As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve come to Connecticut to help out a friend with his bar he opened recently. I came here to bar tend, because I actually love working as a bartender, or at least I have in the past working events when I was in Texas. As it’s turned out, I’m running food deliveries and bar backing instead. So now I have to determine if I’m going to stick it out, or leave.

It’s not making much sense to me to stay at this point. After all, I packed up my car and drove across several states to come here. It hasn’t been a total loss, as I wanted to see my friend’s place and get some experience working there, but of course I was hoping that would be bar tending experience, not running deliveries. That’s something I could do anywhere. It could be argued that I can bar tend anywhere, but I was really motivated to be around the live band music, which is what makes this particular place stand out. As I write this, it’s making less and less sense why I even came here in the first place. It really tells me I’ve been desperate to get something going in my life again, and once again that’s just not happening.

I can’t help but think about how failure after failure has led me to move from place to place, in search of something better after life falls apart where I’m currently living. It has literally taken me all over the world. When I was in Florida years ago, I lost my job and decided to head out to Germany, where I had met a girl there the year before while on vacation. After living in Germany for about four years, life fell apart once again. I had already broken up with my girlfriend, and, you guessed it, my job outlook was in the crapper. So I picked up and came back to the states. I then traveled up the East Coast to attend a school in Manhattan to be certified to teach English internationally. The course was at a breakneck pace, and I ended up dropping out.

After New York, I drove down the coast again headed back to Florida when my back tire blew out and I did a few 360s on the interstate before crashing into a guardrail, which totaled the car. I had to backtrack to Mississippi, my home state, get another car, which turned out to be a complete POS (No, I don’t mean Point of Sale), then made it back to Florida. After working in Orlando for a few years, I bought my house in Largo on the Gulf Coast. I managed to live there about seven years before, you guessed it, I lost my job. Following that particular episode of life falling apart, once again, I drifted out West for a couple of years, had some great times during my travels, and ended up coming back to Florida to kick out my nightmare tenants and fire my property manager. Since that time, I’ve rented out the house without the hell episodes I experienced that first year of tenant nightmares.

Writing all of this has really caused me to contemplate where life has taken me. Yes, I’ve experienced a lot of good times on the road. My last blog I wrote was all about my travels west, which ended in Texas after getting a job there.  This was an act of desperation that led to a four year run that I’m glad is finally over. Now, here I sit, once again wondering what to do next. Going back to Arkansas will involve living with the parents, which I actually didn’t mind so much, but it’s not much of a singles life. Going back to Florida feels like being put out to pasture, and I’m not exactly at that stage of life just yet. However, I do need to take care of house maintenance once again after years of renting it out.

I keep being reminded of a quote by Winston Churchill that states, “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” From that perspective, have I been a failure, or have I been a success? I’ve definitely moved on from failure to failure, and I’ve had difficulty with maintaining enthusiasm, especially as I get older. Moving along from place to place in the past never bothered me, but now it feels more like the travel is starting to wear me down. At the same time, I get bored being in one place for too long, which has also motivated me to “roam the earth” as my friend calls it. One of these days, I’ll look back at all of the places I’ve been, the adventures I’ve had, and know that it was all worth it. In the meantime, finding a way to maintain financial income would sure be a great enthusiasm booster.