A couple of regulars, G&M, came in the other night and told me I should go on vacation with people and make cocktails for them. “We’ll all go to Hawaii and you can make us all mai tais.” Sounds sort of fun depending on how high maintenance the people are…Now that I think about it, it could be horrible and not a vacation at all. Maybe this is where I’ll end up, instead of being 65 years old behind the bar at Rustic. I’ll be the wind up toy you bring on vacation and when everything begins to get a little dull, you just call me into your hotel room. Hahahaha! There he is! Make us some drinks, boy! Now dance, boy, dance! Yes!

It would be cool to go to local markets in weird places and then go back to the airbnb to drum up some odd concoctions for people to get drunk and make babies. That would be fun as hell. Sort of like being a private chef but only for people on vacation. The more remote, the better.

The darkness is real. I keep getting anxiety when I think about where I’ll end up later in life. Am I destined to own a bar someday? It doesn’t sound horrible. I guess being the old guy behind your own bar is better than being the old guy behind someone else’s bar. Ugh. The ladies told me the other day I should name the bar “The Aging Bartender.” Huh? What a terrible name for a bar. Also, it needs to be catchy and that name is great for a blog but not an actual physical place. It’d be a good memoir title though.

I’ve been a writer all my life in some form or fashion and it has yet to pay off. Sometimes it’s all I ever think about. When I was a kid I thought I’d be a famous cartoonist or comic book artist. I really did. But when the opportunity for the next step presented itself, I decided not to take it and instead remained in kitchens for a long time. The writing went stagnant along with the drawing which I’m still pretty regrettable about, but it took on a different form later when I started writing short stories and a bunch of non fiction about working in kitchens. When I got to grad school in New York I thought I’d be a famous writer but never put any of the damn work in. A bad bout of depression hit somewhere in 2007 and continued until 2012 culminating in waking up in a hospital bed in a neck brace after a Patriots game in December. This was the moment I realized I needed help, so I went and found a trained professional and life started getting a lot better from that point on.

From 2014 or so until 2020 I thought I’d be a screenwriter. That’s part of the reason why I ended up out here. I’ve written…let’s see, a slew of short films, and four screenplays? But it wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that I really got off my ass and decided to write everyday and write what I wanted. From that point I wrote four novels in two years. It just all came out of me, I have no idea how. Maybe all those years of unproductively kept everything dormant until it all came gushing out.

At the end of all this came the cocktail book and now I’ve faltered a bit after receiving just a couple of brutal but not so bad rejection. Gotta have thicker skin. Life is weird. If you told me five years ago I would write a bartending book I would have laughed in your face. Shit, things were incredibly different in my life just a year ago. I was still writing at Bluey’s every morning.

I still wonder sometimes how I got here. I know I say this a lot…Maybe I’m dwelling…I tend to do that…I mean, first there was the delusions of grandeur that led me to LA in the first place, then the extreme desperation that ensued that led to me being totally loyal to Rustic Canyon for giving me a job when I was on the last rung of the ladder, then Aaron left, then the Dawg left, and the bar program was in my lap. I had no clue what the hell I was doing. I mean really. Throughout the years, I learned from doing as well as from the people, the bartenders who worked alongside me. Each one of them, over the course of the last five years, has given the bar and myself something to add to the program whether it be as simple as a garnish idea, how to make bitters, using milk punch in cocktails, how to make milk punch without a centrifuge, or just something as great as having an excellent palate or verve for the job.

I think every profession goes through this, some more than others. You do something for long enough, you wonder how much longer you will do it. Maybe it’s worse with bartending because it’s so physical. Shit man, I just want to be an under the radar sci-fi novelist and get paid to write really weird shit. I guess my aspirations in life aren’t too outrageous.

To bring it all back again…Yeah this post went awry fast…I gotta send out some queries again…This whole idea of going on vacation with people…I don’t know…Maybe once or twice a year if ever…Vacation isn’t fun if you’re working…