Jobs # 14 (Avenues)

I graduated from UMKC for the first time in May 2017 with an MFA in Creative Writing and Media Arts. I had just fallen in love with an incredibly caring, gorgeous, and inspiring woman who would eventually become my wife and the mother to my children. I was beyond happy, but also still feeling unstable and unsure about the future.

When I thought about a career or a dream job, I honestly drew a blank. If I could have made money as a rock musician, I would have started a long time ago. Instead, music became a labor of love that I still pursue today. I wanted to start giving back in some way. I had several friends who had become nurses. I always wanted to help in the way that they did, but I just had a couple of writing degrees.

I thought a lot about what greater purpose I could genuinely contribute to in the world. Time and again, I returned to teaching. It seemed like something significant, especially at the time. I had so many good teachers over the years, and kept them in my thoughts constantly. I went full force into obtaining another Master’s degree in the fall of 2017. Not my most brilliant move, in hindsight. I probably could have stood a little more time outside of the classroom, to be honest. However, I’m genuinely happy that I decided to pursue a career in education.

I had convinced my girlfriend to move in with me in a barely livable house in Troostwood. Some of the best times we ever had as a couple were in this shack of a domicile with a crappy roof and a wrecked basement. We loved each other deeply, so we made it work.

I started serving at a fine dining establishment part-time while pursuing my next degree. It was called Avenues Bistro, located in Brookside, and catering to any and every blue-haired individual in the vicinity. I had to adjust to a lot of new rules, proper ways to serve guests, how to make wine recommendations, and snooty behavior that I did not normally condone. I did well, until I didn’t.

I lasted about nine months, once again. I had one terrible shift the night before my first-ever triathlon. The thought of swimming in open water was and is still terrifying to me, even though I had trained for a few months. I’m not sure what happened, but I screwed up everything a server could screw up. Wrong food to the wrong tables, mis-ordering food in a cold sweat, forgetting to bring people drinks entirely. I was really a mess. I got a write-up from a very perturbed manager who must have hated my guts. I quit a few weeks later. I did not do well in the triathlon, but at least I finished.

Although I was a fairly terrible fine dining server, I was so blissfully happy and busy outside of work that I didn’t even really care about leaving the job. I knew I would find something else, maybe something that didn’t take so much of my soul away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite to that point yet.