Pushers

There is something effortless in transitioning back to a service mentality. It feels sometimes like I never really left it in the first place. My life has always centered around ensuring that people have enough: love, food, advice, data, beer, coffee. Six of one...

I think the most startling difference in where I've been and where I am is how unaccustomed I now am to people doubting me. For nearly five years now, I have been in the business of being in charge...these days, I'm a worker bee, a grunt, a rent-a-brain, a towel with legs.
The owner of the bakery and I were chatting tonight about how she needs to increase volume and can't figure out how to get people into the building. I said I thought the ambience didn't fit what people are looking for. She has the lights up, the music on 80's, 90's, and today, and there is no real swagger to the place. Then I realized I'd thrown my opinion out there and expected her to take it as law...so I back-pedaled a little and mumbled something about spending lots of time in coffee shops during college. She kind of non-committal nodded and then walked away. I put together some more pastry boxes and shut the hell up.

I wonder at my ego. It was beaten out of me during graduate school, but it was clearly reborn. Do we all eventually begin to define ourselves by what we do rather than who we are? When does this happen? Does it happen to everyone? I have been fighting the impulse to explain this job away to every customer who looks at me with even a hint of curiousity. "I am grateful for this job. It's honest. It's lucky. It's temporary." I say it inside like a mantra thousands of times a day. On the inside. I bite my tongue...because in a rare bout of sensitivity, I realized that several of the people working there do not have a mantra. They want to be there. They have enough. The bakery, baking, being a barista, its enough for them. And who the fuck am I to belittle their choices?

For my entire life, I have expected to do work that changes lives and changes the world. I have never, until now, doubted my ability to do these things. But I left an admission to the Physicians Assisting program at ECU to come to Texas. There is every chance that ECU was my shot and I won't get another. I'm certainly not getting younger. So there is a sense of panic bubbling under my surface. "This is how people get caught up and then turn around and they are 65 and a new career doesn't make sense any more. You're too old. Don't be ridiculous. It's too late. You already missed that boat. Accept your life as it is and stop wanting more. You have enough. There is never enough..." And on and on my mind rambles.
But it's enough for now to work hard, pay my bills, and pray that this is, in fact, temporary. Because like it or not, like the fabled Ms. Norbury from the cult classic Mean Girls, I am, in fact, a pusher; of myself, of others who is reaping the consequences of my world view by working three jobs and feeling a skosh hollow. And I don't know when or if I will ever be satisfied. But even if I never am, I will almost certainly never have my fill of trying.