Embracing my lack of “discipline”…

When I was in seminary, I took a class that required us to take a Myers-Briggs test to help us learn about ourselves. The whole idea was to cultivate a more self-aware student as they embarked on their ministerial career (though I had no intention of being a pastor). My result was not entirely surprising: INTP. And when our professor showed a couple memes that placed characters from certain movies into each category, it revealed that I’m either Yoda or Gandalf.

At the time it was mostly affirming. I’ve often been deemed a loner and early in school this didn’t bode well for a social life. But seeing that I was in the category of two powerful and wise characters from their respective universes, I felt a lot better about being an introvert.

But there was a blurb below the actual results that didn’t care for the memes. It explained in greater detail what my tendencies, both positive and negative, would mostly likely be. I genuinely forget the positive ones because once I saw a particular negative trait, I felt pretty jarred: It said that people with my combination of letters (INTP) tend to lack discipline.

Despite graduating seminary and then completing an MFA program, that line still haunts me. “Lacks discipline.” If conquering my Imposter Syndrome hadn’t already been difficult enough, these two little words have often been the fuel against my best efforts to feel like I belonged, and that I was capable. And not just for writing, either; every job I’ve worked since has always had this cloud hanging over it with the message of, “You’ll never be good at this; you don’t have what it takes to anything good because you can’t be disciplined about it.”

No amount of accomplishments or promotions has helped, either. Like I said, I received two Master’s diplomas with this cloud hanging over me and it seems to have only grown since. Early last year, I was awarded Partner of the Quarter at my Starbucks store; I still went home feeling like I totally fucked up at work. Later in the year, I was promoted to a supervisor and told that I was “over-qualified” for the job (and they meant it positively!). But sure enough, when training began and then when I was scheduled to run the floor for the first time, I felt like my fraudulent self was about to be discovered.

Sure, I lasted about nine months in the role and I only quit when my hours were cut below a livable paycheck. But ever since, my brain has interpreted almost that entire experience as one where I dropped the ball as a leader. And every time that feeling washes over me, all I can think is that I “lack discipline.”

It’s been a battle in the last few months to get any creative project off the ground. I have outlines for days for what should be my first podcast episode or my first Substack newsletter or my first Ko-Fi chapter. But not a single one of them has launched yet. Instead, I open up each document every now and again, edit this thing, add that thing, then save and close it. Minutes, hours, or days later, I do it all over again with a completely different document for a completely different project. And this has been the pattern for the last few months.

A thought occurred to me. What if this definition of “discipline” isn’t even good? What if it’s framed in a production-driven understanding of how we live our day to day? That is, what if the range of what “discipline” even means is limited to a 21^st century capitalistic understanding? That anyone not producing for oneself or, more importantly, one’s employer must be considered to “lack discipline”?

Even if that weren’t the case (because I have no doubt it’s partially this), there’s still the fact that at no point in any of my academic days have I ever done anything creative out of a strict, regimented commitment to a word count and a deadline. Though due dates have often spurred me into action, getting the work done has always come from following my creative intuition. Being disciplined didn’t lead me to write more than half my graduate essays literally the night before they were due. And when it came time to write either of my theses, I always turned in my work beyond the deadline – even if only by a day or so.

My point here is that when it comes to developing a creative practice, I have long been taught that forcing oneself into a regimented practice is the best way to get results. But it’s clear to me now that the results aren’t the goal; being creative is. And that can happen in a variety of ways – maybe it’s a day where I read or listen to a book, or maybe I binge-watch a few episodes of a show I enjoy, or even tackle all the chores I’ve put off for a minute. Monotonous tasks have often bred more creativity for me than any daily word count goal ever has. I wasn’t staring at my computer when I imagined the pivotal scene for my MFA’s creative thesis; I was washing dishes (the very thing my main character was doing).

Arguably, the compulsion to be “disciplined” in a sense of steadily producing something that can be exploited or consumed is a key part of being neuro-normative – or at least being read that way. But there is no way I’m not neuro-divergent, at least in some small way. And that means that I should not follow along with whatever commonly accepted neuro-normative practice a professor or employer or even a parental figure wants me to do. In fact, I would venture to say that this sense of “discipline” – the kind that says productivity is the end-all, be-all of human existence – isn’t healthy for anyone.

In other words, yeah, I actually am an imposter. I’ve been masking as a book-smart, straight-A student my entire life. My super power is being able to hyper-fixate on a project long enough not just to where it was done to the standards of the assignment, but done so well professors thought I’d been working on it for months. And all of this without completely and irreparably burning myself out. I am not now, nor have I ever been a neuro-typical. Instead, I’ve known the script well enough to give teachers and professors what they wanted to see or hear, and go right back to my own creative practices in my own time.

There will come a day when my Substack, Ko-Fi, and two podcasts are all off and running – and hopefully soon. But none of it will ever happen if I keep carrying this neuro-normative baggage about being “disciplined.” I don’t want to be good at something that dulls my intuition; I just want the safety to follow it wherever it may lead. Maybe you do, too?

Posting in Peace (sort of)

On Monday I finally did what I thought I’d never do: I deleted Twitter off all my devices.

In the past, there were several points where I felt I was too stressed out by the constant barrage of depressing news updates – Trump becoming president, oil pipelines being approved (and the water protectors jailed), another cop killed another Black person, etc. – and I deleted it off my phone for a little bit as a way to reset. But I’d always come back.

As I’ve talked about before, Twitter had been my primary social media platform for more than a decade. I met tons of like-minded writers, readers, exvangelicals, etc., and in several cases formed pretty good friendships. I’ve lost track of the number of people I met through Twitter that then became my IRL (in real life) friends. Simply put, Twitter has been a constant in my life. Given all the shitty things I’ve had to endure in the last several years – lost friendships, lost jobs, lost passions, etc. – it was nice having somewhere where I could vent and commisserate and most of the time feel heard.

But the fuck wad in charge has made too many changes for me to treat it like it’s my primary spot anymore. At least not on my phone. I’m still tweeting, but just from my desktop. Why do it this way and not just delete my account outright? Like I said above, too much work has gone into these relationships, however distant they may actually be IRL. But more than that, I’m just tired of doomscrolling. Using the platform only through a desktop browser has already helped in mitigating the negativity.

So far, there isn’t really a viable replacement, not yet. I like Threads’ simplicity, but I think there are too many folks who came over from Instagram and are utterly spooked by the Twitter folks. Bluesky seems to have more folks who wanted Twitter 2.0, and sure enough it has a very similar layout (apart from the lack of support for videos and no DMs). My hangups with each, though, are that Threads seems to have all the popularity without really knowing what it is yet and Bluesky has a lot of the main components of Twitter, but nobody’s really there. Right now it’s mostly folks posting in both places (myself included) because we’re still figuring out if it actually is a Twitter replacement.

But the key difference between either of these platforms and Twitter? The profound lack of the animosity. I’ve seen some spats, sure, but nothing to the extent that has made Twitter feel overrun. Between the spam bots and reply-guys, there’s very little chance to tweet about something good and it be utterly ruined by the end of the day (or even by the end of the hour). When I post to Threads/Bluesky (weirdly I still call it “tweeting”), I don’t have to protect myself from the mud-flingers by using so many asterisks (a technique that helps dodge unwanted replies from folks who search specific words and phrases). I can post in peace now. I can talk about things I enjoy and have others chime in who also enjoy those things (or are at least inspired by my joy in those things). It’s weird, but it’s great.

Deleting Twitter from my phone has left me feeling disoriented because it was such a main part of my daily habits. And I don’t yet know if any other platform will become what Twitter was for me, but maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe there isn’t a replacement because having a social media platform take up that much of your day was never healthy for anyone anyway? Maybe now I can read and write more, and then more intentionally engage with another platform?

As always, we’ll see what happens over time. But I’d like to hear from someone else; what are you planning on doing in the absence of Twitter or was it ever anything viable for you? What’s your experience been like in the wake of all this chaos?

Twitter, Threads, and Finding an Online Home…

Last night (and for a little bit this morning), the dopamine was flowing. I, along with millions of others, had just joined Threads, Meta’s new social media app that is converting quite a few Twitter users. It… almost has me.

Being an Instagram app, all I had to do was log-in with the same credentials, copy and paste my Twitter bio, and follow everyone that I already follow on Instagram (and invite those who don’t yet have Threads). So the setup was super easy… probably a little too easy. In no time at all, I was receiving notification after notification with every new follower (again, easily imported from Instagram), and it seemed like every 10 or 15 seconds, my TL would refresh with dozens of “threads” from people I don’t follow (including people I have specifically blocked on Twitter; as of right now, it doesn’t look like there’s an option to only view posts from people you follow; the TL is always going to include a bunch of strangers based off of Threads’ algorithms).

I soon found myself bouncing back and forth between Threads and Twitter – reading peoples’ threads, then seeing other peoples’ commentary on the app.

Obviously, I got overwhelmed (eventually) and snoozed my notifications on my phone. Since I was still wide awake, though, I watched a couple episodes of The Bear, then read for a while before finally calling it a night. And yes, I did dip back into the app a couple times after snoozing the notifications just to see what kind of conversations were happening.

But today this experience has made me wonder what the point of all of this even is? Do I really need another social media app that will ultimately prove to refine the targeted ads even though I’ve asked every app “not to track” my data? Is there really so much happening in this new place that I can’t find somewhere else? I’ve already been feeling quite fatigued with social media in general, so is this really going to help?

I can’t remember the name of it now, but there was a Medium post I read a few weeks back that talked about how the constant need to be engaged on every platform is actually a myth for being a successful creator. It was something along the lines of “less is more”; find something you’re good at and one or two platforms you enjoy, and stick with those. While I’m not really aiming every single social media platform toward being a successful content creator, I do long for the days when I didn’t have it. When I could spend hours reading or writing instead of binging another TV show or endlessly scrolling through some app.

And yes, this is largely a bed of my own making. I signed up for these damned apps and repeatedly make the choice to engage with them. But honestly there’s now so much of our everyday lives that almost depend on these apps – news, local weather warnings, keeping up with loved ones who happen to live halfway across the country, etc. So there’s a part of this that I can’t really completely bow out of it.

But this constant shuffling of apps and hustling over to The Chosen One to replace Twitter is exhausting. I just want to post things I enjoy and interact with people I like – the rest is just noise. Of course, these things don’t drive ad revenue, so these companies are always going to be jockeying for user engagement by adding weird things and/or cutting our favorite things. They aren’t really about socializing however you want; they’re about socializing in particular ways that wind up making them more money.

I’m sure that I’ll change my mind in a few months when Bluesky(Net) goes active or when the Melon Husk makes another move that renders Twitter (more of) a shell of what it once was. But for now, I’m trying to rein in my online involvement – getting back into blogging, reading more (for fun), and focus on quality over quantity when it comes to friendships.

I am curious, though, if you’ve been an avid Twitter user in the past, do you have a favorite lined up to replace it? Or are you going down with the ship, for better or for worse?

A belated Father’s Day reflection… sort of…

As I’ve mentioned several times before, leaving Starbucks was not fun. The company made it a simpler decision by continually cutting my hours while demanding greater performance, but leaving that specific group of coworkers was tough. In the final week, especially the last couple of days, I struggled to keep it together, to not cry over every little moment – the last time I’d see my favorite regulars, the last time I’d make drinks, or the last time I’d take orders for the drive-thru (I often described this role as a sort of radio-DJ type of experience because customers only interact with your voice – it was one of my favorite spots to work). Focusing on each of those fianl moments would have made leaving impossible.

What I realized, though, was that this is a common problem for me whenever it’s clear that a career change is in order (or at least a job change; honestly it’s starting to look like changing jobs is my career). Something about the job becomes unsustainable, but there’s always something else that tries to compel me to stay. For a long time, I had assumed that this compulsion was something I inherited from my Grandpa (who raised me). He always urged caution when I was considering a change that would effect my finances – going off to college, dropping from two jobs down to one, going off to seminary. Were he still here, it would have been impossible to convince him that going from one job to no job was the right move.

I mean, I hear his voice whenever I’m considering buying the name-brand item instead of the store-brand item, so it’d be a safe assumption that my hesitancy to depart this time around was a result of his influence.

But I think it’s only partially true in this case.

When I was an evangelical, I was led to believe that having an absent father was the absolute worst thing that could have happened to me. It was drilled into me that becasue I didn’t have a dad, I would struggle to maintain healthy (read “Godly”) relationships – especially my relationship with God. More than a few pastors often leveraged my fatherlessness to convince me I needed God. This became my core identity as an evangelical; I was fatherless before, but now I was a son of God.

All of this to say that I believed the biggest challenge I faced was the “abandonment issues”; the type of heightened insecurity I’d experience when people “left” my life. As the narrative was often told to me, I’d be more upset everytime someone moved away or I’d be completely closed off and callous to people leaving. It would only ever be some variation of one of these two options – all because my father was never around.

What none of these pastors (of course, all men) ever realized or ever allowed me to realize was that I did actually have a father, we just called him “Grandpa” (always with a capital ‘G,’ by the way). So every talking point about fatherlessness that they had thrown at me was meaningless because it didn’t apply to me.
In order to abandon someone, not only do you have to show up in the first place, but you have to show up often enough to garner a person’s trust. If you only show up once or twice, you’re just an acquaintance. But if you show up consistently enough, reliably enough, and then depart? That is abandoning someone. That’s how you betray their trust.

And that’s how I felt about leaving the coworkers I had at Starbucks; I felt like I had betrayed people I cared about deeply. People who had relied on me or looked up to me in some way. I left when they needed me.

Again, this is the manifestation of insecurities that developed over the last 35 years – insecurities that originated by a specific ideology manipulating my life experience to internalize the narrative that I’m broken, and in need of yet another absent Father to come fix me. My departure from Starbucks mimicked in many ways my exodus out of evangelicalism – I was repeatedly lied to about how valuable I was, the leveraging of my past experiences for the monetary profits of someone else, and never being allowed to express myself as I wish to. In both worlds, I was expected to conform to someone else’s version of me.

Leaving, then, wasn’t just a result of excessive burnout. It was, in miniature form, an act of liberation.

Being away from Starbucks has actually been relieving in critical ways, even if the financial anxiety has often been overwhelming. I finally have energy to write, read, and draw. I have a clearer sense of what I value most out of life and I honestly find no better way to honor those friendships I made at Starbucks.

I’ve been working on many things in this past month and while they’re each taking longer than I had originally hoped, I am actually quite excited about them. One thing in particular is a podcast I’m calling “Existentially Speaking,” and it’ll be a space to deconstruct my time as an evangelical – both rejecting the horrible things and redefining the wonderful things. More on that later.

For now, though, I’m just focused on breathing deeply and loving well.

Thanks for reading.

The adjustment sucks…

Depression has been hitting hard lately.

When I put in my notice, I felt a slight bit of relief – relief that the physical pain I was in would subside, the stress I was feeling from being over socialized would drop, and that I’d have more time and energy to be creative. I still wasn’t happy about leaving a group of coworkers that I quickly grew to love, but I was relieved that some things wouldn’t be so intense.

Leading up to, right in the middle of, and for a little while after my last week, I often cried about having to leave Starbucks. In the wake of it all, I realized there are many reasons why leaving was the wiser route – the details of which I’ll save for another time. But one of the things that I did not account for was the overall impact of losing my main community.

I’m still friends with most of my former coworkers, and still in the group chats where all the hangouts get planned. But these were people I saw nearly every day for more than a year. To go from that level of being socially engaged with them to nothing… it’s been rough. And this has definitely had an impact on my motivation to be creative because most mornings, all I want to do is roll through and check in on everyone.

I still could, sure. But when you’re still looking for a source of income, being a coffeeshop writer can get expensive quickly. Plus, the loud music that gets played at a lot of Starbucks locations was tolerable when I was working there, but I think I’d hate if I were to pop in to read or write. I just don’t focus well with most kinds of music; usually instramental stuff is better for me.

It just sucks being in a spot where they aren’t around anymore is all. I loved making folks laugh and being there for my coworkers – friends, really – when a customer was being shitty and made them cry (happens quite a bit in food service, but especially at Starbucks). I loved remembering our regulars’ orders by heart, often making them feel even more welcomed at our store. There were a lot of good vibes that were associated with the job.

It just sucks that Starbucks doesn’t seem to give a shit.

Leaving a job has definitely been a more common occurrence than I thought it would be when I was younger and (more) naïve. And this one has hit harder than most other places I’ve left – mostly because I know that I’m never going back. But it has solidified a few things for me. For one, money is important only because capitalism keeps making things more expensive for those of us on the bottom rung. But it’s not everything, and certainly not worth the shit that some jobs will definitely put you through. Your wellbeing is far more important, even if it means taking a pay cut (though, as I’m also finding out, it does get pretty turbulant).

Second, I hate when corporations leverage the familial terminology when talking about a work environment (“it’s like we’re a family here”), but some jobs definitely have an energy about them that will last longer than the job itself. In a week, I’m returning to a job I’ve had before primarily because the vibes have always been good, even if it is a pay cut from what I left behind. It may not be a long-term option, but it might help me get back on my feet in a way.

Lastly, regardless of where you find your community, there’ll always be ways to keep them close, even if everyone finds new jobs. The folks I had the privilege of working with for the last year and some change are people I want to keep around as long as they want to be around. We don’t always see eye to eye on every little thing, but the energy has always been nurturing and positive. This group gave me what I was always searching for from church: a sense of belonging. I had found my people.

Honestly, I could write another 1,000 words comparing the church community I used to have and this group of coworkers, but maybe some other time. For now, I’m just looking forward to the next karaoke night (even though I am quite horrible at singing), and finding ways to be a part of each others’ lives as we all take different paths. I miss them dearly, but that’s all the more reason to keep in touch and often.

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant.

The Right Fit? Or a Good Fit?

Job hunting fucking sucks.

Not only do I have to suddenly pretend that I care about corporate interests, but I have to adopt a certain voice that carries the intimation that I am sincere about caring about those corporate interests. Like when Starbucks customers sometimes asked me what it’s like working there, I’d be expected to talk about the great benefits, better pay, and positive work environment. In those moments, I had to forget how often it was I consoled a barista who was crying in the back, or how we were expected to churn out the same sales numbers when a couple people called out (arguably because they didn’t want to cry in the back at work… again).

Truthfully, no matter how much I’ve enjoyed a job, I have never cared more about the company’s sales or public image than about mine and my coworkers’ wellbeing. I just haven’t. And I never will.

But not having a steady means of income is messing with my mind. Not only do I have to deal with judgement from others for leaving a job I grew to hate with no backup plan, but I have to juggle expenses. Tonight I had a PB&J for the third night in a row because I have three bills going out this week that will take pretty much everything I have left. And the shitty thing I’m trying not to focus on is that even if I had stayed at Starbucks, I’d likely still be in this situation because they cut my hours. So not only would I still be eating PB&Js, but I’d be way more exhausted than I am now.

So why the hell did I tell a friend who offered me a job that it wouldn’t work out? It had full time hours and even offered OT pay. “You can work whatever you want,” he told me. All I had to do was take a quick drug test (job involves operating a lot of heavy machinery), and show up on time. And it’s a job I’ve worked before, so there would be virtually no training involved. All things considered, for what I need right now, it would be a good fit.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the right fit.

I left Starbucks not just because I was tired of the entitled customers or wearing myself out for some millionaire CEO. I left because it was no longer a viable option for what I want to be doing in life. Do I wish I had something else lined up? Sure, but I actually had something lined up after I left my last job, as I did the job before that and the job before that.

All my adult life, albeit somewhat waylayed by a few college degrees, I have left one job to the next thinking I’d finally be able to do the things I want to do – I’d be able to write the stories I wanted to, or spend my weekends reading. And each time I wound up disappointed (again), that regardless of how hard I worked, we still weren’t making enough. Or I had underestimated the level of exhaustion I’d feel after coming home.

Each job offered new promises and instead delivered the same struggles. And when, in late 2017, a former manager told me that what I was experiencing was the result of “being stuck taking low-paying jobs,” I started to believe her, despite the insulting undertone. I really was stuck.

Truthfully I’m still stuck. I don’t know the formula for landing that salaried desk job that covers all my main expenses and allows me some time off to go watch some hockey games once in a while or pursue my dreams of being a published author on the side. I thought it was having a college degree, then I was told I needed more experience… or another degree. Then I got that degree and was told I needed more experience… or another degree. So it turns out I wasn’t just stuck taking low-paying jobs, I was stuck believing that what worked for others would work for me.

One positive side to unemployment is being able to catch up on the stacks of magazines I’ve collected over the last couple of years. Today I was reading through last July/August’s issue of WIRED and there’s an article on Taika Waititi, the eccentric writer/director/actor who’s churned out some incredible stories over the past few years. As the article’s author, Jennifer Kahn, highlights, Taika didn’t attend any film school, and that most of his projects are conducted intuitively. He aims for something new, something different, so when he’s working for an EP who wants something formulaic and safe, “he will agree to everything [they say] and then simply do what he wants. As he put it, ‘It’s literally me trying to not do whatever the grown-ups say,’” (50).

I’m not saying I’m aiming to be successful like Taika – that would take some serious luck and I feel like I’ve used up a lot already. But I am saying that maybe it’s time I stop listening to what the proverbial grown-ups tell me to do and simply pursue what I want to do. Start choosing the right fit over a good fit.

I guess I’m writing all of this to say you’ll probably see me doing a lot of self-promos over the next few weeks and months. Either that or I’ll cave and take another good fit and you won’t see me for a few months.

C’est la vie or whatever.

What’s next?

A friend asked me today if I felt nervous about not having a new job lined up. I said that I was, but that it wasn’t enough to keep me in my current job. As I mentioned last time, my current job has become unsustainable even from a pragmatic standpoint; I’m putting more effort into it than what I’m being compensated for. Fluctuating hours, intentional understaffing from Starbucks, endless orders through the mobile app and drive-thru – it is simply not a healthy place for me right now, and arguably not for anyone. And after talking with several store managers, it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to return to the way it was before.

But the thought of having another job lined up is not comforting. Right now, with where I am mentally and emotionally, another job would only perpetuate the same angst I currently have. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” as they say. Trading one capitalist mess for another doesn’t seem like a viable solution. I’m not leaving because the job I have doesn’t pay well enough; it helped us stabilize our rent situation and keep up with our bills. I’m leaving primarily because it’s causing me more harm than I’m willing to tolerate. And I have growing fear that finding another job of a similar caliber would only yield a similar situation.

Since dropping off my notice on Tuesday, I have actually felt a lot lighter mentally and emotionally. Even though last work week was particularly hellish – several call-outs, a huge technology problem that made the job way more stressful, a high volume of customers, etc. – I woke up Wednesday morning with a ton of energy. And unlike any week prior, I was feeling significantly less pain. It was like a pinched nerve suddenly being relaxed; I felt a little care-free. All I wanted to do in this feeling was create, so I sat down and outlined several categories of projects I want to try my hand at.

I’ve been applying to jobs that I think would be a better fit for what I want to do from home, though I don’t know if any of them will work out. But I also think I owe it to myself to push my own creative limits and see what I can produce. I have some time – not much, but some. Maybe get the ball rolling with a Substack, then a podcast, and then maybe start storyboarding my next comic series, and who knows? Maybe between the different platforms, I could carve out something that pays the bills?

I guess I’m just tired of trying the same damn schtick and expecting a different result.

Anyhow, I’m gonna go read.

To be a partner no more…

“To be honest, it’s a bad time to be a partner right now.”

Sitting on a case of tri-fold paper towels, holding my strawberry lemonade refresher with light ice and a couple pumps of raspberry, I nodded in agreement. It had been a rough week for me – running the floor 3 out of 5 shifts between 2 stores and having to deal with multiple call-outs each of those days. Customers had been patient for the most part, so that was a relief. But I still needed to talk to someone about the stress and frustration of it all and this store manager happened to be there.

Yesterday I made the difficult, but necessary decision to put in my two-week notice. Difficult not only because of the financial toll this will likely take, but mostly because I love my coworkers. It has become cliché and is often dangerous for corporations to leverage familial language with regard to coworkers and the work environment, but this store did actually feel like a type of family for me. There were many stressful days that we all survived together, but there were many other days that were fun. It was a place where I felt like I could come out of my introvert shell a bit and be the weirdo that I really am.

But like all giant corporations, Starbucks started to make our lives difficult. Throughout my short tenure as both a barista and shift supervisor (not quite a year and a half in total), upper management had told us that we had to earn our labor through high sales, low drive times, and high Customer Connection scores. Essentially, Starbucks uses an algorithm to determine each store’s labor budget and despite our sales consistently being among the highest for our district and also for our region, we kept seeing fewer and fewer hours.

And then in January, our district manager announced Starbucks’ plans to reduce each store’s shift supervisors back to pre-pandemic levels (since the pandemic is, you know, totally over or whatever). But, weirdly, no one was being laid off; we were just going to divvy up the horrendously-reduced labor budget between us. Before this announcement, we each were able to work 35 hours or more each week. It was the primary reason why I applied to be a supervisor in the first place. With the new ratio, though, none of us would see more than 30 hours a week, and in most cases would hardly see 20. The labor budget for supervisors went from about 280 hours a week down to below 130. They wanted our store to have only 5 supervisors and at the time of the announcement, there were 8 of us.

All approved by our working-for-the-company-for-less-than-a-year district manager.

With drastically reduced hours, we had to be borrowed out to other stores. At first they told us that we could pick up any shift, but less than a week later, they said we were technically only supposed to pick up keyholder shifts – the kind of shifts that were now coveted by every supervisor because of their extreme rarity. Essentially, Starbucks made it like a lottery pick as to whether or not we would be able to cover our basic needs.

For a short while, things were going alright. I was split almost equally between two stores and still grinding out about 35-38 hours a week. But then they started to micro-manage when baristas were scheduled to where we operating with 1-2 fewer people during our busiest times – all of this with the justification that sales were down (not really) and we had to be “fiscally responsible” (as if paying the CEO over $20 million a year fit that description). When peak would hit, our store would flood with walk-in customers, mobiles, and tons of people through our drive-thru. Even when I was borrowed out to café stores, the lines would be out the door and mobiles never seemed to stop. Despite all of us constantly being overwhelmed, we were also no longer allowed to funnel the traffic in any way; we couldn’t close our café or drive-thru if we were severely understaffed, and we definitely could not shut off mobiles. We couldn’t even shut off deliveries even though no employee at Starbucks gets tipped from those.

But of course, Starbucks has the reputation that they care about their employees partners.

As you might guess, this is not conducive to a viable creative practice, which was a key goal of mine when I started at the coffee company. I wanted to work the early mornings and write in the afternoons. And for a short while, I was able to do that. I’d open the store with a couple others at 4:30 in the morning, then come home to either read or write for a couple more hours before winding down for the evening. My Word journal very quickly eclipsed over 300 pages and 200,000 words in less than a year. When I started, I didn’t even have 50 pages.

For the last five or six months, however, I’ve hardly done anything for writing, and absolutely nothing for the other creative projects I have in mind.

So leaving this company is, in a way, taking back my creativity. Taking back my energy.

In the coming weeks, while I peruse for another job, I’m going to be revamping my creative outlets, starting with this blog. This space will be more like my journal; short, free-form entries mostly about the goings-on of my life. I’m also looking into launching a Substack where I’ll share more in-depth musings and even stories that I’m working on. With the extra time and energy, though, I’m also going to get back into drawing for my Write On Comics page. Lastly, and the thing I’m actually most excited about, I’ll be launching a podcast, but more on that later.

For now, though, I’m just relishing the fact that there’s an end date to the stress that Starbucks has become.

Tip your baristas, please.

What Twitter was (is?) for me…

While Twitter hasn’t completely collapsed yet, it does seem evident that it’s undergoing changes for the worse. Harmful people are being reinstated and those seeking change for the better are being banned. Twitter’s previous team wasn’t the best about taking care of white supremacist accounts (not by a long shot), but it is likely to get far worse going forward.

Whether or not it remains a functioning website/app in a few weeks from now, Twitter’s tumult has compelled me to reflect over its role in my life. Unlike Facebook or MySpace or really any other social media platform, Twitter’s style of short, chronological posts is close to my own stream of consciousness. Rather than long, exhaustive prose, I often think about one thing one moment, then something completely different the next. There have been so many times where I’ll be tweeting about something sports related, then randomly have a reflection about the shortcomings of capitalism. Or I’ll be sharing others’ tweets about systemic racism, then share a story from work in the middle of it all. It’s just how my brain works.

Beyond that, though, Twitter motivated me to be a better writer. When I first joined in 2010, I suddenly found myself almost returning to the early days of T-9 texting on a flip phone; I was cutting unnecessary words and using a lot more abbreviations. My blog posts, which had consistently been somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 words in length, were quickly cut to about 700 words in length – a 1,000 word post often felt too long. Twitter’s 140 characters (back when they even counted user handles, too) provided a type of constriction that challenged me to make my sentences as succinct as possible.

Obviously, I don’t always succeed at this. But it’s a notable point where a social media platform’s structure influences the everyday moments of life. Other platforms haven’t really had that kind of impact for me.

But Twitter has been more than a writing tool. It helped when I was in college and taking a Public Relations class for my journalism minor. The professor would often have a live Twitter feed of our class’s hashtag so students could pose questions on Twitter that they may not have felt inclined to ask out loud. I still didn’t really take advantage of this, but the material of the class suddenly felt so much more accessible as someone who’s deeply introverted. It felt like I had a chance to share my voice in class. Several years later, we did the same for a seminary class; we listened to an audio version of a book from the Hebrew Bible and live-tweeted our reactions. It was a fun way to make the material more engaging and less stodgy.

Yet its most crucial role for me was the kind of community that would be formed over the years. At first, it was a collection of writers and seminary students like me who wanted to question the strict belief systems we were surrounded by as evangelicals. For a lot of us, when our own local churches failed to provide a healthy, vibrant, and sustainable community for us to live and grow within, we turned to one of the few places where we could find others like ourselves. There are many people who I’ve “known” for years, yet have never actually met in person because we first encountered each other when Mars Hill finally ousted Mark Driscoll, or when some of us attended a writer’s conference together, or when Mike Brown was murdered.

My mutuals through the years have seen some intense highs and lows from me, and I from them. It has been a platform where I often had no filter in venting frustrations, fears and anxieties, or just discovering things about myself out-loud. Platforms that were better suited for in-real-life connections like Facebook or Instagram (even before it was bought by Facebook), didn’t allow much freedom to explore. You’d always find some racist high school classmate of yours jumping into the comment section of your Black Lives Matter post, or some homophobic asshole you met once in church would leave a random collection of bible verses that “proved” homosexuality as a sin. Sure, you could encounter this on Twitter, too. And many of us did. But the difference was that I felt more comfortable, despite the risk of trolls, airing my thoughts out on Twitter than anywhere else because the judgement of strangers was and is meaningless. Judgment from people I used to know can still hurt.

Not every connection on Twitter was perfect – I met many people who seemed like decent human beings until some event might happen where they’d then reveal their racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, etc. But chosen families have a stronger bond than blood relations, so in many ways I have a larger family on Twitter than I ever did in church. Its dismantling, then, will be felt much more severely than if it had simply lost popularity and gone the way of MySpace. Because for those of us who’ve utilized Twitter to connect in meaningful ways, we never joined for the hype of the platform; we joined because we found community – many of us for the first time.

It should be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks and months. I have no plan of leaving the platform because it’s still my preferred way of interacting with others outside my local connections – coworkers, local IRL friends, family, etc. But it is already getting glitchy and the bot accounts have returned in droves (or did they ever really leave?). I’ve started posting more on my Tumblr account (“cushmanschronicles” for those interested), and I created a Hive profile (same as my Twitter handle). But a full migration away from Twitter might take some time, if it ever happens at all.

What about you? Is Twitter a primary platform for you? If so, where you will go from here?

Grief, then & now…

Sunday was what would have been Grandpa’s 94^th birthday. And as I’d soon realize as my work day got going, I am still grieving.

We’re now approaching nine full years since he passed and every time I see his handwriting on an old birthday card or random note he left me, every time I pass by someone smoking the same kind of cigarettes he used to smoke, and every time I hear his voice in my dreams – deep and gravelly frame decades of coffee and tobacco, it feels like I just said goodbye to him the day before. And with Christmas decorations going up all around, these memories are only going to grow more palpable.

For those who don’t know my story, it is long, so I’ll summarize most of it here to say that the only father figure I ever really knew was a man 60 years my senior whose day-to-day was buoyed by coffee and crosswords in the morning, and whiskey and Blazer games in the evening. He taught me how to balance my checkbook, drive a car through Cape Foulweather (“keep your eyes on the fog line and steady your hands against the wind”), and work for what I want in life. Because of him, I’m not afraid of power tools or unexpected bills (“round down for income and round up for expenses”). What can be done today shouldn’t wait for tomorrow, and keeping your cool is less about not feeling frustrated and more about not acting on that frustration.

All of these, of course, are easier said than done. But the point is that because of him, I had an example to follow. That’s a hell of a lot more than most kids in my situation got. And there is no question that whatever I’ve achieved thus far or will accomplish tomorrow, it’s all because of what he taught me, which is less about any one specific life problem and more about the kind of temperment I have in handling those problems.

There is a clip that keeps popping up in my mind of Andrew Garfield on some late night talk show describing how it felt for him to perform a certain role at the specific point in life he was in. His mother had recently died and a certain role allowed him to process a certain level of grief he hadn’t been able to before. He was quoting someone in that clip, but what he said was that grief is all the love we can’t express. In that particular role, he said, he was able to express a certain love for his mother even though she was no longer in his life.

My Grandpa’s passing had actually been something my older brother and I both feared and anticipated for some time. We joked with him that he’d always be around, but we also knew things were not steadily improving with his health. Despite having quit the habit a few years ahead, the decades of smoking had taken their toll. Yet when the day finally came in April of 2014, none of us was ready. And I had thought back then, after watching him breathe his last, that I’d already gone through the hard part of grief. I had had the Ugly Cry and felt the immediate release that comes with knowing that a suffering loved one is no longer suffering. But hardly a week later, all the emotions came like a riptide that plunged me back into the pain of losing him.

We had just finished clearing out his apartment and loading it all into a storage unit. It’d be months later before any of us would be able to find the time to clear out that storage unit, but we had done a lot in a short amount of time. I said my goodbyes to my family members, many of whom I hadn’t seen for the better part of a decade, and started my way back to Portland to finish up my first year of grad school. Minutes later, after I stopped for a pedestrian crossing at a crosswalk (which are pretty much everywhere in Lincoln City), the massive pickup truck behind me (that was also towing a boat), slammed into the back of my little Cobalt. As I pushed my car to the side of the road, I pulled out my phone to call… Grandpa.

No one in my immediate vicinity knew why I was weeping on the sidewalk.

What I’ve been feeling in recent weeks is a mixture of a lot of emotions. Two years ago, we had to rush my fiancé to the ER 3 separate times in the same week because she wasn’t able to keep any food down, nor get any ounce of rest. Strangely enough, it had nothing to do with COVID. That whole week was probably the scariest I had endured since losing my Grandpa because each time we went, things were getting worse and no one could figure out why (mostly because men doctors do no listen to women patients, but that’s a long story for another time). We were also moving into a new apartment and with her condition, my fiancé could only help so much. I was getting maybe 2-3 hours of sleep each night for nearly a month, packing and moving most of our belongings by myself, and all the while trying to avoid COVID. So when the weather hits the right conditions where it feels less like Fall and more like Winter, these emotions sweep underneath my feet.

The love that I couldn’t express for my Grandpa was for his role of being an anchor through turbulent seas. To say the very least about her, my mother was unreliable and often placed me and my siblings (my three younger siblings were eventually adopted by another family) among dangerous, reckless people. From what I remember, there were nights we went without eating, days when our electricity or water was shut off, and constantly navigating a living space that could generously be called a dumpster; not an actual one, but pretty fucking close (think the show “Hoarders,” but worse). Beyond my memories, though, were nights spent in U-Hauls, days left to ourselves while our mother got high somewhere else, and countless conversations with social workers and sheriffs.

Needless to say, given the slightest change in circumstances, I might not be sitting here writing this.

In the years since his passing, there have been any number of potential disasters where I really wish I could have heard his voice, where I wish I had my anchor. But then I think about the things he taught me that were less practical and more relational – showing up for loved ones in their time of need, relishing life’s quieter moments like watching a movie or playing a board game, and making sure the people around you are safe and okay – and I realize I’m already doing them. Like Andrew Garfield’s opportunity of processing grief – unexpressed love – through a unique acting role, I am expressing my love for my Grandpa by being present for others the way he was for me.

Maybe I’m the anchor now.

Christmas was always his favorite time of year. He wasn’t Christian, as far as I know, but he certainly loved the decorations and presents. When I was a kid, I just thought everyone liked Christmas, but now I realize that he loved Christmas… because he loved us. He loved seeing our excitement as we unwrapped new toys, and loved surprising us with things we never asked for or things we thought we’d never get. Seeing all the lights going up and Christmas colors sweeping through stores and businesses, I know that this is yet another reason why memories of him keep cropping up. They may never not be tinged with pain, after all they’ll always be a reminder he’s not here like he used to be. But maybe with time and a little more expressed love, they may be reminders of how he was here. And when that happens, would he really be gone anymore?