite a ceremonious meal. I made sure to say my 頂きます, with my hands together in prayer, and give a small bow, before snapping my chopsticks, perfectly, which I rarely do, and must be good luck, and I made sure to eat all of the wasabi, and all of the ginger, and every single grain of rice, leaving absolutely nothing behind, as all of my Japanese girlfriends would have wanted. And, when leaving, I made eye contact with one of the sushi chefs, who smiled at me and nodded, and I said, smiling back, “ごち”そうさまでした！” Which I was sure he would be surprised and thrilled to hear, but he seemed confused, and held his smile, and nodded again, before looking away. So, I don’t think he was Japanese, which surprised me because I thought he actually did look Japanese. There must be someone on the staff who is Japanese, but maybe not. I know the owner isn’t, the owner being Karen, who is an extremely friendly and amiable lady. She was not at Wild Wasabi on this day, and I haven’t seen her in awhile, but when we were first opening the store, she took a great interest in our activities and came by nearly every day to see what we were doing and to chat with us.

The entire reason why I was at my Starbucks on this day, and was about to carry these boxes and receive a wonderful sushi reward, was because on this day I was enjoying my life and visiting the cafe as a regular civilian. This is something that has baffled some members of the team, as to why anyone would ever want to go in to their place of employment on their days off, but as I said to Jaz just that day, as I was again asked why I was there (this is now the 23rd time that I’ve been in the store as a regular civilian), when she said why would you come to work on your off day, that I didn’t see it that way. I have explained to them, tried to explain, that the whole reason why I wanted to work in a bustling, bright coffee shop was because I liked being in them, and so it is no surprise that I would be going to one on my day off, because that’s what I do, and I might as well go to mine, because I know everybody, and like being there. And there are perks, such as that I can basically always score free food and drink, and on that Wild Wasabi day, I even scored sushi. Going in and hanging out at the Starbucks on my off days has presented me with many opportunities, as is the case of being in the right place at the right time, and also, the whole thing about third spaces, just hanging out somewhere in public, where you can have no pressure and spontaneous interactions with people in your community, or the people of the world. Unfailingly, every time I go in to the store to hang out, someone ends up talking to me, usually my coworkers, who find ways to get away from the counter and come chat with me or discuss the day’s drama, as every single day contains at least one notable event of major drama, but I also have had many conversations with customers. And this is exactly why I like being in coffee shops. You can eavesdrop, and listen these people’s conversations, maybe they’re on the phone with a colleague, maybe they’re with a friend, maybe having a job interview, seeing an old friend, tourists, bachelorette girls, or discussing serious business, and you catch the tone of the their voices, the general content, the relationship of the speakers, and their mood, and you realize that all people everywhere are kind of the same.

As the register king, the POS king (point of sale) which is the position that I gravitated to and excelled in (if I may be so humble as to say) and loved, because I have a nearly endless stream of quips and banter, and because I can also actually listen well and hit the right buttons on the machine, which is actually an enormous responsibility, because getting even one single thing wrong can be the death of a $10 drink, a twelve-step process, or simply neglecting one word, can result in your barista working hard to make this beast of a drink to perfection, and then handing it over to the customer, who says, the dreaded and infamous, “Umm, this was supposed to be iced…!” Or perhaps they take a sip, and they say, “Was this made with oatmilk? It tastes like regular milk.” To which you reply, “No, was it supposed to be? It wasn’t on the ticket. I’m so sorry about that, I’ll remake that for you, right after I go over to the register and throttle Titania, who has now gotten 7 out of the last 9 drink tickets wrong, and now there are 25 people standing here waiting for their drinks, and by the way, who’s on warming, and why, how is it possible that we have no brewed coffee right now, at all? How could this be possible? So literally no one has brewed it?” This is how it goes.

My point being here that pushing buttons at the register is a very important part of the Starbucks factory line, and I knew that, but then I learned one day that Stacy also knew that, and that’s why Stacy always put me on POS, because I would push the right buttons. Prior to me fully realizing that I had a special gift of being a good register button pusher, charm and conversational skill aside, I would often give up the position or trade it with other team members, because they wanted to have a go at it, and because after about 3 straight hours of being at the register and having 200 small conversations in a row, I would get tired of it. If I actually got tired, and needed a break, such as to be relieved of my frontline position after 3 or 4 hours of intense rush action, that’s a different story, and I could get relief, but if I was just bored or indifferent, then sometimes I would give up my spot to Charlie, who would be itching to say to every customer who walked up to the counter, when he would ask them how they were today, and then if they would make the mistake of asking him how he was today, he would reply, almost always, without fail, “It’s a great day to have a great day!” Now, Charlie was extremely corny, and he also had a habit of shouting out every 15 or 20 minutes everyone slaving away at their battlestations, “You’re doing great, everybody!” And it was amazing, the team’s varying reactions to this strange, corny, positive encouragement. We were not used to being treated this way, and to hearing such words. Christopher Bodily, Granddaddy Snow, back in the days when he had graced us with his presence as the Assistant General Manager, before he left us for bigger and better things, I think had the best response, that he could use every time, and that was always nice, that was, “Not as good as you, Charlie!” Jessica meanwhile immediately hated that, and immediately hated him. Stacy Hamilton would generally just say nothing, probably not even registering these useless words, and some other members would laugh, and sometimes, when he would announce it after a particularly turbulent time, a tense time, where Stacy was pissed, and everyone was battered and bruised, and then Charlie would announce, his timing now being somewhat awkward, but he could never help himself, God bless him, “You’re doing great everyone!” And if Chris was around, he would be the only one to reply, “Not as good as you, Charlie..” Forcing it out, and saving it from falling completely dead, on silent, disgrunted ears.

Depending on my mood, I would either like to hear his corny, stock words of encouragement, and I would reply, or I would like them, but would have nothing to say, or I would think that they were corny, and then sometimes, I would think that they were corny, and that I desperately wanted to then be sarcastic, which would get laughs, and so after some time, because I didn’t want Charlie to think I was a meanie butt, and needed him to know that I was just a jokester and fond of ribbing and roasting, and that I did actually appreciate his words of encouragement, but I just needed to ease some of the corniness tension, I would then say after his words, to some friendly coworker who was deserving of or seemed to want to receive some good ol’ ribbing, “Except you, _____.” Which was often Jessica. And that would get a response out of them, and kill the corniness, wipe the corniness from everybody’s minds, a bit.

Although he was corny, and had a habit of hugging everyone on the team, including the people who he should never have been hugging, because you know there are 100% people who do not like to be hugged, and if you hug them they will hate you, he would hug those people, and they would hate him. I’m mainly talking about Jessica here, who if you really knew, you would understand immediately that Charlie hugging Jessica was an enormous transgression and should never have been done. But Charlie was just like a puppy. Very genuine, very direct, smiling, and friendly. I liked that about him, and I did like him, but unfortunately, this personality type, as lovely as it is, has no place on Stacy Hamilton’s ship, because Charlie lasted for about two weeks before he got the axe, which is an extremely short period of time. Stacy Hamilton could not stand his corny joy, his boundless, caffiene-fueled, positive energy. He was also always walking around with a cappuccino, and Stacy noticed that, that he would come in, and the first thing he would do was make himself a cuppuccino, and then 7 more throughout his shift, and when she said that to me, my mind was filled with memories, all of the visual images of all of the times that I had seen him strutting around with a cappuccino in his hand, sometimes, I swear, if my brain is not lying to me, even two cappuccinos, one in both hands. He may have lasted three weeks, but he did not survive long, and I was somewhat sad to see him go. We actually did benefit from his blind positive energy, his persistent motivation, even if we all thought it was varying degrees of stupid. Charlie did not know what to make of me, in the beginning, a masculine man that I am, and presenting a very tough, cool exterior, with quick wit and sarcasm. He tread lightly with me, before warming up to me, and then hugging me, which then was the sign that we were officially friends. I think that took about three days.

I write about Charlie now, and I do miss him. And since he’s been gone, ever since Charlie made his short impact on the team, I will occasionally find myself filled an urge, as I walk out from the back and see the whole team before me, mulling around, having done great work, or not, having nothing to do at all, I have the urge to say those magic words, “You’re doing great everybody!” Because even in corniness, even in irony, they work. When I have actually said the words, and I have confessed that I have these urges, when I have said those words, those who remember Charlie, they understand.

I was writing about Charlie because he was often one who would want to take over for me at the register, and told people, over and over, “It’s a great day to have a great day!” And I would generally let him do this, until one fateful day, when we were having an intense rush, and I was on one end of the counter, and Stacy Hamilton was all the way down at the other, with about 3 or 4 baristas in-between us, and I was checking over on her, standing down by the handoff area, making drinks and handing them off and handling customers, the maestro and the orchestrator, and we made eye contact, and she gave me an expression and a look that said, someone or everyone had f***ed up one too many times, that she was fed up, and things were not going well for her, and so I took some food from whoever was at the ovens, and brought it down to the handoff plane myself, and on the way I watched her take a drink from a customer, saying nothing, and immediately dumping it, and she caught me and said, in some desperation, “I’ve had to remake 15 drinks. 15 drinks already. If they get one more ticket wrong I’m going to kill somebody. This is why I put you on register. This is why I want you up there.” It was something to that effect, and that was the moment that I understood the method to her madness. Prior to this, I had thought that she simply wanted us to stay planted, which is the lingo we use for saying you have a battlestation and you stick to it, you don’t abandon it, you don’t leave it without being covered. I thought that that’s why Stacy didn’t like us moving around, but as long as everybody was planted somewhere, and all positions were covered, it didn’t matter where you were. But then I understood, I was assigned register and was expected to stay at register, because I was good at it, and that was important. So then, as a barista, I hardly ever left my spot, as the POS king.

I gravitated to POS, and it is still my home position. I have ranked up, and have now a larger set of duties and tasks that I must fulfill, and bounce around, all over, running on missions and quests and etc., but the register is still my home position. And if we were to say that our Cummins Station Starbucks were a ship, which I think about often, and Stacy is the captain, our Captain Ahab, the register is the steering wheel.

Everyone has their favorite spots behind the counter. Their favorite positions. Emily and Chris K. are the brewmasters. Emily in particular, the hot drink, the espresso machine, the latte art aficionado. Emily never gave up on her love of making latte art that no one cared about and no one would see. I encouraged this and supported it, and whenever she would make something particularly spectacular, I would say, “That’s amazing, Emily, you must show this to the customer!” And she would, and of course they would love that, even if you could tell that they didn’t really care, but you know, who isn’t going to be at least a little happy to see some latte art on their latte? Everybody is at least ever so slightly tickled by that. But Granddaddy Snow, for as much as I loved Emily’s latte art, Granddaddy Snow could not stand it, and would say, “If I have to look at Emily’s latte art one more time…” It was actually going to make him snap. And she never detected the sarcasm in his voice, when she would show him her art, and he would say, “Oh wow, looks like latte art!” And then immediately look at me and smile, that kind of smile that implies you are about ready to murder someone. So I would encourage Emily to show her wonderful latte art to either the customer, or Granddaddy Snow, when I felt that he could use some latte art in his life.

The big problem with Emily showing off her latte art and with her discussing anything in her life in general, or telling you about anything ever, is that it involved you looking at something on her phone, sometimes many things on her phone, an extensive, never-ending catalogue of personal photos and videos and social media content. Once you got sucked into that, there was no escaping. But, that’s actually not true. It’s more that after every 5 seconds of talking with Emily, you would then be forced to look at something on her phone, which for Granddaddy Snow was mostly latte art, and he couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t either. So very quickly, very early on, Emily would talk to me, and say, “Hey Steven, I have to show you something, c’mere.” And I now, wary, would say, “Is it on your phone?” And she would say yes, and I would say no, I’m not looking, and sometimes she would convince me to look, pitching whatever it was that she had for me skillfully enough, catching my interest, but sometimes she would fail, or I simply refused to look at a phone screen in that moment, and I would say, “Just tell me about it. It’s okay. Just tell me in words.” And I remember, this happened many times, but there was one specific instance where she said, there was something I “needed to know”, that it was very important, and I refused to look at her phone, and that she had to just tell me, and she finally caved and told me, that there was a new flavor of Red Bull. I can’t even remember what flavor it was. It was not an extraordinary flavor. And after she told me that, I thought, okay, you literally could just tell me that in a sentence, and you’re trying to get me to watch a video, and so out of curiosity, to see what I could have been missing, I had her show me the video, which was a 26 second Instagram video of a girl holding the can and rotating it. For 26 seconds. Just a can in her hand. Basically, showing that it existed. And that video had 80,000 likes.

You can see why I stopped looking at Emily’s phone.

… TO BE CONTINUED

Games, Beans, and French Cult Groups

So here we are.

I’m going to write something on this here blog o’ mine.

Yes, that’s right. Something will be written here, on this here o’ blog o’ mine.

What should I write?

I just did a bunch of writing in my little notebook, my little Kroger $2 composition notebook that is exactly the kind of notebook you buy for your kids in elementary school. And here I am writing my genius adult thoughts down in the very same kind of book that I would have been so thrilled to buy when buying school supplies in the summer. These have been my go-to notebooks because they’re cheap, last awhile, and have the right proportions for me to write in. Not too much space between the lines, not too little, and they don’t have a metal ring, which are annoying for me. I hate the metal ring that goes through the spine of some notebooks. That has never been for me.

The things I have written just now are what you get when I write in this way, which is totally stream of consciousness. It’s like I’m talking to somebody, but that somebody is myself, and these are the kinds of things I would say to somebody in a conversation, where there is no real particular aim, and we are free to just chit chat. That’s what is happening right now, here on this blog.

I write this because I have spent more time thinking about the differences between typing and writing, and how it impacts writing quality and what I write at all, and this is the first time I’ve written a blog since July, apparently, and so I am particularly paying attention to how I’m writing, right now, as I write it. And the things I’m writing here, and the way I’m writing it, I would never be writing in my little notebook, with my Pilot G-2 0.7 blue ink pen. I wouldn’t be able to write like this because I can’t write fast enough to keep up with my stream of consciousness. But in typing, like in a conversation, I can type about as fast as I can talk, and so I can write down my thoughts to you, in a manner that is more like speech, and more conversational. Isn’t that interesting?

My thoughts are slower and probably of a higher quality when written down. They’re certainly of a more substantial nature. But after just doing a bunch of that, that’s not what I want to write about anymore. So, what should I write for you now?

I did have two main topics I thought I would write about, as I drove home from Starbucks today in the car. Let’s see if I can even remember them. Yes, I can. The first topic was basically an entire overview of my Overwatch gaming journey, and I’ll crack into this and see if anything interesting results from it.

I did write about playing Fortnite, and shared a little story about one of my thrilling Fortnite moments, of almost having a super-epic-heroic game-winning play and completely failing. Fortnite was a fun game for me for a few months, but I had to quit the game. My Fortnite saga ended in dramatic style, with me completely quitting cold turkey, and why? Because they ruined the game. I didn’t quit playing because I got bored, which is usually what happens. I quit playing, rather the game creator wizards behind Fortnite forced me to stop, because they introduced an item that was so destructive to the quality of the game that I couldn’t stand playing with it in the game. There was no way to play around it, and there was no way to enjoy the game while it existed, so I had to simply quit. I was getting too angry. I could not enjoy the game anymore. And this dreaded item, you may be delighted to know, was the Captain America Shield. If you just think about Captain America and his shield in the Marvel Universe, and imagine that you are one of the grunts in the Marvel world that try and shoot Captain America, just for him to deflect all of your bullets and then smash your face in with the shield, you will understand why this item was so horrible for the game of Fortnite, and why I had to quit. The only way to reliably beat someone with the Captain America shield, which required absolutely no effort or skill to use, by the way, so any regular noob and crappy, unskilled gamer with no tactics, can pick up the Captain America Shield and become invincible and smash your face in easily, unless you found War Machine’s Arsenal, which was a rocket gauntlet that fired a relentless stream of rockets that would blow up any pathetic, cowering shield user. Or, you decided to give up your entire strategy of enjoying the game, and picked up a Captain America Shield for yourself, and then you would enjoy freely demolishing any other player stupid, stubborn, or unfortunate enough to have not picked up a Captain America Shield, or if they did have one, you could then enjoy a leisurely and uninteresting, 50/50 shield fight coin toss, where you and your opponent would walk in circles around each other and alternate blocking and throwing your shield, which usually ends when someone just can’t stand how boring it is anymore, and switches to any other weapon, and then they lose. In a game where the final 1v1 would, in the good ol’ pre-Captain America Shield days be an insane, high-stakes battle between two hardened warriors who had clawed their way through the rabble, picking up legendary items, plungers, shotguns, rocket launchers, rifles, flying fists, and putting it all together in a final, epic showdown, to be watching now every 1v1 a yawning Captain America Shield turtle toss-off, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was driving me insane. I had to quit.

I’m triggered even now thinking about it.

So moving on… Fortnite was over, and after awhile, I got bored. I probably shouldn’t be gaming at all, and I have once again had thoughts on this, the perpetual ideological battle for the soul of gaming, whether gaming is really good, or not good, whether I should ever game at all, or whether there are good parts about it, and I have some thoughts this time around that I think are real definitive truth for me on this matter, and unfortunately, but also, it is what it is, that definitive truth is this: That gaming can be fun and good, energizing and enjoyable for me, but there is an everpresent chance that a gaming session can turn into a binge, and a binge is always bad, and so if I don’t game, I can’t binge, and so the best choice is to not risk a binge at all, and not game at all. Even if I am 1 for 5, where 4 gaming sessions are not binging, where I play for an appropriate amount of time, and have fun, and get what I think you are supposed to get out of any session of doing something fun, even if 4 in 5 are successful in that way, if 1 in 5 results in a binge, of me playing for too long, going over what I even want to be doing, tiring myself out, gaming mindlessly and staying up too late, sacrificing sleep for it, then it’s not worth it. The negative effects of a binge are too costly, compared to the benefits of gaming. That is my final conclusion, and my final take on my whole personal struggle with gaming. The other argument that has weight with me, that makes me lean in favor of no gaming at all, is this one: If I am gaming, there is no chance that I will end up doing anything else that can be productive for me. There is no chance that I will have any kind of good thought or idea, that I will end up exercising, calling someone, putting on a record, or anything that is better for me than gaming, and I say better for me because for me personally, I know from experience that all of those things are better for me and my life. If I am not playing a game, then there is a chance that I will end up doing anything that is better than gaming. And I feel that this statement then begs the question – why even game at all?

The whole reason why I do it, I think, after having analyzed my own behavior in recent months, is because 1. I’m bored or 2. I’m lonely. I never have any desire to game or want to play a video game if there are other things for me to do, such as people for me to play with. I say play with like I’m a kid, but guess what? We’re all big kids, and we all need to play, and I have learned that I need to play A LOT. Turns out that I am extremely playful and have a great appetite for play. I would say this about myself, at least, and based on the copious amounts of gaming I have done and my history of being popular with dogs and children, it must be true. That’s one major driver for why I turn to games. And video games are of course, often highly entertaining. Massive dopamine pumps, with learning curves, a social element, teamwork, glory, and uncertainty. And they’re colorful and stimulating and exciting. So, yeah, no surprise I have been sucked into game worlds and have had so much fun with them. But the problem with some of these games, the competitive games and the team-based games in particular, is that they tap into something in me that goes beyond fun, and they hijack something in my brain, that gets me to play when I don’t even really want to, and when the game isn’t fun anymore. That’s the bad part, and that’s something that doesn’t happen with pretty much any other kind of play that I do. There are natural limits on other kinds of play, such as sports, because your body gets tired, or with conversation, because eventually your mouth and brain get tired, or your partner gets tired, or you have to go home, or whatever. But with gaming, there is no end, it is complelely unlimited, and purely mental. You can just keep going and going and going, even when your eyes are burning and you know that you should have gone to bed 6 hours ago. It’s too much power, too much potential in the hands of someone as play-hungry as I am. And there is another element to it, that is part of the games that I get hooked on, and that is the learning curve. There is an element of mastery, and that is so stimulating for your brain. That combination of skill and randomness and excitement and spontaniety. It is hard to find ways in life to achieve this mix of qualities that make gaming so fun, but I would say that is also what you get when you play sports, and ALSO, what I am finding out these days, when you JAM with people in a band, or even by yourself, when you really get into it. The thing about gaming is that it is so low effort to do. You don’t have to schedule anything, you don’t have to find anyone else, and the games are often free. So it’s very easy to do, whereas these other ways of playing and using your brain and unleashing your inner warrior spirit are harder to achieve. I have wanted to have a band and jam with people for months and I still don’t have any real jam partners or band members. But, yesterday I came home and Smosh, my drummer roommate, said THE MAGIC WORDS THAT HE’S ONLY SAID ONCE BEFORE EVER in our almost year of living together. He said, “I’m in the mood to jam.” And sweet baby jesus, we jammed, and it was glorious. I want to do that all the time, for hours and hours and hours. And I am jockeying to get there. But it’s harder to make it happen. I can fire up the Switch and find 1000’s of Overwatch Smoshes battling their hearts out (or not, some of them, who knows what they’re doing) in an instant, and battle for as long as I possibly can humanly stand. That’s unhealthy, though. That’s the problem.

I’m really stream of consciousness writing here, but I feel like it is pretty juicy stuff, and this is interesting for me, personally, at least. This is some real meat and potatoes of my life. And I will share, with that bit out of the way, about gaming vs. not-gaming and also, which I didn’t explicitly state, why I think rock is basically my way out of ever having to game again, and my saving grace, and my ultimate perfect form of play and enjoyment in my life, and that is allowing me to kiss gaming goodbye forever

Oh, my other roommate (she who must not be named) has decided to rap and seems to h…

(Apply Buddhist techniques. Rise above your fleeting and trifling discomforts and emotions..)

I wanted to write about Overwatch, and my journey with Overwatch, and why the saga ended, because it has ended, and it’s interesting to see why, as I reflected upon today in my ride home. I’m getting typed out, but this important. For who? Great question.

I came home today to find a condom at the end of my driveway. It was unfortunately too far into my driveway to be considered in the street, but I don’t think I could have left it there anyway, because it never would have been picked up, and I could not stand walking out of my house to see that. On my second trip outside of my home, I used another piece of trash in my yard (they wash up like shells on a beach, coming in at a steady rate of 2-5 pieces of trash a day) to pick it up. I wasn’t sure if it was used or not, as in the condom, but on closer inspection that I had to do when I bent down to pick it up, it was thankfully not used. Extremely thankfully not used. That would have been hard even for a dirty boy like me. It was not used and I threw it away. I write about this because I was in an interesting mood when I found it, feeling tired from my intense shift of serving my duty on the frontlines of Cummins Station Starbucks, but also feeling humorous, and so when I had come home from a hard day’s duty and was walking out to check the mail, which we didn’t have any because it was Sunday, as I remembered immediately after opening the mailbox and finding no mail, I saw the condom and thought, “Man, it must be nice to live somewhere where you wouldn’t find a used condom in your driveway.” And then I thought, “But hey, at least someone is getting laid.” And that thought cheered me up and made me happy, and I thought, if I could tell this to anyone, they would think, you know, this guy (me) has a good disposition. Because that’s exactly what I would think if anyone found a used condom on their property and instead of reacting with disgust and rage, my initial reaction being a little more of disgust and displeasure, they reacted with digust and humor. Humor and the lens you view the world through is a very powerful thing. I do seem to have a good disposition. It has made me popular among the ranks at the Cummins Station Starbucks. My bff (codename Jessica) has said, “Why do I like you so much? Why are you so cool?” My manager again said today that “everybody loves you.” My other manager called me “the popular one.” And my other manager (I have a lot of managers) said, upon reacting to my new promotion, “You have the charisma for it.” It is strange to be so popular, for not being someone who is trying to be popular, or cares about popularity, and it is strange to be constantly reminded of it. I think it would be like being really beautiful, and people are constantly telling you that you’re beautiful. You appreciate it and it is nice to hear, but it’s also weird sometimes, and makes you feel different. This is something that I grapple with often these days, that I am somehow now, at least on my diminishing Starbucks team, so beloved. But I have been loved and popular before, as a sensei in Kumamoto, and I thought that was weird too. My lead sensei at Shoyo would say to me, “You are the best ALT I’ve ever had.” And she had had many, and after a few times that she had said it, I said, “Matsunaga sensei, why? Why am I the best?” I genuinely wanted to know, because it was hard for me to wrap my head around, as I did not think I was anything particularly special. I don’t think I had any extraordinary ideas or organized any extraordinary program, I did not start a club, or anything I could point to as being particularly extraordinary. I did help my students win the Kumamoto English Skit Contest, two years in a row, and I had a major hand in that, although the credit goes all to them, and I am proud of that as being one of my greatest accomplishments as an ALT in Kumamoto, particularly because of how much it meant to the students who won. Otherwise I did not think of myself as being an extraordinary ALT, but Matsunaga sensei seemed to feel strongly that I was, and she told me why. She said I was always pleasant and friendly, I talked with the students, I talked with the other teachers, I stayed late to help out, I never complained. So by way of just being friendly and fun, not causing any problems at all, and lending a helping hand whenever asked, that made me the best ALT. And I see that that is also now bringing me popularity and success at my Cummins Station Starbucks. Despite all of the drama, the unbelievable and unending amounts of drama behind these counters, despite all of the beefs and tiffs, I have been unscathed, and am a friend to all, and have no enemies.

Smosh just came into my room and shredded on the guitar. He commented on my guitar tone after several minutes of solid riffing out and said, “Also this guitar tone is horrible.” I said, “What!” He said, “There’s way too much chorus.” Thanks to my new Small Clone, there is a lot of chorus in the tone. Almost as much as there possibly could be. He is not the first person to comment on my love of chorus. I seem to have an intense love of and hankering for chorus. You really can’t have enough chorus. No shocker then that one of my top Nirvana songs is Come As You Are. That song is the entire reason why I have the thing, and it seems like the entire reason why any new purchaser of a Small Clone has the thing, because on the box was written in small white text, “your nirvana.” Just like that. They know who their audience is. Who their users are. It is just as good as I wanted it to be, this Small Clone pedal. Even better. The thrill that shoots through my spine when I step on that metal button and the chorus activates, my tone suddenly becomes watery and wavery, and sounding just like Nirvana’s Come As You Are. It’s magic.

Something is happening now that has been happening of late, and what I knew would again be happening tonight. This has recently been a major problem for me. I am hungry. The problem with this is that it is 8:47 pm here in CST, and that is two hours and forty-seven minutes exactly past the end of my daily intermittent fasting window. I’m not usually hungry, but my cycle has been thrown off, and so now I am hungry, just as I was starving yesterday at 8 am, when I usually don’t break my fast until 10 am, and I don’t usually have any problem. But I’ve broken the cycle. Things fell apart when I went home for Thanksgiving, and they have been made worse by the fact that I’ve now been closing at the store, so my schedule is all over the place, and then I haven’t been eating enough probably, because I’ve been working when I should be eating, and then I end up in a severe calorie deficit and have had to eat at night because I’ve been so hungry. This might make it sound like I’m starving, but I’m not, although I am about as light as I ever have been. But shockingly on the scale today I measured at 147.7, which is higher than my base, lowest healthy weight that I have been, which is around 144. I would say this is about the lowest I can go while being healthy and having muscle tone, because I have basically no body fat, and my muscles are not as jacked as they’ve been before, but I’m not emaciated. It feels wrong to say that “I’m not emaciated” so I must be doing fine, because we can all agree that there are steps between “fine” and “emaciated”, but I think I am fine. Maybe on some days though, working too hard, and not eating enough, on those particular days, there is some small starvation happening. So, right now, I knew this would happen, that I was going to be starving tonight, because I ate a bunch of bread at about 5 pm, after running and working hard all day, so I burned a ton of calories today, and totalled only about 1500 consumed, but I was stuffed with bread, and come 6 pm, when I had planned to eat some black beans, I was still so full, and I couldn’t eat the beans, and now here we are. That’s how I’ve walked into this again. Life can be so hard sometimes. You may be thinking now, “Steven, why are you doing this to yourself? Eat the beans!” Were it so easy, young one. Were it so easy. It’s never so easy.

If I eat the beans now, I am farther down my road of destroying my intermittent fasting habits. It will only be harder to recover. Except that tomorrow, I will be able to do better, and I can make a plan to eat enough before 6 pm, and ride it out. That’s usually the case. I should probably eat the beans. It is always helpful to imagine that the protein I get from the sustanence will be used to strengthen and repair my muscles. I am a vain man, even if I tell myself I’m not, or pretend not to be. We are all vain. Who is not vain? I am vain, sometimes. I will flatter myself, sometimes. Who doesn’t? Maybe some people really don’t. But I will catch myself in the mirror on some days, and think, “Damn, I look good today.” That’s generally only on days where I shower AND wear my contacts, so quite rare. But the last day, or one of the most recent days that I did this wombo combo, I had also had a beard at just the right length, that made me look manly and older, but not too long to be scruffy and unkempt, and this combo of shining fresh hair, no scratched and cloudy glasses obscuring my beautiful blue eyes, and my perfect beard made me looking sexy, I felt, and it was reciprocated by the reactions of the customers, who were giving me extra special attention that day, and so much that one guy (why only a guy? why can’t it be one of my Cummins Station loves?) at the counter immediately asked if I had a girlfriend, and said he would set me up with some girls. He was very eager to make my acquaintance. I could not match his eagerness and have decided not to pursue this new line of friendship, because I have now had so many similar encounters and have learned that they are generally not worth my time, and I don’t have time or energy for such a one right now, because I am on the Rock Quest. Will it result in meeting a potential band member? Will it result in meeting a potential musical bestie? Unlikely. He was only interested in me for my dashing good looks. He knew nothing of my personality, except he knew something of my charm and wit, that I had demonstrated before him asking me if I had a girlfriend because his name was Stephen and we bonded over that and I told him that I had always thought myself superior, being with a V instead of the inferior Ph, but then my manager, wise old owl ________ hit me with this: “You know the Ph Stephen is the way it’s spelled in the Bible.” I’m probably not supposed to use her real name either. I need a codename. We can call her.. Margeret Underwood. That’s not right. How about… Stacy Hamilton. Fine. Stacy Hamilton hit me with that, and since then I have felt much differenterly about the spelling of Stephen with a Ph. Much more differenterly. And after telling him about this revelation I had had for no particular reason, as I do have a habit of telling stories to any customer who is inclined to listen and I think will appreciate them, as I am not babbling but tactfully sharing anecdotes or information/tales that I believe will be appealing or entertaining or enlightening to the particular customer, he then asked me immediately after, if I had a girlfriend. Very direct, and I thought, now this guy probably gets what he wants. Being so direct like that. I wish I could be that direct, instead of mulling over everything endlessly forever, and plotting and planning to extraordinary lengths and charting a detailed course before taking any action ever. But I decided not to pursue this because such a similar thing has happened so many times before.

My most recent engagement with a stranger that turned into a social event was with a neighbor that I had a pleasant conversation with, that turned into an invite to their house, that turned into me attending one of their semi-weekly gatherings and realizing 30-minutes in that I was basically at a cult party and they wanted to get me to join their cult. Several people took me aside and gave me the same schpiel about a French organization that in English means “the shelter”, or something like that that they were very fond of saying to me, that had taken them in and that they were now devout followers of, and I had also been tipped off early because two separate ladies had asked me, “So do you find yourself searching for answers these days?” And one lady straight up asked if I believed in God, and these are not questions that you are often asked at parties, at least not at the parties I usually go to. I started to see Bibles, and the texts of religious teachings, and I was talking with another lady who was an author and told me she was writing a book about play, which I was very interested in because I think play is a great topic to be explored, and then she started talking about how God plays, and how we can play with God, and I thought, “Dammit!!” I ended up getting so bored by the end of the night, and so overflowing with witty comments and off-color jokes and sarcasm that was generally not appreciated or desired by this serious French cult group that as the night drew to a close, I had to start letting them out, and see what happened, and I made a great joke/line about homeless people in Nashville being pests, which was definitely sarcastic and I feel strongly for homeless poeple and want to help them, and we have many in and around the store and it is sad and I wish it was not the case, but you know there are many people who I think view them only as pests to be gotten rid of, or look at them simply as an eyesore, and anyways that was the joke, but I knew that was 10 times too edgy for this group, but I had to say it, and then the thing that really did me in and put me on the outs and in the bad graces of the dad of the house was that I had made a joke reaction to this woman who was talking about her crazy ex-husband and that he was “homeschooling” their daughters and keeping drugs at the house, and I said, “Homeschooling? Now it all makes sense.” Or something like that, something implying that people who homeschool their kids are wacky, and then out of the side of my eye I saw the dad’s reaction, and he did not seem too pleased by that comment, and then I immediately remembered that the mom had told me that they had been homeschooling their 14 year old daughter, and I thought, “Well, I’m probably not going to be invited back.” Thankfully they did not invite me back, and I did not want to go back, so we were on the same page with that. But the mom did tell me at the end of the night, a terrible story that made me extremely outraged, because someone had asked how we had met. We met because I had stopped to admire her amazing flower garden that was out in front of their house, by the street, and I hadn’t noticed she was sitting out on the patio, and she must have seen that I was so interested in her flower patch, which was absolutely buzzing with butterflies and bees, and this was in October I believe, so it was later in the season. It was swarming and I was amazed to see so many pollinators here, as well as what kinds of flowers she had going on, and she came over and started talking to me, and then we found that we had more common interests, having lived abroad, and her husband working with parasites and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt, so I did know going into this that they would be some interesting people. At the party then, she told me a very sad story that I did not want to hear, which was that they had later had pest control people come by the house (already interesting for someone who is a nature lover to do, but I don’t know if she was really an insect lover as much as a flower lover), and after spraying the house with the chemicals, as the pest control guys left, they decided to spray the flowers in her garden on the way out, and they killed everything in the garden. That to me was the most infuriating story I have ever heard, and I thought that they need to be fined, and that she should have complained, but the really sad part of the story is that, why in God’s good name would you ever spray your poison on a bunch of butterflies and bees? On a batch of beautiful flowers? Why? In what world, in whose mind are those pests? Masochist sadist psychopath idiot. I don’t know. But that should be illegal. That should be criminal. Unwanton and reckless killing of anything should be punishable and illegal. Pesticides should mostly be illegal and banned. Humans are idiots and should not be allowed to have the power to broadly apply toxic poisons to the environment. Does that seem smart to anybody? No, it’s not smart. It’s a bad idea and all the scientists have been saying so for 50+ years.

I’m really rolling here. It didn’t take me long to hit my hot button topic of rage against people killing nature. I don’t ever write about that because I always get angry and write the same thing, and it’s not funny, and what’s the point?

I didn’t really tell you what I wanted to tell you about my Overwatch 2 saga. What I wanted to dissect with you, and explain to you in great detail, for no particular reason, is why exactly I stopped playing Overwatch 2, and what I had gotten out of it. I think that will be interesting for you, to detail this journey for you, and the lessons entailed. I stopped playing it for a different reason than I did Fortnite, which is that I seemed to have understood the game, and figured out how to play it, and with the character I loved, and that was everything I wanted. And once I did that, I didn’t care about playing anymore. This took me about three months of playing on and off, I would say, and many, many hours of playing. I don’t even want to know or say how many, but let’s say, many, many hours of playing. Still not as many as the hours I spent with the guitar, I will have you know, but too many hours for sure. And when I had very first started the game, I had been attracted to a character called Winston, who is a giant monkey scientist, and who has a very unique playstyle. He is classified as a tank, which is one of the three roles in the game – damage, tank, and support. In every match of Overwatch 2, there are 10 players, 5 v 5, just like basketball, and on each team of 5 there is a tank, two damage dealers, and two supports. The tank role is something like the point guard, I would say, in basketball. The game generally revolves around the tanks, and they set up their teammates, and fight for position. They are also something like the quarterback, because again, the game kind of revolves around them, and Overwatch 2 is an objective-based game, so kills do not really matter. The way to win the game is to achieve the objective, which is securing zones, or escorting a payload, as they say, advancing or securing territory until you have reached the endpoint or the total number of points. Well, anyways, the explanation is getting boring for me. The point is that Winston was unusual for a tank because he could make enormous jumps, and no other tank can do that. He has mobility that is unrivaled among the tanks. To compensate, he dies faster, and doesn’t deal as much damage as the other tanks. So, Winston is weird. Mobility is not inherently useful unless you know how to use it, because if you go to die faster, that’s not helpful. That’s actually worse. That is to say that if you are just faster at running into the enemy and dying, it’s not useful for you to be faster. In the wrong hands, Winston is just terrible, and unplayable, and in the beginning of Overwatch 2, that’s how Winston was for me. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I would jump everywhere, all the time, and my teammates hated me, and I would die, so many deaths, and fall off the map, because I didn’t know the maps, and get completely decimated by the enemy tank, and jump into 5 people on the enemy team and die in a second, or just jump away and leave my whole team behind and vulnerable and they would all die, and just generally, I had no idea what I was doing. I just liked that Winston was a monkey and he could jump, but I was new to the game, and had no idea otherwise, what the hell I was supposed to do. So, I gave up on Winston pretty fast, because eventually you get tired of getting your ass kicked all the time. I then took a long detour of playing almost every character, and had some fun on a robot monk called Zenyatta that was a support but could “one-shot” people (kill them in a second) from across the map, and who had great and wise euphamisms that actually were really great and wise, and a big shoutout to whoever worked on his voice lines and character development, and you could just put a healing orb on people and heal them, and then you just could focus all on your energy on one-shotting and kicking people, and I liked being Roadhog and being unkillable and grabbing people with his hook and then blasting them apart at close range, but every now and again I would come back to Winston, as my game knowledge progressed, and I would think about him, and I would play with a Winston, and I would think, “Man, I want to be good at Winston.” And I would try him out, and still mostly get my ass kicked, and not know at all what I was supposed to do. So, I would watch videos of people who were good at their characters, and they would talk about how to be good at the character, and then I would go and try and do the things that they talked about, but this really isn’t that helpful. They say mostly obvious stuff, and there are a few major tips, but especially with Winston, I never understood still what I was supposed to do, and I was still bad at Winston, even when I had started to understand the game and how it was supposed to work. Then, one fateful night, I had had enough of playing everybody else, and I had at this point figured out how to be good on many of the characters, but the one character I still really wanted to be good with was Winston, and so I searched yet again for advice on how to play Winston, and I found a YouTuber genius Winston called Bogur. That changed my Winston life forever. This man, 24-year old Bulgarian Overwatch 2 genius, particularly a Winston genius, had two videos that were 2 or 3 hour long playthroughs of him destroying everyone in ranked and getting to the highest rank possible with Winston. And in these videos, he did something different from every other video I had watched that told you how to play a character – he just played the character, and gave educational commentary on what he was doing, while he played. He realtime verbalized his thought process, his decision making, strategy, etc., in every game that he played, constantly, throughout the games. That was basically like having a chess master play games of chess and explain in every scenario what they thought was going to happen and why they were playing the way they were playing and what pieces they were going to move and why. And watching these videos, I learned such an incredible number of things, my Overwatch 2 knowledge skyrocketed, and my understand of Winston and what was possible had overnight quintupled. I spent two or three evenings watching these videos, taking it all in, truly studying Winston from this master, and absorbing his teachings. Some characters can kill you, stay away from them. Take the high ground, always take the high ground. Dive anyone who is separated. Never forget about the objective. Almost never die. Someone is always out of position. Dive the backline. Dive the backline. Dive the backline. Now go kill the tank. Don’t overcommit. He showed me when to jump, what things to think about, and all kinds of mechanical techniques, such as jumping straight up in the air simply to buy time, and using your bubble shield to prevent the enemy team from healing their tank. Who to pressure on the enemy team, when to be aggressive, when to dive, when to sit back, how to be extremely annoying, and especially, how to slowly acquire territory. In sum, this man’s Winston knowledge was everything I wanted to hear, and to see it in action, to actually see the results, that his thought and action was correct, because he was winning literally every game, against even the best of players, applying the same principles, was incredible to witness, and my brain’s mirror neurons were firing like fireworks on the fourth of July, and the enormous gaps in my Overwatch 2 gameplay knowledge were now being filled with tomes of strategic and tactical knowledge, and I was ready. The next time I got on to play, I had gotten home from an espresso party with my sister and her boyfriend, who showed me all the wonders of the espresso machine and how to pull the perfect espresso shot, and we tried four different blends and experimented with temperatures and timings, and I probably had had 15 espresso shots between the hours of 2 and 5 pm, and as I sat in my room that night, more caffienated than I had ever been in my life, alone in my room with nothing to do, I decided, I’m going in. Because I had of course been thinking that I was playing too much Overwatch 2, that I had been binging it and I shouldn’t really be playing it, but I still loved it, and I was extremely caffienated, and so I made the call, that tonight, I would become the monkey.

Prior to this now infamous night, I had a losing record with Winston, and in general, a losing record on Overwatch 2. You did not want me on your team, if you were trying to win and climb the ranked ladder. I was a liability. That was mostly because I would get bored of being good and then pick a character that I was horrible with and then get destroyed, but I also still, even when I was good, was not so good that I could alone reliably win a game. Well, guess what happened? On this infamous night, you wanted Adventurer on your team, there was no other tank in Silver that you would have rather have had on your team that night, because I won every single game that I played. Yes, that’s right, a man with a losing record, a Winston loser, was 0 to hero, from watching Bogur videos for 3 nights, and with 15 espresso shots, I logged on, and armed with my newfound Winston knowledge, seeing the game with clear eyes, and having a burning passion for victory with this nerdy scientist monkey, I was unstoppable, and was blowing all competition out of the water. It was a completely different game for me. Suddenly, I could understand everything. All of the mistakes that my enemies were making, I was on them at once. All tactical decisions, all strategy involved, I knew the optimal choice and the correct decision. Take the objective, or go for kills? Make a pick, or stay back? Pressure the tank, or dive the back line? Use my ultimate now? Jump on Ashe or Anna? Of course I made mistakes, but I knew what I did wrong. And now I knew how to play Winston. Completely bypass everybody, and go straight for the objective. Cause chaos by getting the high ground and sitting on top of them. Cut off the supports. I could see the vulnerabilities in the enemy positioning, the weakness in their composition, the soft spots in their armor, the players that needed to be dealt with, and I was relentless and confident, and I won every single game. Winston’s power had now been completely unlocked in my hands, and I was enjoying it to the absolute maximum. The true most glorious moment of the night, was this right here: There was one extremely close match, that had been a slog throughout, and I had fought absolutely tooth and nail to keep my team in this game. We had gotten rolled in the first round, and had battled hard to win the second, with my team rallying and turning around, and in the third match, we were pretty deadlocked. My team had taken the lead initially, and we had exchanged control of the objective with the enemy several times, and we had made it all the way to 99% completion – that is we had held the objective for 99% of the required time, but the enemy had taken it back before we could get it to 100% and win. They had come in and wiped us, and reclaimed it, and they were shaping up to be the ones to get it to 100% and win it all. I had been killed first in that last fight, and the rest of my team then died later, so that I had come back before them, and before I respawned, I thought to myself, in a special moment of clarity, “I am going to try as hard as I possibly can to win this game. I am going to do everything in my power to make the other team earn this win.” I respawned, and had to make it to the objective to put the game into overtime, and I made it there with a second left, and the next thing I had to do was to stall for as long as possible so that my team could respawn and join the battle. I just had to be the most incredible nuisance ever, and not die. I landed on the objective, which was in the center of a pyramid-esque Egyptian sand tomb, that had a small chamber space to the right, high ground surrounding the room, with an open, bottomless pit on one side of the lowered floor where the main objective space was, and then two halls with open sides running along the length of the room. It was a cramped and awkward space. Not ideal for Winston. I landed in the smack dab middle of the room, on the lower floor, contesting the objective, and stopping the enemy team from reaching 100%. As long as I was within bounds of the objective, or if I did step off, made it back within something like 3 seconds, they couldn’t win. As soon as I landed, I had completed my first task, by just making it there in time, and then I took stock of the situation, and it was this – D.Va was in front of me, the enemy tank, and behind her to the right, on the stairs leading up to the high ground were two healers, and directly to the right of me in the small chamber was a little dwarf man called Torbjörn, a damage dealer. He was the one who was separated, and out of position, being in the chamber, and with me between him and the rest of his team, and so I immediately went after him, pushing him back into the chamber, and separating him further from the team. The supports could not reach him there, unless they dropped down into the chamber from above, which they wouldn’t want to do because you don’t want to be stuck in there with a Winston, or with any tank, with no escape. I couldn’t push too far in, because I needed to stay on the objective, and Torbjörn also does a crazy amount of damage, and I had to be careful I didn’t take too much, because I needed to live – but I had a secret weapon, which was my ultimate. My ultimate would reset my health bar and double my total health and let me slap the hell out of people and send them flying, and would let me do my mega monkey jump every two seconds, instead of every 5, so I was just trying to live for as long as possible before I would use my ultimate, and try and get them to think that they could kill me. Torbjörn was pushed back into the chamber, I was using my bubble shield to soak up damage and as no support dropped down to help him, this dwarf man was going down, but I had to stay on the objective, and I wanted to keep D.Va from coming onto to me and being sandwiched between them both, so I danced, using the corner of the wall as cover, soaking up damage with my shield, lasering D.Va after forcing Torbjörn back, just buying time, waiting, then D.Va jumps onto me, my bubble is down, Torbjörn almost dead, I use my ultimate Primal Rage and slap him into the wall, finishing him off, now D.Va has already used her dash to come try and kill me and she’s stuck with me, down in the chamber, now I’m slapping her further into the chamber and cutting her off from the supports, still touching the objective, the supports trying to get to her and kill me, I see my opportunity now, the huge opportunity, to jump behind the Zenyatta (support) and slap him into the bottomless pit, now that he has moved up and closer into the room, so I commit and jump away from the D.Va, right behind Zenyatta and slap him off the stairs and into his doom, now the D.Va is back on me, I have to get back on the objective or we lose, I jump back in, now my health is getting lower, enemy Hanzo has showed up and is firing at me, I drop another bubble shield, just holding on for my team, holding on, and then I see the Pharah rockets flying overhead, slamming into the D.Va, my Junkrat comes sailing in to blow the Hanzo apart, and our Mercy starts healing me, the enemy D.Va goes down, demechs, tiny D.Va jumps out, I lazer her down, the only one left is their Illari, who makes a desperate last move onto the objective, and she’s immediately melted, and the overtime bar goes down, and the enemy team is routed, we flip the objective, and the game is won. Victory.

This was the highlight, the pinnacle of my night of Winston conquest. That was the peak moment because it was the hardest I had to try, and it pushed me to the utmost of my abilities, and we still managed to pull it off. My Winston was unbeatable that night. Bogur’s teachings had left an indelible impact on my Overwatch gaming, and that was the proof. And since then, like magic – I haven’t wanted to play Overwatch anymore. I guess that that was everything that I wanted to do. I didn’t realize it exactly, but I had achieved my peak as an Overwatch gamer, and I could be done. I wanted to learn how to be good, and how to be good on Winston, and that was obviously complete. Then, I didn’t need to be as good as Bogur. I didn’t need to play 1000 more games just so I could have a higher rank. The rank didn’t matter. It was the concept. My hunger for Winston dominance was satiated.

I haven’t felt like playing Overwatch since.

Car Wash

(December 2024)

Good morning to all inhabitants of the world.

I sit here and look out of the window and drink my morning coffee. It was hard to get around this morning, as it is most winter mornings for me. I’m not exactly springing up out of bed full of energy and joy. It is much more like waking up from a hibernation, repeatedly, every morning. Slow and unwilling. I usually actually do want to get up and go do things in the world, but it feels so difficult to do that, when it’s grey and dark, and you’re cold. The gap between where my energy level needs to be and where it is is massive. But not so hard to bridge that gap, I have learned, with various techniques such as drinking copious amounts of coffee immediately upon waking and taking cold showers and using Luminette light visor to blast 10,000 lux of light into my eyeballs. I always love saying, “ten-thousand lux of light” because it sounds like such an incredible number. 10,000 lux baby. That’s what these Luminettes are pumping out into my retinas. A mini-sun.

I am writing because I really have nothing else to do. This is easy enough for me to do because I don’t have to go anywhere, and it doesn’t cost me any money, and is generally a good way for me to spend my time, and it makes me feel connected to people. Even though I’m kind of just talking to myself. It’s fun. And there is some good stuff I want to write about, that all happened just yesterday, particularly one episode, that was serendipitious, and will probably make you feel warm and fuzzy in your heart, so here it is.

I’m at Starbucks doing my duty to capitalism and the world, and it is something like 5:30 pm, where I have now served hundreds of guests and made hundreds of drinks, and am getting pretty worn out, because it takes a toll on you. Three pretty girls walk in, at this time there aren’t many people in the store and we’re kind of chillin’, the main hordes behind us. They come up to the register, and the first girl smiles and I say hi, and she says, “Do you have the sugar plum cheese danish?” No, sorry, unfortunately we don’t have any more of those. She says, “How about the cheese danish?” I think we have those, let me check. We do. She gets two of those, pays. Actually knows how to work the payment card reader machine, which is always nice, because it seems that 80% of people actually run into some kind of trouble with the machine, that requires me to intervene, which when you think about how we’re serving hundreds of customers a day, gets pretty tiring, to constantly have to make the same comments over and over and over about the same defects of the machine, and the main problems are that the text on the machine is too small, and people can’t read it without their glasses, and sometimes they don’t have glasses, or they don’t realize that there is a tip prompt occuring, which they wouldn’t because the machine doesn’t make any noise, and I’m learning that most machines ask for the tip after you pay, which makes sense to me, but our machine asks for the tip first, and does not beep or anything to tell you that it is first prompting you, so I pretty much have to tell everyone, as they put their card down on the machine and wait patiently or say, “Am I doing it right?” or “It seems like nothing’s happening.” I have to tell them that there is a tip prompt on the screen, and then be ready for whatever their reaction is to that. There is a third issue which has nothing to do with me or our machine in particular as much as that it seems that most people, even young people struggle to understand how to use the machine properly, and how to use their cards, regarding the prompt answering and the tapping and the swiping. I don’t really understand that because they act like they’re never used one of these machines before, and the way that people try to tap their cards or tap and then insert after they’ve failed the tap, or whatever they’re trying to do, it’s not that hard, in my opinion. I know they’re all different but they all tell you what to do, if you just follow the steps that are being given to you by the machine. But that does require you to slow down and read, and every machine is kind of different, so you can’t just do the same thing with every machine. I agree that that is annoying. Our machine is one of the most inferior ones, I noticed and commented to codename Stacy Hamilton (our fearless leader and General Manager) within the few three days of me working on POS (point of sale) at the Starbucks. I saw how every customer struggled through it and how awkward it was to use and immediately thought, this machine sucks, and we need a better one. Then I took a trip to Waffle House, and saw that that was absolutely the truth, because the Waffle House payment device blew our pathetic Cummins Station payment device completely out of the water, by having a large, bright screen that you could easily rotate to the customer, that was a touch screen, that beeped whenever a new screen that required an input popped up, and that had large, clear font. That’s the payment device we need, and that’s not the one we have. The other issue with our device then is that it isn’t a touch screen, and I have to say that so many times a day, after giving the customer a chance to try and figure it out for themselves, when they go to tap on the screen several times and realize nothing’s happening, and then the quick people see that there are tiny buttons below for selecting an option, and other people don’t, and they start hitting buttons randomly, or just don’t do anything, and I have to say, “Just push one of those buttons there.” Or, “Sorry, it’s not a touch screen.” And then have to make jokes about how it’s an inferior machine or how it really should be a touch screen or something like that, and they say, “Oh, they’re all different!” Or they apologize for not realizing that or something. None of this is the customer’s fault, I think it’s all the machine and the process, and it’s annoying, and I think about how much easier it would be if we could just pay in cash, and I would just get their money and we didn’t have to go through this whole rigamarole with the cards and the machines. Handling cash is much more fun for me too, because I get to do the math, and I get to touch money, and who doesn’t like to touch money? The customer also has to do more work of getting their cash out, and I have to do less work of telling them everything about how to use our inferior machine and why their card isn’t working, etc. I love it when people pay with cash.

Now, I will say that when people pay with the Starbucks app, it is amazing and the best thing they could do, because it’s so easy. All they have to do is scan their barcode, and it gives me their name, so I can say, “Thanks, _____!” And they almost always have enough money on their account to pay, and I just push a single button and the payment is handled. That is as easy as it gets, like magic. That’s better than cash. But then when they pay with the app, they don’t tip, because there is no way to tip with the app, as many kindhearted and generous Starbucks customers have mentioned, and when I talk to Stacy Hamilton about it, she says, “All I know is they’re working on it.” It must be very low on their priority list. “Their” being Starbucks. It’s not causing a critical failure of their app, so I’m sure it is. But the customers have been indignant about it, and moreso than I ever have been, which is cute. I have had multiple customers who have expressed outrage at not being able to tip us through the app, who are much.. I am looking for a specific word here, something like righteousness. Indignant is the right word I think, that they are indignant over them not being able to tip us, and they are upset at the unfairness of us not being able to receive their tips, and they’re so spirited about it that they even rile me up, and get me saying, “Hey, yeah, that isn’t right! You’re right! We should be getting more money!!” And then they leave, and I tell Stacy Hamilton to tell codename Michael (this is a running joke, because Michael is our incredibly passionate and enthusiastic Starbucks corporate man who comes around and makes sure we’re doing the things we’re supposed to be doing, and tells us how to fix the syrup pumps, that are devised through arcane pump technology, and that nobody else has the mechanical genius to figure out how to fix, and gives us suggestions on what to do better), I tell Stacy Hamilton to tell Michael that the customers want to tip us through the app, and he needs to fix that, and the joke is that because Michael is the Starbucks guy he can solve all of our problems and fix everything for us, so whenever we have a problem, tell Michael, but he actually has not been able to fix any of our problems, and notoriously does not fix any of our problems, and maybe it is not even his responsibility to fix any of our problems, but just pass them on to someone else, and so nothing gets fixed, but it’s fun to tell Stacy to tell Michael to solve our problems. Except this last time that I told Stacy Hamilton to tell Michael about letting customers tip us in the app, she was not happy to hear this again, and she angrily repeated that Michael has no way to fix these problems, and has nothing to do with solving these kinds of problems, and he already knows anyway, and stop asking her to ask Michael for help, and that “they’re working on it”.

That was a long tangent about the payment machine that the first of these three pretty girls had successfully navigated, but as you can see I have some thoughts about this machine and our payment process, being the POS (point of sale) king at our Cummins Station Starbucks. So the first girl got her cheese danish, after not being able to get the sugar plum cheese danish that she had really wanted, but she didn’t seem too disappointed, and the next girl stepped up, smiled at me, I said hi, and she said, “Hi. Do you have birthday cake pops?” No, unfortunately we don’t have birthday cake pops. The last time I had looked was earlier in the day, and all we had then were cookies and cream cake pops, and they don’t sell that fast, so I was confident then when I told her, “Sorry, we only have cookies and cream cake pops..” And she was so disappointed, and I tried to think of what to say to console her, and I said, “But you know, they’re all kind of the same..!” But as I said that, I knew it was a lie, because they’re not all kind of the same, they’re all very different, the Birthday Cake Pop, and the Snowman Cake Pop, and Chocolate Cake Pop, and the Cookies and Cream Cake Pop. They are all totally different, and she immediately called my bluff and said, “They’re not all the same!!!!” And I said, “No, you’re right. They’re not.” And she said, “I’ll get the cookies and cream cake pop.” So the last girl steps up and smiles, and I say, “And what would you like that we don’t have?” Because as you see, that I had disappointed the last two girls, of course this gal also would like something that we don’t have, but she asked for a cheese danish, and we did have that, except now that was three cheese danishes, and now I wasn’t sure we would have enough, but we would cross that bridge when we came to it. So they had all placed their orders, three cheese danishes and a cookies and cream cake pop, and I moved over to the food station to get it going, and found that we had exactly three cheese danishes, perfect, but to my horror, there were NO cake pops AT ALL. NONE.

Now, I was about to have a crisis. This pretty girl who I had so disappointed with not being able to get her her birthday cake pop, and settling on the cookies and cream cake pop, at least it was something, it was still a cake pop, but to now have to go back and tell her, “Sorry, turns out we just don’t have ANY cake pops AT ALL.”, I couldn’t do that. It was going to break my heart. So, with this in my mind, praying for a way out, I go to the back, prepared to hunt and scavenge up any cake pop I can possibly find. Even if frozen, I could make it work by heating it, maybe, but ideally there would be some kind of cake pop already thawed, on our thawing rack, and it just hadn’t been taken up into the food station, and that’s exactly what I found. On the top rack of the thawing rack, I found the most glorious thing I had ever wanted to see on this day, and it was one carton of birthday cake pops. One carton, containing three pink birthday cake pops. And then I was overjoyed, because not only did I not have to go back and tell her that we didn’t have any cake pops, but she was going to get the cake pop that she really wanted, the cake pop of her dreams, and you know when someone really wants something, it sucks when they can’t get it. When those girls really want their Pink Drink and we don’t have any Strawberry Acai for them, (this was one terrible day), they are devasted when they can’t get it. There’s nothing else that will be as good, you will only have to settle for something less, when you really have a craving for something in particular. I get it. So the fact that I could get her what she really wanted, instead of totally disappointing her again, was enormous. And then as I went back to the warming station, heated up and bagged the three cheese danishes, I had the brilliant idea to make the surprise even better, and I threw an extra cake pop in the bag just for fun, because I was feeling so joyful (don’t tell Stacy Hamilton), and when I handed the food to them I said, “Three cheese danishes and a cookies and cream cake pop.” Not revealing that I had in fact just given this girl TWO birthday cake pops, and then I walked back over to the food station and pretended to be busy with the clean up, and not stare, but I wanted to catch her reaction, so I gave it a few seconds, and then glanced over and saw her in the middle of opening the bag, and seeing the birthday cake pops inside, and she had the biggest smile on her face, like it was Christmas morning and she had just got the best Calico Critters or My Little Pony or keys to a new BMW. You could have taken a picture of her face right then and used it on those facial emotional recognition games, and it would have been the 100% perfect picture to represent abounding joy, her smile was that perfect. And I think because of how her reaction was reminding me of someone opening the best Christmas present ever, I shouted out, “Merry Christmas!” And I was happy, and they were happy.

That’s what it’s all about, right there. That is the joy of being a barista and working at Cummins Station Starbucks. Those are the kinds of moments you live for. And that’s one reason why I like the job, and like working with people in general. I can handle a day of six hours of nonstop action and grinding, to get one moment of giving a pretty girl the cake pop that she really wanted and making her smile.

There was more action than just this serendipitous cake pop event however, as every day contains so many small dramas and thrills. In a single day at Cummins Station Starbucks, there are hundreds, if not thousands of noteworthy events, on most days. It’s why I haven’t even written about it yet, because there is more content coming in than I can possibly handle, no human, no mortal can write about everything that happens that deserves to be written. In the first three weeks or two months of me working there, I would write down these legendary events, quips, interactions, events in my notes on my flip phone, and I would have paragraphs, every day, so many lines, and eventually I just had to quit, because it was too much, and unending. I will give you an example, more, of what a day is like, because yesterday was yet another rousing and jam-packed day, as you have now already seen by the little cake pop story, which is the most charming, but there are many more stories I can tell you even within that single day.

Car Wash gave Queen two Jim Beam shooters. Car Wash is an older man, that we are not sure if he’s homeless, although he has that quality that makes him at least fall in with that crowd, of being lost/displaced, and a little strange, but he’s not dirty or smelly, so he must have somewhere that he’s going to get cleaned up, and he doesn’t seem like he’s suffering all that much. He has a pleasant disposition, even though he’s kooky, and wears a santa hat, and shuffles around the store, sitting right next to Stacy Hamilton’s battlestation and drinking his drinks and bumming cigarettes off of other quirky customers that he befriends. Two days ago, he had asked for two cups of ice, and had gotten two coffee refills, and also wanted cups filled with milk on the side, and had a can of something that he had brought, so that at one point I looked over and saw that he had six cups of various drinks on his small round table, all right to the table that Stacy Hamilton worked at, and he was sitting there drinking them, like he was at home in his living room, and I had to tell that to Stacy, because she doesn’t like this guy, or anybody who just hangs out in the store and tries to talk to her and the rest of the staff too much, and doesn’t spend enough money, and asks for cups of milk and ice and $0.50 refills of coffee. I learned yesterday that this man goes by the name of Car Wash, because Queen said, “Car Wash just gave me two shots of Jim Beam. He said he doesn’t drink.” And I was confused, because she said car wash, and I was like, how do you get shots of Jim Beam from a car wash, or what am I missing here, and she talks quietly anyways, so she had to explain that our new regular told her to call him Car Wash. So at the end of the day, we are supposed to close the store at 6:00 pm, but we had a troop of young basketball girls come in and order 10 crazy drinks, and the very first drink, I handed to the girl, and she said, “Umm, excuse me.” And I said, “Yes?” “This is supposed to be iced…..” And I took a moment to process that, because that meant I had to remake her whole crazy drink, and that was just the first one, and I laughed, and high-fived her and said, “That’s a good joke. You are joking, right?” She was not joking. And then I got to work remaking her drink. So we were not finished with them until 6:15, and while making all of their crazy drinks, and I did have to remake another because it was the wrong size, and while Queen and I were slammed trying to crank out all of these drinks and get them out of the store, they were all watching, and I heard one girl say, “I would hate to be a barista.” And I thought, In moments like these, yeah, it’s not the most fun job. We didn’t even get to start closing down the store until 15 minutes after we were supposed to be closed, and we had so much work to do, cleaning, prepping, throwing away, taking out trash bags, wiping, shutting down, counting the drawers and the money in the safe and the tips, etc. etc. etc., and I made a joke about needing a shot, and Queen said, “I’ve got the Jim Beam!” And so we shot back those Jim Beam shooters, and that did really take the edge off, and got us through the rest of that night. We were still hard at it when the building lights shut off at 7 pm, which I thought signaled the end of our closing, whether we had anything left to do or not, but Queen said, “We can’t leave it like this!” (We totally could have.) And so she turned her phone flashlight on, and kept scrubbing, and I worked in the near pitch dark, throwing away the food in the display and wiping it down. Car Wash’s Jim Beam shooters came in handy that night, and I thought, we may have just started a new tradition of night time closing shots.

Car Wash, three days ago, paid for his $0.50 (it’s actually $0.55, because, taxes) coffee refill with pennies. We were in the usual positioning when this happened, with Stacy over to my right, me at the register, so that she was there to witness Car Wash drop an enormous load of pennies down onto the counter. This is one major area where Stacy Hamilton and I diverge, because otherwise we actually agree on many things related to the job and the store. I personally am overjoyed and enthralled when customers do such things as pay for their refills with pennies, because it’s hilarious, and I am ready to have a great time whipping fruit flies to death with a wet rag, because it’s great fun, and Stacy does not have time for these kinds of annoyances and trifles, and does not find them as funny as I do. So, Car Wash paid for his refill with pennies, and that’s when I learned that Stacy hated him, and wished he would never come back to the store. He also gave Queen, I’m just remembering, a Puma Ferrari sweatshirt, yesterday, when he had given her the Jim Beams, because he said, “People just give me clothes sometimes.” This man is a real character, but he is a sweetheart. (Update from the future: The beast has been unleashed. Car Wash has shown his ugly side.) Stacy does not like characters like this, but I had to tell her, when learning that she was not a fan of him, after he paid for his refill with pennies, and he dropped that huge load of pennies down on the counter, and I did not bother to count them, when she had said that he drives her crazy, I had to argue that he was at least better than the hot water splenda man. The hot water Splenda man is another one of regular characters who comes in almost every day, and asks for a large hot water with four Splendas and cream, and then pulls up a chair and sits at the wheelchair accessible station (a table that is meant for someone in a wheelchair to use), and watches YouTube and does whatever else he does all day. The large hot water with four Splendas and cream is free, as he knows, and he probably brings tea bags and puts them in there, instead of paying $3 for tea from us, and so this guy who has now been in our store almost every day since we’ve opened, has yet to spend a single dollar at the store. It doesn’t really bother me, not as much as it bothers Stacy Hamilton, but a few days ago when we were really slammed, he came up to the register and said, “Two things, a large hot water with four Splendas and cream AND a large cup of ice.” And this time, I was a little irritated, because he had the audacity to also ask for a large cup of ice, and we were so busy that I really felt annoyed at having to also get him his free drinks and to make no money off of them. At least Car Wash is a paying customer. So yesterday, that is the day after Car Wash had horrified Stacy and paid for his coffee refill with pennies, when he had come in and made his first order of the day, I couldn’t help but ask him, “And are you going to pay with pennies this time?” Stacy was again over to my right, and I knew she would also be horrified at these words, and I was going to get in trouble for saying them, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to ask him about his pennies. He said, I’m sure to Stacy’s relief, “No, not today.” Or something like that, because he is hard for me to understand, and he then proceeded to tell me a lengthy story about getting small change from collecting recycleable trash from his neighbor’s trash can when he was a kid, and the entire time he was telling me this story, I could feel Stacy’s eyes burning into the side of my head, and after he had walked away, she said, “Why did you ask him that??” This is an example of why I may be helping to drive Stacy to an early retirement.

Humanism

(Early January 2025)

In the spirit of having written every day on this blog, as in having written some kind of post every day for three days in a row now, which in the history of this blog is totally unprecendented, I will keep it going, and write yet another post. The challenge this time is, what to write about?

I am not much in the mood for writing, to tell you the truth. I am in the mood for living. But my environment is not currently all that conducive to living. Or, not living, exactly, but living passionately and with gusto, and savoring life and tasting the joys of life, as I kind of want to do right now, in some way.

I picked up the guitar, but I’m not quite in the mood. I am beset on both sides now, literally on both walls of my room, by people who I will be bothering if I unleash the beast, as has now happened multiple times. It’s dark, and I feel confined, in this room, and in my spirit.

Something I have learned about rock and rocking – you can’t do it without making noise. You must make noise. And if you are going to do it right, you must unleash. You can use headphones, but it’s not the same. We all know that. It’s not the same, and you’re bound to the headphones. It’s like a silent rave. Not a fan of the silent rave, even though I like the idea. But it’s not about being quiet. It’s almost the principle of the thing. It’s about making some fuckin’ noise. It’s about unleashing the beast, freeing your spirit, that’s what the fuck rock is all about.

I went to Gibson Garage today. I work in the same building as the Gibson headquarters, and their main store, the Gibson Garage, that has all the fancy Gibson guitars. It is a guitar player’s dream to be working in the same building as this Gibson Garage, and in the last week I’ve been in there probably four times. Today, again, I played the Kirk Hammett 1979 Flying V. The Epiphone verson. That guitar is absolutely amazing. I want it now. That’s the first one I was interested in, and I also have been interested in the Epiphone Extura Prophecy Explorer, but I picked it up today, and I just wasn’t that into it. But that Flying V, I picked up afterwards, and was once again, extremely into it. So that must be the guitar for me.

There is one other guitar that I really want to try out, and that’s the Fender Mustang, whatever. Some kind of Fender Mustang, with the racing stripe. I want to see what that guitar is all about. I first saw one at the Nashville New and Used Music store. Caught my eye, that one did. But I haven’t played it yet.

These days, I’m all into rocking. Punk rock, metal, heavy metal, grunge, rock of all of those flavors. That means Metallica, Nirvana, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Superheaven, Disturbed. Not much Disturbed right now, because I’ve already listened to it all and am waiting to crack into playing Disturbed. I have my hands full learning Nirvana stuff, and now just recently, Metallica. A completely different ball game. We are riffing the fuck out now. I LOVE it. I’ve been playing Blackened. Genius song, and genius writing, and heavy as fuck. The riffs outstanding. The Ramones and Sex Pistols is fun to play, but the Metallica so far is something else, because I’m actually getting to work the neck and do some riffing, some interesting fret work, that I haven’t done yet in my guitar player career, which is still pretty short. But today, at the Garage, I have been hooking into a $2700 Mesa/Boogie amp (the Mesa/Boogie Rectifier Badlander), and I played around with the knobs and settings, and with the Flying V, and I landed on a sound that was so heavy and chunky that I can say 100% it was the best sound I have ever gotten out of an amp/guitar combo. That was the sound for me. I need that sound in my life. I must have it. I asked the guitar pro guy, who’s name I should really remember, how can I get something like this sound but not pay $2700 for this Mesa/Boogie, and he recommended the Marshall DSL to me. And I keep hearing the name Marshall pop up, so I might have just found my next amp.

I titled this post Humanism because I had to think of something to title it, and I looked up and directly across the room in front of me was a small framed Keith Haring artwork poster, with this word written across the bottom. I can tell you a little story about this, the story of how I came to own this poster and three Yayoi Kusama framed posters. Here is the story, not the most riveting tale but mayhaps thou’ wilst enjoy it nonetheless.

When doing my Christmas shopping with my dearest sister we attended a local thrift store that I must have passed by many times and never noticed, although it was much further down Gallatin than I originally thought, so actually I have not passed by it so many times, and it looks like it would be a CVS or Wallgreens, and that’s probably what it once was, but it is not a thrift store, and I went with her to this thrift store that was so close to my house on Gallatin, and it was amazing and full of treasures and gems, and I spied a Yayoi Kusama poster, framed, for $18, that was calling to me, sitting in a wicker chair, all alone, and I thought, that this is here for a reason, but did I need it? No. And was I shopping for myself? No. I was there for other people. I was there to shop for other people, for Christmas, so I resisted and did not buy it, and I have often thought, if you aren’t sure, just don’t buy it, and if you are still thinking about it later, maybe then you can go back and get it, and be sure about it. That way you avoid making impulsive purchases. Well, guess what? After Christmas, and during Christmas, I kept thinking about that Yayoi Kusama poster. That frame. I wanted it, and I could justify it, because I am a Yayoi Kusama fan, with nothing to show for it, and it fills a niche in my room that I don’t have, which is any kind of connection to visual arts and the art world, that I do love and am interested in, and currently, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you looked around my room, except that I have one large handmade couch throw hanging on my wall, that I bought at a local Indian restaurant called Surya when I lived in Ozu machi, and then I have a fluid painting that I made awhile ago. So, my room is sorely lacking in wall art and especially of the art world, in the visual arts way, and so I wanted this poster, and I could justify it, and I had a little Christmas money to spend. Well, when I got back home to East Nashville, I went back to the thrift store to see if they still had the frame, and they still had it, and they had two others, and then they had the Keith Haring up on the wall, and I thought, I must buy all of these. I need to have all of these. I absolutely must, and this is important. And they were all $18. So now, in my room, I have three of these framed Yayoi Kusama exhibition posters, and one Keith Haring, and this was money well spent, and I don’t feel guilty at all. The reason being that it truly is a reminder and a link to the visual art and art lover in me, and I appreciate these frames and am reminded of that world every time I look at them. When I look at these Yayoi Kusama frames, I think about going to her exhibit when I was in New York, and I think about her story, from what little I know about it, and it makes me happy. My room, if it were going to be a representation of me, is now more complete, having these artworks. And someday, if anyone were going to enter into this room, they might say, “Cool pictures!” or they might say, “You like Yayoi Kusama?” and I would say, yes, I went and saw a Yayoi Kusama exhibit in New York, I love Yayoi Kusama. Keith Haring I don’t know much about and have not been to a Keith Haring exhibit, but I have always liked his work. I couldn’t say that I really knew his name or connected him with his art until I bought this frame, though. The Yayoi Kusama also ties in with my Japanese self, and that’s important. I have a nice bottle of Kagoshima shochu on my bookshelf, that also is a reminder. The word iconography has been in my mind, recently. The iconography of my room, that brings certain things to my mind. It is powerful.

I have been hanging out in my room more than I would really like to, because it’s winter, and after staring enough at these blank walls, I started to have ideas about how to decorate them. I have been leaning records against the wall, on the back of my couch, and I can display five records that way, which is amazing. After the Superheaven concert, I bought a record, which contained two copies of a folding album artwork, and I also got a free poster with my purchase, so here were two large rock visuals that I could tape to the wall, and then after doing that, I had the real brilliant idea, to rip up the picture book that come with my deluxe Bleach album (Nirvana), and stick all those pictures to my wall. I wasn’t looking through that book anyways, it was just sitting there in the record case. So I tore it up and stuck it all over the walls. Now I have had rock iconography, and I think more about rock, which is great. But the Yayoi Kusama and Keith Haring are something else, they give me something else to think about, and represent something else I care about, and love. So I’m glad I got those.

Soup

I made a soup.

Smosh came in from doing his manly car work. Such a man. I said this many times, as he was doing his car work, talking to myself. I was making a soup.

I had the ingenius idea whilst I was laying in bed, starving away. Very hungry. But I was not going to go out, and my brain got to working, thinking, thinking. What can we eat? I had black beans, but I can’t eat black beans by themselves anymore. I just can’t do it. Too disgusting. As in, the canned black beans, that are kind of mushy and gross. No, I can’t do that anymore. I had no bread. I didn’t really want bread anyway, but I kind of did, because bread is always at least alright. So, I laid in bed, hungry, and tired, from my long shift, needing rest, and recuperation, and my brain got to workin’. I have recently been making a soup, and have made it three or four times now. My brain was now starting to have ideas of cooking, which is basically the first time in my life I have ever had real cooking ideas. I remembered that I had some baby carrots, that were like three weeks old but somehow still totally fresh and fine, and I had a lotttt of kale, that was not going to be used any time soon, so thought I, because it would only be used for cooking the soup, and when was I going to make a soup again? But then I thought, well I can throw the black beans in, and I have the tomato sauce, and I already opened and used a little bit of the veggie broth I have, so, that’s it. That’s a soup right there. It’s not the soup I’ve been making, but it’s basically the same thing. And I’m starving, and I’m going to make a whole pot of that, and it will be absolutely loaded with kale, and carrots, and garlic, and I’ll use the whole can of tomato paste, instead of half the can, because, F*** it. Let’s see what happens.

That’s what I did. I cooked it up. Hanging out in the kitchen, and cooking that good ass soup up. And I ate the whole thing, as I wanted to do, because I could tell that my body wanted every scrap of those nutrients, and I was physically capable of getting it all in, if I really wanted to. But Smosh was outside, doing his car work, using some UV liquid and a blacklight flashlight to try and find a leak in his AC system, and I sat at the window and watched him do this in the darkness, as I ate my soup, which was pretty outstanding, but needed pepper, and then when I added the pepper, as in more pepper, because I had already put some in there, it was perfect. The whole can of tomato paste made it very citrusy, so it had a great tang, and then the kale was still crunchy, which was very important because the black beans had further mushified, and were then totally soft, but still tasty, and not a lot of chewing required. The carrots still had some bite to them too, so it was a good blend of crunchy, chunk, and mush. Very delicious and hearty. And then with the pepper, that little bit of kick. That was necessary. Smosh was out doing his car stuff, and on my third and final bowl, I thought, I should share this with him, because 1. he would like it and 2. if I really eat this full entire last bowl, I will be suffering. So I stepped out and said, “Smosh? Smosh? Want some soup?” And he did. I set him aside some, and then he came in and grabbed the bowl, and sat down with me at the table. Now, here is where there was some interesting dialouge and banter, that I can perfectly capture because it literally just happened. I was already saying to myself, and have said to Smosh before that he is a manly man. He has tools, and a tool belt, and does car repairs, and today he went to Lowe’s and got more tools, and then was just working on the car. So he came in, and grabbed his bowl, and said, “Thanks honey bun.” And I said, “A bowl of soup for my hardworking husband!” Something like that. I think it was a little funnier, whatever I actually said, and I said it like a little old housewife might say it, in that kind of voice, and he laughed, and sat down with me. And then we were actually having a family dinner time, and I did think, I’m kind of being like my mom here, for the first time, actually cooking something and offering it to someone else, nurturing the family, you could say, with my delicious cooking, and I asked him about the car, and he told me about what he was doing, and then I said some interesting things, and he said, after I was finished saying my interesting things, “What?” Because he had immediately gone into his phone, and was now doing whatever he was doing on his phone. And I said, in my little housewife voice, “Oh, just like usual, phone at the dinner table! So much for dinner time bonding!” Something like that. He had no response, being on his phone. And then I added, “This is why I’m sleeping with other men.” He still didn’t answer. “You probably didn’t hear that either,” I said, and got up, being finished, and having no reason to keep sitting at the table, because he had still not responded, and our extremely short conversation was now over. I got up and walked over to the sink, rinsed out all the dishes, and put the dishes in the dishwasher, by which time Smosh had finished his soup, and handed me the dishes and said, “Put these away like a good housewife!” And I said, “Yes, of course!” But to myself, I was thinking, which, isn’t it how funny this is? This was all just acting. But to myself I was thinking, Smosh, you are actually on track for being cheated on by your wife. You are actually perfectly emulating the behavior of a man who drives his wife to feel unloved and uncared for, and seek the companionship and attention of another partner. And I almost thought to say this to him, but I didn’t.

If you think about it.. Smosh came into my room when I had gotten home from work, and I asked him how his day was and what he was up to, and he told me that he had gone out and gotten tools and done things around the house (good manly man, I told you), but he forgot one crucial thing, that I would have liked, probably, which is that he forgot to ask me how my day was. I didn’t need to particularly tell him, but I would have liked him to have asked me that. And isn’t this also, a common complaint of wives?

I feel like I have unlocked a new skill of cooking soup. I really first put it together, the fun in picking out a recipe, going to the store and securing all the ingredients, and then cooking it up, and eating it, when I was in New York. When I lived with the gay couple, Ben and Chris (shoutout to Ben and Chris if you happen to be reading this ever, I still think about you guys and you are awesome) they had a vegan cooking cookbook, and there were many simple and delicious recipes in there, and when I was really bored, in the winter as well, same as now, I picked out a few and did just this thing. And now, a full year later, I’ve done it again, recently, with this soup. I found the soup recipe on the side of the veggie broth box, Kale and Cannellini bean soup. And that was when I really, for the first time in my life, felt the fun in what I’ve just described, in cooking. What I’ve really noticed about it, that I felt then and have felt again recently with making these soups, is that it is a truly calming and relaxing activity. It’s actually something to do, that nourishes you, and relaxes you, and takes up a decent amount of time, and makes you feel good, and exercises creative powers, and if you’ve never done the recipe before, teaches you something new. AND you can share it with people, and make them happy. That is A LOT of power of good in an activity. So, I plan on cooking more. And, when I went home for Christmas, my mom, knowing that I am interested in baking bread, got me a cooking magazine special edition BREAD, with like over 100 breads and bread type things like muffins, that I am itching to crack into, but I am intimidated, because I’ve never done it. And I don’t know what I would use for the baking, the pans, and the measuring equipment, and the kneading, the rising, etc.. But I know already that it is only a matter of time. It’s in my mind now, there is a space in my brain that is now dedicated to finding a way to start baking bread.

With the soups I’ve already made, and being a vegetarian, and with how much I love soup and beans and vegetables, and bread, having a deep, passionate love of bread, it makes sense for me to be a bread and soup man. I feel like, if I just specialized in making soups and breads, that would be such an incredible skillset for me to have. They also actually completely go together, because what do you want to eat with your soup? Bread, of course. Oh my god. It’s genius.