On being good at what you do.

I just closed out my second week at my new job, and I was told by a manager, the husband of one of my coworkers, and two separate regulars over the course of my shift that I had a reputation already.  One for constantly being on the ball, for holding steady when we're in the weeds, for having a knack for knowing what the team needs before we run out.

All of which is really nice to hear, considering this is the first cafe job I've ever worked, and I tend to remember the giant pot of coffee I put on with the spigot in constant-pour mode, or how I can never seem to grind a pounder without losing an ounce to spillage.  Seriously, I can't get the damn thing off the spout without sending grounds friggin' everywhere.

And I know I shouldn't be all that proud, either.  The place is so well-organized and labeled that keeping up with par stock and rotating materials is out and out mindless.  Everything else is Service Industry 101 - a smile and a warm greeting, fast hands, sharp short-term memory.  Work clean, don't stand still.  All crap I picked up in my first two months of bartending a decade ago.

Still, it feels good.  Particularly because I spent the last two years immersed in a job I was terrible at.  I bought into a restaurant concept, and almost immediately, my two partners just disappeared into the woodwork, leaving my dumb-ass, minority-shareholder-by-a-wide-margin self to run the locations.  And when I say I was woefully ill-equipped to do so, I'm not exaggerating.  I had zero experience with accounting, no concept of the cornucopia of federal and state taxes I needed to pay.  I'm a soft touch with underlings, which leads to a happy, lazy, exploitative staff.

But I forged ahead, failure after failure, determined to steer this ship into clear waters.  I hammered out food costs, shopped for vendors, reworked recipes and processes over and over again.  Printed paychecks and hand-delivered them.  Ran materials back and forth between shops.  Good Lord, I was miserable.  My blood pressure and cholesterol spiked, I picked up smoking again.  I passively-aggressively antagonized my (now ex-)wife, I stopped responding to my friends calling me out to hang.  And I couldn't even take joy in what I was doing on a daily basis, because I fucking sucked at it.

Which brings me, after five paragraphs of masturbation and tears (it's like Tuesday!), to my point.  It's important to do something that you're good at, something you really enjoy doing.  Running this company, I buried myself in video games.  Now, I actually like getting up and getting in there to wreck shit up.  Maybe for you, it's acting.  Maybe for you, it's welding things to your neighbor's car while they sleep.  Maybe for you, it's banging dudes with neckbeards.  Whatever it is that gives your ego a shot in the arm, make sure you make it happen on a regular basis.  Because it's so easy to get trampled out there, so easy to forget there's a reason to keep your head up.  Whatever it is that gets you to make eye contact with yourself in the mirror and smile that cocky half-smile, get your ass out there and do it.