Part 1:

Everyone hates their life in a restaurant. No one is happy to work. Life is short and dull and boring.

At least that’s what I thought.

It’s an interesting idea: can you be happy in a restaurant. I felt for years that I could not. I failed at my original goals. Restaurants were easy: easy to work at quickly, easy to have a job just good enough to survive.

I did not hold on to my money. I drank my weight in beer and gorged myself on burgers and fries. I blamed the world for my position, and bitterly regreted my decisions. I didn’t even know that I hated my decisions, I was so embittered with myself and my life I buried my feelings, and became numb.

Life doesn’t have to be that way.

I paid attention once. Just one moment where I woke up. Why, I don’t know.

It was by accident. I looked into the workings of my mind. I found cobwebs soaked in whiskey, and demons and spiders. I found what was not to be shown to the world. I found regret and loss and shame.

And I kept looking.

I wrote some of the things I found down, into computers and journals. I thought about what it meant to be a man (very little, probably) and I kept looking. The spiders seemed less scary. Still present. Just less somehow.

I endeavored to feel my emotions. Which was largely a bad move, at least at the time. Because I did not repress only joy and happiness. Bitterness and rage and shame and fear. All forms of self-delisional hatred and dissmissive lack of concern for self came surging out. The skies turned bitter. The whiskey had started to drip from the brain.

You see, in retrospect, I was drinking to hide from the demons. In a fascinating story, unique to me (because I can only see my own experience) but repeated nightly the world over, I was drinking to numb the pain of my existence. Pain I didn’t know I had. But the drinking was slowing me down, and wearing me down. And adding to my pain. I was on an autolytic self-starting journey to distruction. One that wasn’t even interesting. What is interesting about someone sitting in a dive bar drinking PBR and Jameson, night after night, losing youth and vitality, and waking up regretful and poor?

To the 21 year old: excitement and novelty. To the 25 year old…less. And to the 30 year old, nothing.

I kept walking the path.

My name is Andrew Roy. I have been trying to answer a very big question for me: Can you work in a restaurant and still have an insanely meaningful and happy life? Can you find fulfillment and joy being in the service industry?

It’s a deeply personal question for me. I currently work in a restaurant.

This is part one, I’ll continue on later. Happy hunting!