“Several Years Worth of Coffee Experience…”

“I bring several years worth of coffee experience…”

This is the line that stunned me. I sat on the couch, after a long day of talking to people about jobs, applying for jobs, working on resumes and cover letters, and then printing some off at the local library, going through that whole debacle…

I had checked, I had double checked, it was all good. Everying looked fine, everything was ready. Except, IT WASN’T.

My fresh cover letter for the local cafe laid out in front of me on the table, I was feeling satisfied, a hard’s work finished, and I picked it up, to look over my fine work one more time—and then I read the start of that second paragraph, and had a crisis.

It read that I had “several years worth of coffee experience”.

Well, that was a straight up lie.

I debated on what to do about this. If the hiring manager read my resume, they would know that that was a lie—or they would think that for some reason I had coffee experience that I did not list on my resume, which would be strange. I had in truth seven months of professional coffee experience. That’s not several years, not even close. I thought about how I could reframe it, (“Well, I’ve been drinking coffee enthusiastically since I was 20, haha!”) no, that wasn’t going to work.

But I really, really did not want to go back to the library.

It was horrible, at the library. All to print out several pieces of paper. I had to log-in to Google, which required two-step verification, which require logging in to wifi, and using my old smartphone that I almost forgot to bring, but I remembered this time, having walked all the way to the library just to be stymied once before. It took about five minutes before my crappy smartphone’s processor could run fast enough to handle a notification from Google, and before even trying this, I had attempted to print remotely from my laptop, and I went through that entire process only to not have it work for some mysterious, unknowable reason in the end. You see that I did not want to go back to library and relive all of that. It took an hour of work to print a few pieces of paper. And to fix one sentence? Please, no. Not like this.

Parker’s suggestion was whiteout. Use whiteout on the letter, he had it. Just write over it. I couldn’t accept that. Handing in a cover letter with whiteout on it?

Come on. It’s just not to my standards.

So, this morning I had the great idea. A handwritten note. That’s what I would do! Cover letter was a little over-the-top anyway, although I’m sure would still be well-received and would be better to turn one in than not. But a handwritten note, with a funny picture, which I had several of—that would be perfect. And I didn’t have to go back to the library. Yes!!!! So that’s what I did.

Now, you may be wondering, why did I write “several years of coffee experience” on my cover letter in the first place?

The reason why I had written “several years of experience” on that cover letter is because I didn’t actually write that cover letter.

I had written my own cover letter, heartfelt and authentic, and then I gave it to ChatGPT, who kept most of what I had written, but made it sound professional and polished. And, truthfully, it sounded much better, even though it said basically the same things. But look—I was lazy, and I didn’t catch the mistake. That’s how this happened.

I used ChatGPT to help me write a cover letter, not write a cover letter. I think there’s a big difference. I also did not end up even using that cover letter anyway. But I thought a lot about using ChatGPT to help me get a job. Is it wrong? But, if I had a friend who suggested to me that I frame things in this way, that way, and improved it, would I accept that? I would. There is one major difference between these two scenarios, however, which is that I would probably learn more from talking it through with my friend, than by just giving it to ChatGPT to mockup. I still learn from ChatGPT though, and this is where ChatGPT can be really useful. I see what I wrote, and I think it’s not bad, but then I see how ChatGPT writes a cover letter, with the same content, and I think—now this is better. And why? It can be a great learning tool.

But in the end I was so impressed by ChatGPT’s cover letter writing prowess that I completely missed the “several years” of coffee experience line. And that killed the whole thing.

I walked in this morning, ready to hand in my resume and handwritten note, folded up in an envelope with some stickers attached, and would you believe it, but I see the manager walking over to the front of the store, passing me in line. It was my perfect chance, to make a direct connection, to hand him my letter in person, and remind him of my face. I couldn’t believe my luck, and I stopped him as he passed, and said that I was interested in working for them, he said great, do you have a resume, I handed it over, boom, shook hands, incredible. Couldn’t have been more natural, or gone more smoothly.

Now, that’s a good sign, is it not? That has to be a good sign.

I am fully immersed in the real world now, as it is required of me. I need a job, I need money. I must engage with the world to get what I need. But I have enjoyed reengaging with the world in general.

I feel like I’ve come out of a deep slumber. (Context: Have been doing a lot of fiction writing.) And waking up, I find that somehow I’m now friends with everybody at the gym, and have made a personal connection with almost all of the baristas at the coffee shop. I’m having more serendipitous interactions with the other customers and other climbers than ever before. But, nothing has really changed except me—they’ve all been here. It’s just that I’m tapped in and engaging, in the real world again. My energy is directed outwards.

My candle has not been cutting it for reading at night. It’s too much of a pain. I could do it for Harry Potter, and that’s a testament to how good the Harry Potter series is. I would say after a month has passed, that reading the Harry Potter series has expanded my literary consciousness. It was something different, something fresh more me, not as simplistic as some children’s literature, nor as whimsical, it was more advanced, something massive and epic in scope but not overly intellectual or literary, emotional and funny, but with depth and darkness as well. It could be all of those things, like The Lord of the Rings, but more accessible.

Anyway, I bring up the candle for this reason…

The last few nights, I haven’t been reading at all. For even the last week. All I do, when the sun goes down, is lay in my bed and think. That’s it.

I have lit the candle a few times to do some things, tidy up the room, attempt to read once more before giving up because it is such a struggle, and then I end up laying down in the bed again. And when I lay in that bed, for hours, in the darkness, it’s just me and my thoughts.

Last night, I was thinking about all of the people that have been in my life recently. All of these people, that are out here in the world, that are part of my world, that are here on this Earth with me. Lots of names, lots of faces. All of us here together, doing our thing, living our lives. And I ended up coming back to a core idea, which is really hippy-dippy, but I kept thinking—I should continue to expand my heart and mind. I kept landing back on that central idea.

I should keep my heart and mind open. I should keep connecting to people, reaching out to people, accepting people. Having pity for people, helping people, having mercy and empathy for them, and caring about them, and supporting them.

It’s hard to explain concisely some deep, lengthy thoughts and complex feelings, but there is a real lesson here that I am consistently reminded of, and am reflecting on once again, these days, which is this: I wish that my brain did not make so many assumptions and judgments about people. My brain, my intuitive and subconscious brain, likes to make assumptions about people. It likes to attempt to infer things based on how they look, how they sound, context, labels and titles. What they are wearing, who they are with, what their job is, X Y Z. Could be good, could be neutral, could be bad, and that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that my brain does this in the first place.

I guess it’s natural that we do it, but I wish it wasn’t so, because I have to tell you—my brain is so often wrong.

Most of these impressions, coming from stereotypes, assumptions, guesses and profiling, almost all of it goes out the window as soon as I start to talk to someone. I don’t like that I have all of this baggage before I even do start to talk to someone. I wish I could take every interaction with every person as a neutral, blank slate, and then learn about them through interacting with them. I wish I could always form my impressions and opinions of them after I start to see who they really are—because my perceptions are so often wrong.

I realized to what extent my perceptions were flawed on a flight to LA. I was on the end of the row, the aisle to my right, and a couple sat to my left. The guy was next to me, and the girl at the window. And I have to confess that I felt that we were unlikely to be friends. They didn’t strike me as such, and especially, I think the guy’s hat did it for me. It had some slogan that I thought was a dumb, and there you go. Whatever it was exactly that did it, my brain made some assumptions.

Well, you can see where this is going… We ended up talking, and then we became best friends. We talked for the rest of the flight, the girl was an actor, the guy had been studying web development, as I had been, we talked about music and coding, life in LA, TV shows, etc., many things. We had so much in common, and we had a great conversation, much bonding. And the guy’s hat?

It was the name of his brother’s band. He was wearing it in support of his brother.

I was so affected by this event, and felt so stupid for my brain having some negative assessment of these people who turned out to be so great, that I wrote something down on a piece of paper and carried it on my wallet, to remind me of this. And I actually still have it, I just checked—this is what I wrote, all those years ago now:

“I’ve noticed on these flights and conversations how judgmental I tend to be from the start, and how every person I talked to was completely different from whatever expectations I projected onto them. This is something you need to be aware of. Every stranger I’ve talked to has brought me a lot of joy, and I’m sure to them as well. So let’s keep that going.”

There you go. It’s still true, and it still happens and I have to catch myself and say, “You don’t know. Until you talk to them, until you get to know them, you have no idea what they’re really about.”

I am corrected and reminded of this lesson all the time.

For example, even at Ugly Mugs—I thought one guy might be the manager. He’s always working, he’s older, and he was on the website, modeling with the merch. Well, when I talked to another Ugly Mugs employee and asked if he was the manager, they laughed, and said no, it was another guy, that I would not have expected at all—and when the other employee came over (this is the girl I befriended who also works at the climbing gym, I should just give them code names), he was laughing and told her, “He thought Caleb was the manager,” and she cracked up.

Apparently it was funny to think about Caleb as the manager. And I thought, you know, that’s it. My brain thought I might have had it figured out, that I could somehow tell, who was doing what, and it turns out I was so wrong that Izzy is laughing about it. I didn’t have a read on anything at all. And I thought, imagine that someone asked, when I was at Starbucks, “Is Jason the manager?” (Jason being the annoying barista who is always complaining and praising Elon Musk and generally driving me insane.) Wouldn’t that be hilarious? I would say the exact same thing to my co-worker, Jessica. “Jessica, this guy thought Jason was the manager. Hahaha!!!” And we would crack up, because we would know Jason, and know how absurd it was to think that Jason could ever possibly be the manager.

Quack Hits

I meant to say, Quick Hits.

“But what could it do, if any danger came?” Alice asked.

“It could bark,” said the Rose.

From Through The Looking-Glass, 1871, Lewis Carroll

Quick hits:

We write for joy. We write for fun. That’s why we write, ultimately. It is for joy.

Sometimes to convey information. Sometimes to persuade. But the best writing is that which comes from an act of love. It is play. That’s the best. So says Stephen King.

I have sat down to do this and found that I don’t really want to do this. So it goes.

“So it goes.”

– Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut.

I went on a run today. A wild run. I ended up in the middle of the woods running on deer trails. I stopped one centimeter before running through an enormous spider web, complete with large, scary black spider in the middle, at face height. It was like meeting a tripwire. I stopped just in time. I felt out around the edge, not wanting to just destroy the poor beast’s hard work and livelihood, but having to pass through this way, being in dense woodland forest, and I felt around the edges of the web, the invisible space, to see if there was some way I could pass without entangling myself in threads. I did find a large patch of open space, and I contorted myself through it, hoping very much to not bring the spider down upon me. I then resumed my running.

I could not believe that I had absolutely no ticks on me after this wild run. Through long grass, for a mile or more, I had mud, some scratches, various other debris, but surely, thought I, there must be a tick or twenty on my body. And there were NONE. Moving too fast? Too much sweat? No ticks in that grass? I couldn’t believe it.

It’s good to run hard through the woods. Makes you feel alive. I ran through about twenty deer, ten different pairs of two or three deer, on that run.

Tragedy struck this morning. Or, it struck last night. I discovered the tragedy this morning. My sunflowers had been ravaged. They had been doing so great, too. Well, they were ravaged. Not even a trace of three of them, only craters left in the ground from where they had been savagely ripped from the earth. The second largest, uprooted and mangled, left a carcass on the soil. If sunflowers had blood, there would have been blood everywhere. The largest, my prize bonnet, or whatever people said in the old days, my prize pig, bit clean off from three inches up. Three measly leaves and a smidgen of stem left. Well, at least they gave me that. Can it rise from the ashes?

Mysteriously, the two that have made it out of my second planting were left untouched. Perhaps they are being saved for later? Allowed to fatten before the slaughter?

Who was the culprit? We will never know. I suspect a rogue deer that haunts our neighborhood.

I’ve seen her.

I have had a growing history of reading people things from books, offering personal heartfelt readings, generally when in the comfort of my abode. I have read or attempted to read many a story to my living mates. Two nights ago, at a party, before heading out into the night, we sat around in the living room, eight of us young modern American people, and my roommate Smosh said something that I will never forget. I remembered it just now, I was reflecting on the significance of this event just moments before I started to write this piece, because it was truly extraordinary, and has put him in my good graces forever. He said, in the midst of the revelry, the group now gathered around the couch and table, all conversing, he said to me: “You should read us some poetry.”

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it first. Smosh, you wonderful man. I ran the three steps from the living room into my bedroom and grabbed my book of Poems of Fun and Fancy. And I read the poems.

Some of them.

I first chose to go out on a limb and try a new one. That was as an experiment. But it was not a great success. Everyone (my sister) just wanted to hear A Letter To Evelyn Baring.

Smosh then said, “I thought you would read us a Japanese poem.”

I went and got my Japanese poems.

I read the first poem I came across, which happened to be from The Exile Of Godaigo, about an exiled emperor of Japan in the late 1200’s.

tsui ni kaku

shizumihatsubeki

mukui araba

ue naki mi to wa

nani umarekemu

If it is my fate

To terminate thus my days,

In the depths of ruin,

Why was I ever born

Sovereign supreme of men?

After only one week, possibly ten days of avoiding all artificial light bar fire in the evenings, my circadian rhythm has completely reset. I have woken up at the crack of dawn on nearly all of these days. And now, the sun goes down, and I am sleepy. I am still often having surges of energy and late night mental wanderings, but I resist the urge to indulge them. I think it takes some time to fully adjust. This morning I woke up at 5:30 am, and for the first time, I felt like I was waking up regularly, as in, I did not feel that I wanted to go back to bed.

Parker came into my room last night to show me something on his phone. He had been working on some art for his Spotify. I allowed him to show me, he said, in an attempt to persuade me to evaluate his art, “I’ll show you on the lowest light settings.” Well, to my fully adjusted nighttime eyes, that “lowest” setting was still blinding, and when he flashed that screen in my face, I immediately recoiled, and I felt my eyes rapidly contract in my head. It was like I had just looked into the sun. I felt like I had just been doused with cold water.

I talked to a girl at the barcade, the night of the party. It was towards the end of the night. I had gone over to the machine to play Q-Bert. I got the second highest score, that night. Someday I will claim the first.

There was a girl standing alone at Burgertime. She was pretty. I had the urge to talk to her. I walked over to the machine next to her, and said, “Are you winning?” She said, “Oh, I’m just waiting for my friends, they abandoned me.” I said, “Oh.” (Or something like that.) She said, “I don’t even know what this is,” gesturing to the game in front of her. I looked at the title, saw that it was Burgertime. I said, “It’s Burgertime!”

She said something about how her friends were always going outside to talk to the bouncer or something. I said, “What do you think they’re talking about?”

She thought for a moment.

“Drugs.”

I laughed. She said, something about how they’re always talking about a “plug”, and she put emphasis on that word, somewhat mockingly, lighthearted mocking. I think she rolled her eyes.

She then asked me, “Are you winning? Tonight?”

I said, “Eh. I’m not losing.”

She was really looking at me now.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

I could tell she meant where I was really from.

“Elkhart Indiana… Northern Indiana.”

I don’t remember if she had any real response to that or just acknowledged it.

(Actually, I remember. She asked what brought me to Nashville.)

“How about you?”

She was from Nashville. She said, “right down the street” and she made a gesture suggesting that she really was talking about right down the street.

I said, “You can tell I’m not from Nashville?”

She said, “Mhm.”

“How could you tell?”

“Your stature.”

That was not what I expected to hear. I didn’t really know what that even meant.

“My stature?”

“Yep. And the way you talk.”

I ain’t no southern boy. That’s for sure.

Somehow, then, for whatever reason she told me that she had broken up with her ex that night. I don’t remember why she was telling me that. It was pretty matter-of-fact. She didn’t seem too devastated about it. But I remember that she phrased it as, “My ex and I broke up tonight.”

I said, “You’re already calling him your ex?”

She nodded.

I thought that was interesting. Can you say, “My ex and I broke up?” Not really, right. Because you can’t break up with your ex. You’re not dating them anymore.

I didn’t go into that right then. I said, for some reason, I guess I just had the feeling, “Have you broken up before?”

She nodded.

This was about at the end of the conversation. I’m wondering why I didn’t offer any words of solace or comfort. She might have asked me right after that what brought me to Nashville, but that doesn’t seem like it would have been the follow-up question. I think that came earlier in the conversation. There wasn’t much more said though, before she said, “I’m so sorry, but I really have to go now, my friends are waiting for me. It was nice talking with you, though.”

And she touched my arm.

I said, “Go on!”

Not in a way that suggested I wanted her to go. But it was time for her to go.

Maybe I was supposed to say, “It was nice talking with you too.” I don’t think it mattered too much what I said, then.

I now had permission to go ham on Q-Bert.

I had an epic run. In the very first game, I lost two lives like they were… pieces of candy… that you don’t… want, on Halloween. (I want to come up with an original and unique simile here. I don’t have it.)

I lost my first two lives like they were tadpoles… in a pond. Because frogs have so many babies…. they’re disposable… do you know what I mean?

Oh my god.

I lost those first two lives, and then I was on the ropes. I had one life left. And somehow, on that one life, I ended up going so far. It was all I needed. I was rolling hot on that one life.

I was in the perfect place, mentally, for crushing Q-Bert. I was the right level of invested. I didn’t care too much. I wasn’t too drunk. I was just a little buzzed, a little desirous of doing my best. The alcohol was unlocking some Q-Bert skill in me.

Then, my sister came over. She started talking to me. Something happened. I got riled up, I got distracted. And I made my one, final life Q-Bert jump off the cliff.

What a tragic ending!

I watched as my Q-Bert fell into the abyss. There went my final life. And for the night, that was my attempt at the top score. I did no better than that.