A Romantic Conundrum in My New Life

Needless to say, I am an anomaly. My friends and I are what we call Reality Junkies which coincides with being Knowledge Junkies. My closest friends are all well rounded in skills, trades, we are musicians, writers, poets, linguists, athletes and artists. While i was originally in undergrad, some of my best friends were music majors and I was in Choir with them and took Piano I at the best Music College in the state. I was an English major studying James Joyce and Modernists as well as an Environmental Studies minor. Music was always this duel life that most of us had. My percussionist and friend majored in Sociology and eventually graduated from a Traditional Chinese Medicine school. My classical pianist friend and teacher went on to Master in BioChem, my church friend from high school used to sing acapella with, - we would switch from tenor to bass with each other for practice and fun, - he graduated from St. John’s with a Liberal Arts degree and now is an Engineer with Toyota and sends me his music (his father was a classical guitarist and taught him great finger picking patterns) to collaborate on. I took a year of Violin in high school, taught myself guitar and was a Singer Songwriter who played with many different bands and friends, and jams. The guitarist in one of my bands (Vestal Vapor & the Vision) was an English graduate and now plays with a band of surfers. He has been a professional musician all these year. I’ve always kept it up but more for peace of mind and self-enrichment as most of my musician friends have been away these last 7-8 years.

My Jr. year as an English major my life blew up. (Which is a story all on it’s own.) I had to drop out of school and pay a lot of debt off and pick the pieces of my scattered life up and put them back together. Part of this was embarking on a Yogic Journey. I spent hours and hours practicing Yoga, meditating, and studying Yogic Sutras, Sanskrit, Siddhartha, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. I had all of the pleasantries of life ripped from me. I started a life working for a Greek family (my percussionist friend’s family) as a 3D artist. I lived a year with Greeks, learning as much of the language as I could. I got to the point the Greek father could speak to me in Greek and I could understand most of the broad idea of what he was saying. When we would sell the Art, other vendors would comment that (me) his son seemed taller. We joked that I looked more like the Greek father than his own sons did. (It was the mustache;) The relationship I had with my best friend and Greek brothers was similar to Siddhartha and Govinda. The sunshine left when he went away for TCM school. I have never in my life been able to talk with anyone the way we can express ourselves to each other. With languages not yet conceived. It’s like Greek-English with New Age spirituality. When he left, I couldn’t speak to anyone in the language we could speak in. It was like being a foreigner in my own country. Or being forced to time travel backwards in the past. We both have a Buddhist, for like of a better term, spiritual journey. Later, I would work in restaurants throwing pizza because I love the athletic part of it. I would use martial arts and yogic practices to refine the trade and to find peace in my journey back to school which has always been my goal. Pizza is why I stayed in restaurants. I could go in, be the best and go on my merry way in the direction I am really going.

Now that I am back in school with a new life I feel like I’ve been given a second chance at things. I am working part-time at a Hibachi restaurant for extra cash on my way through. She exploded into my life. She is a career Server and most likely has dreams of having her own restaurant. She’s a world traveller and a 5 Star Server. She is at the top of a profession I am sick of, - though, I am the best at what I do. I never half-ass anything.

Recently, in my life, I have had this issue in my career in the Service Industry. The last restaurant I helped open it was a similar story. The world is a-changing. Especially in Hospitality and the Food Channel. One woman my age I was opening the restaurant with (she was my boss) felt she was somehow owed my attention. I quickly deduced what she was all about: Money, fame, fortune and Easy-Street. I swiped left. But she couldn’t accept that I was not interested. I was being forced to play in the Bachelorette (from hell) and was shamed by her for just giving her to the other guy. I wouldn’t play. I was there for work, not to get married. I couldn’t stand those shallow, egotistical, alcoholics. I can work with anyone, but I can’t fake attraction. She disgusted me though she was slightly attractive and rich. Her personality, her lack of Inner-Resources, or caring about anything other than all the things I gave up in my spiritual journey.

Marla Singer in my new restaurant job is definitely more of a plausible match, however, it’s still a similar feeling. When I say she exploded into my life, I can’t really put a better expression on it because that was what it felt like. It was an intensity I really can’t explain. She really loves me and I can feel it. But, she is settling down, and my life is taking off into the direction I’ve been working for for years. She was horribly rude at first, intrusive, demanding my attention, forcing me into love triangles that are years behind where I actually am in life. I look into the rabbit hole of life together with her, and I can’t stand it. Entertaining shallow, talentless, neighbors, “normies” as my guitarist friend from St. John’s calls them. I need someone athletic because I will be snowboarding, and surfing, playing and writing music with my friends and that little dork of a prick, bitch-boy she toys with disgusts me. And it cheapens my value at least to myself. The times she’s away, I become light and happier and feel like myself again loving yoga and athletics, reading and writing and schoolwork and just loving being alive. But, when she comes back it feels good in a different way. It’s a very deep, and a sorrowful way. The other guys at that job are pushing for us to get together, to marry and make a life around them. It’s like my lion pride are offering me their best lioness as far as that career goes. It feels really good in a way. I play guitar at work and I may play live shows there. But then I go back to classes and see my new life unfolding. The life I worked so hard to get back to. It’s like I’m back to being the person I was in Undergrad. The Author, the Biologist, the Nurse, and Yogi. The person I really care about being.

The Hospitality Industry has very cool aspects and I have become connected in an exceptionally cool network in a way. But the Hedonism, the gluttony, the Egoism, the alcoholism, are all the things the Yogi in me detests, - and you facilitate it. I yearn for my life of practice and study.

When a woman is ready for children the experience can best be described by this scene (the Biologist in me; )

Last updated September 13, 2023