Well, it looks like I’ve been slacking once again. No posts or blog updates for well over a month. What can I say, I guess I’m just lazy / busy. Lazibusy?
A lot has happened in the past two months.
I traveled to the GABF and once again my liver was damaged, and once again it took me weeks to feel right again. (We did win gold this year, so that’s something!)
My folks came and visited from Joliet and stayed with Nina and I, which was nice, and I miss them already.
Our beloved hound Pulaski got terribly ill, and for a while there, it was touch and go… Thankfully she seems to be healthy now.
We celebrated our one-year anniversary with a nice dinner and belated travel.
In addition to that, I have been traveling a lot.
In the past three weeks I have gone from cliffs overlooking the Pacific, to the back streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I had dinner one Sunday under the Golden Gate Bridge and the following Sunday at Bobby Flay’s restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.
No matter what anybody might tell you, business trips are not fun. Even my business which revolves around drinking beer and eating fancy food, still requires me to spend more time than I would like wandering around in the A terminal at the Denver International Airport trying to decide if I can stick-it-out until landing, or if I should break down and eat at Panda Express…Yuck.
I feel like I have spent the entire fall in flux.
Moving here and there and always looking to what’s next rather than what’s now.
This seems to be a theme for me.
In Joliet, I couldn’t help looking for what’s next. In Woodstock, I insisted in scanning the horizon for the new move. Later in Norfolk, despite buying a house and some gesturing toward permanence, I still continued to play the field and working for the newest opportunity.
That was then, but it is still true now.
Part of my need for movement came with the idea of being a journalist. The way it is done (I was led to believe, anyway,) is that you move from one paper to the next. Always moving to the next big rag, up, over, out, angling for the better title, the better pay, the more niche work, to the mythical Shangri-la of newspapers, or the New York Times…whichever comes first.
Now that the newspaper business is in shambles, that is no longer an option for the journeyman journalist. Folks are lucky to even have a job at all, much less one where they don’t feel exploited and put-upon. I speak with friends still working in the trenches complaining about some new half-baked, revenue-building scheme thrust upon them from management. In the past, I would have hitched myself up on my self-righteous high horse and said “screw-em”… Now, I tell them to keep their heads down and hope for the best.
According to my friends, I’m one of the lucky ones. Not many people have a life raft handed to them, just before the ship sinks.
I did.
So what now?
In journalism, I had a plan. Work a lot. Take pictures. Move to the biggest, brightest spot on the horizon. Win some awards, and after my knees get shot, move to an editing desk, maybe wind up as a Director of Photography at a mid-level metro, and live out my days in budget meetings and peace until it’s time to retire.
Now in the beer business I have no path in front of me. No gold on the horizon. No plan. I’m kind of working day to day, or more accurately, project to project. My future is hazy. I have virtually no training or experience in my day-to-day work, and if things go pear-shaped at the brewery, I’m in trouble.
That said, I’m learning a lot about the ins and outs of making beer professionally.
Does this mean I don’t still squint toward the horizon?
I do, believe me.
I had two job offers recently, both in journalism, and much to Nina’s chagrin, I briefly considered both of them. But do I really want to go back into a burning building?
I don’t know what to do in 3,4,5, years.
Go into business? Start my own shop? Find another newspaper and try to make a go? Move back in with my parents and invest in a lot of sweatpants?
We’ll see, I guess.
For now, Northern California and the beer business as a whole are treating me well. I’m trying to think about today and leave tomorrow alone. As it turns out, the horizon is always a little farther away than it seems.
I’ll go into business with you! Let’s sell little coats for dogs. We could open a hot dog stand and sell the little coats and call ’em “Hot Pups”. It would be totally fun. Whaddya say?