Crafting a Life

I've had a life that is full of untapped potential. I was given ingredients I had no way of understanding: pain, turmoil, anger, hate, depression, anxiety and I had no way of knowing how to take these and make something new. I spent a long portion of my life letting these ingredients eat at my core, erode my sense of self until I was lost. I felt hopeless, useless, and without value until I stepped behind the bar one day at work because there is magic in doing things and a particularly powerful type of healing in the magic of doing things for others.

After years of abuse, suffering from health issues, mental health issues, trauma, and all sorts of maladies of the soul I found myself in need of a job. Fortunately for me, I had a friend who manages a restaurant. She got me hired on as a host because it was simple, easy, and could be done with relatively little energy. I hopped at the chance thinking this would be a short stint and then I'd be back to welding, or construction, or warehouse work, or any of the things I was used to doing but little did I know that I would find a craft that enabled me to find self-worth and a way of giving to people from a humble job.

I had been working for a couple of months when I found another job that sucked the soul out of me and left me wanting more. I came back to the restaurant but all they needed was a bartender, which they assured me they could train me to do but I was pretty against it. I was raised thinking alcohol is bad and have a family prone to alcoholism, so I came in with my guard up. I learned how to pour beer from a tap, which isn't complicated or particularly captivating but it is something to do. Learned how to use our bar gun to make our flavored lemonades and do prep work for our cocktails. Then the damnedest thing happened when I was being taught to make our cocktails, I found myself interested, and that never happens.

After leaving work that night, I kind of just sat there stymied. Why was this interesting? Why did I care? Why was it all I could think about? Was there more to this? So I poured over reddit, and found a couple of videos on making cocktails. I slowly became more, and more, and more hooked and irritated the living hell out of my friends because I wouldn't stop talking about mixology and making drinks. I finally found something that allowed me to take my focus off of my past and my pain and be involved in the moment.

To most people making a cocktail is as simple as taking the ingredients and throwing them in a glass. To others, it's so complicated that if you give them the ingredients, the tools, and the instructions they would still struggle. And then there are those to whom it is a craft, a profession, and a way of telling a story and creating a shared experience that will take the simplest of cocktails and make it a night to remember solely because it is done with the love of creation. That is who I aspire to be because this craft has saved me from a world where I thought there was nothing I could do well.

For me, crafting cocktails and learning about drinks and how to mix them is magic. It is a life-renewing craft that elevates me from the doldrums to a euphoric sense of being. The best part is that I get to apply it to helping others and relating to them. There's something so rewarding about giving someone a perfectly crafted Old Fashioned and having them say "I haven't found anyone that could make this the way I like, but you did," or "these drinks took my mind off of my problems for a minute and just let me enjoy myself." It feels like coming full circle like in the process of healing myself I'm helping others to heal too and that's the magic of all of this.

I know there are things other people do that are more impactful in the long run, but in the moment what I do matters and can put someone in a different state of being allowing them to move on to the things with larger impact. Matthew Barnett said "if we are to be a bridge for other people to get a better life, we will be walked on," and I for one am fine with giving people a small step forward by healing myself and letting them experience something crafted in love.