Second Wind

I just realized it's been over a year now since I started this blog. Of late, I've really not been on the writing wagon. And the reason smacks of irony.

I wanted to write this blog to aim some positive light on a much-maligned profession. I wanted to focus on why I love my job, why I feel like I'm lucky to be doing the work that I do, how serving and bartending are not just worthy of a little respect by customers and non-waiters, but by servers themselves who often seem to not take their jobs seriously.

I wanted to write about the funny stuff that happens, the ways in which the table-waiting list of pros outweighs the list of cons, how I can't believe that more people don't embrace food service as a meaningful profession and career in our culture.

What I very much didn't want to do was to spew complaints and gripe about my work. I didn't want to rag on customers and highlight their foibles. I didn't want to sound like I was complaining all the time, which is what happens rampantly in waiter blogs. I didn't want to add to that mix.

But I'm looking back at my posts, and I can see how I'm being seduced by the dark side. More recent (however infrequent) posts are cranky ones. There's little that I say that isn't grousing.

And I swore I wouldn't go down that path. That path of using my blog as a way to be negative about the work I do. That path of crabbiness. The path of bad juju.

But I'm having trouble focusing on what I set out to focus on, maybe because after eighteen years of doing this work, I'm feeling a tad burned out. Perhaps a lot burned out. It seems that when I'm at work and an idea for a blog entry strikes me, it's almost always because of something that falls under the heading of "whining/bellyaching"-- precisely what I was trying to avoid.

So, finding myself conflicted, I just keep my mouth shut. Hence the long periods of no writing. In keeping with adage, I can't find anything nice to say so I'm not saying anything at all.

I've thought a lot about where to go from here. Give in to the dark side? Make things up? Scrap the blog? After a little introspection, this is what I've come up with: 1) try harder to find and reap the good stuff and 2) be really bitchy if I want to be.

Is that the obvious solution? Probably. But in keeping with my default black-and-white thinking, compromise doesn't come easily for me. I'm willing to give it a shot, though, and hoping that it won't be long before that second wind kicks in.