Well, I’m now in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and a new chapter has begun. I’m working at a bar in Danbury that my friend part owns. I packed up my car and hit the road, once again. Let the games begin.

This bar is a unique place in that it totally caters to music and musicians, but it also has the drama you would find in any other type of business. Well, actually the drama at this place is more reality show worthy than other places I’ve worked. The owners have been thinking of new ways to grow the business, and I’m starting to think just putting a camera in the corner and getting us on TV will generate more money than any amount of booze we can sell.

Working at the bar has already been quite an experience. I’m picking up deliveries from the pizza place down the road when food orders come in, and something I thought was going to be simple has actually been a bit complicated. Tonight just seemed to be one of those nights where I felt like I was in a fog, and what should be simple shit felt so damned difficult. Sometime in the evening, I swore that if I’m going to be the delivery driver for the next couple of months, I’m going to be shipping out and moving on.

Then a thought came over me, amidst the chaos of running pizza back and forth to the bar, and bar backing between deliveries. When I was in Germany, years ago now, I started out there working for the Army, cleaning rooms at an Army hotel. My tourist visa time had run out, and I needed a way to stay in Germany with my girlfriend I had met at Oktoberfest in Munich back in the year 2000. Crazy to think it’s been that long, twenty-one years.

Just before I thought I was going to have to leave the country, I scored a job housekeeping at the US Army Guest House in Heidelberg. That way I was able to stay in Germany, and I was also able to work among Americans. I didn’t speak much German at the time, certainly not enough to get a job on the German economy. I moved to Heidelberg from my girlfriend’s little village in Bavaria, and my life was about to change completely, out of many times my life has changed completely over some random change in life I chose.

So, I went to work as a housekeeper, after working as some sort of computer IT guy for years. I remember first walking into one of the hotel buildings and meeting my fellow housekeepers thinking, “What the hell am I doing? I have a Masters Degree!”. As it turned out, living in Germany was one of the highlights of my life that I still think about and talk about all the time to this very day, twenty-one years later. This has been another one of those times in my life that someone on the outside looking would probably think, “What the hell is this guy doing? He’s educated!”

While working there, I was promoted to desk clerk, which turned out to be another place where I wish I’d had a camera recording another reality show worthy experience. Once during a shift, I remember one of the other desk clerks working with us talking about how people there would say they’re not getting paid enough money to do their jobs. His response to that statement was that doing your job and doing it well before moving on to something better was “a biblical thing”. He went on to say, “Why would God move you up the ladder to a more significant job if you can’t do a simpler job?”

I’m not saying any of that to promote religion. I remember the guy being a very religious person, but what he said applies to the general balance of the universe, if I’m saying that correctly at all. I feel like this is my situation at this moment. I failed at a job that had significantly more responsibility before agreeing to help my friend out with his bar. I am feeling that I must succeed at this significantly lower paying job before I’m going to move up to anything better with more responsibility. The work of chopping wood and fetching water was a noble task in earlier times that could also have been seen as merely the work of peasants. My duties as a delivery guy for the bar have had me wondering what the hell I’m doing, once again, but I do feel that what I’m doing will lead to significant events in the future.

My friend and I have an understanding that we’re trying things out for a couple of months, and if they don’t work out, for either of us, I’ll be on my way. This kind of open ended adventure could lead to something good, or it may just lead to another destination after this plays out for me. This could be just another job, or this could be the beginning of a transformation. Guess we’ll just have to see what develops. If it’s a biblical thing, the way of the warrior, call it what you will. I have a mission to complete, whatever that’s going to lead to in the end.