Monday, June 27, 2011

Unemployed: A Love/Hate Dynamic

Many of my friends now know that I have recently left my position as General Manager for a restaurant located in California's South Bay, and that I am now questing for a new job, preferably one that will allow me to stretch my managerial wings even further. I learned a lot over the year and a half that I dedicated to my last position, but the fact of the matter was that I had no more room to expand.

I was introduced as a barista and my work experience combined with my love of all things food-related and customer service propelled me into management. In a way, I could see the end far before I got there. To be a GM for a family-owned operation means that there is an end, but where there is an end lies another beginning, to be positively existential about the matter.

In the mean time, as I apply for jobs, pester hiring managers, and await responses, I have taken to relaxing and soaking up my free time. I spent the better part of a year stressing my body out and allowing important areas of my life to atrophy: relations with friends, my emotional health... Hell, I couldn't even call my mother on a decent schedule. I don't want to wither away out of frustration and greed and fear. Fear. I know it all stems from the ever-looming fear that only affluence equals happiness. Such an ideal is not true, I know, but it is a difficult battle to fight when so many seem to give into it.

All of this tension surrounding how to live and how to live better than your neighbor leaves a sense of unease about me. I cycle through feelings of disenchantment and ardor toward the world. A dilemma that will only no longer be a dilemma when I stop seeing it as such. It is getting easier though...