Well, you’re in your little room and you’re working on something good
But if it’s really good, you’re gonna need a bigger room
And when you’re in the bigger room, you might not know what to do
-The White Stripes
It’s big room apprehension season my friends.
Which is to say, it’s January, time for the search for universal truth and a tendency toward finding “better” whatever that might be.
Even if you’ve already found better, as the lyrics above and Biggie told us, “Mo money. Mo problems.”
Whatever the crop it is you seek here at the turn of the year, I bet anxiety is watering the seeds.
I know. Calendars are arbitrary. But they are the numerical methadone that drives rehabilitative reflection. As such, I’m drinking through the firehose of worry like so many of you.
Am I far enough?
Did I do enough?
Will I make it?
Will my loved ones make it?
How long can I do this?
Am I too old? Too young?
Do I/Will I have enough?
Does any of this matter?
Can I keep doing this?
One of my wisest friends answered all these questions in the most satisfactory and unsettling way this morning:
“You just do it. I think that’s the only answer. You go until you can’t anymore.”
But how can you?
This is an especially difficult time for the hospitality industry. The holiday expense account budgets are spent. The “let’s save this restaurant” well has been excavated beyond the water table. The weather in the Midwest right now is an ever-present COVID situation, forcing artists to cobble together “restaurant week” specials to survive.
December being an optimal time to pour out the wine cellar and shut it all down for the tax man and contract requirements, some people didn’t even make it this far.
If you didn’t make it with what you believed to be your best, how can you find better?
