First Impressions of Nostalgia

At noon today, I reported for an unofficial first day of duty at my local Starbucks, where I will be employed for the next bit of my life. But I suppose that is getting ahead of myself.

A few months ago, with my head hung slightly low, feeling defeated and confused, I packed up all of my most necessary items from my bedroom in the house in Brookline, NH I had been living in for the last two years and headed back to my one consistent home in Wayland. The deterioration of the New Hampshire house was slow and steady, but when I arrived there after work one day and there was no longer anything resembling a kitchen where one used to be, I knew something was seriously wrong. The demolition up to the destruction of the kitchen was a process of gutting rooms and removing walls, which was fine because it made the acoustics of the rooms very nice for playing music in, and did not affect my standards of living. Without a kitchen, and also without a job that afforded me the luxury of being served all my meals in nice restaurants, I had a big problem. I could no longer physically survive there, and with the previous two years' house projects as evidence of how slowly things were moving, I had little hope of a quick reassembling of a functioning kitchen. Enough was enough.

That is the basics of the last two years of my life culminating in being back home, out of ideas and creativity, and feeling like a rat who has abandoned a sinking ship. I hoped that a great job would fall into my lap, and it did not, so Starbucks it is. Anything for some money. I have plans. I have health. I have youth. I just need to find confidence and direction.


No more summer, no more lovely vacation on Cape Cod... Nope, not for me. Back to working.

And that brings me back to the beginning. I arrived at Starbucks at noon for a meet-and-greet style introduction to the store and the employees who happened to be there, and to taste the first of a long line of different coffees I must accustom myself with in the next few months. I have the hang of most corporate, retail-styled stores and their inner workings, but reading the Safety At Starbucks booklet was pretty informative. For instance, if a civil disorder were to break out in the glossy suburb of Wayland, I should "remove exterior tables, chairs and trash cans as these can be used to damage the store or gain entrance into it". Excellent thinking, but I would rather enjoy watching some irate, rioting 40-something soccer moms throw chairs at the windows of their favorite coffee spot after being refused entrance during their tear across downtown Cochituate.

So, back to Corporate America, back to smiling incessantly, back to schedules... but also, back to money in the bank (without a ridiculous rent to pay), back to enjoying freedom, back to an open canvas. This must be the place.