What is a detox?
I always though the term detox was one
of those bullshit terms that don’t mean anything. And if I’m honest,
I still feel that way. What the hell is detox? Detoxification. But
from what?
I suppose, I can say it’s all a detox
from the booze and the drugs and the smokes and the bad food, the
lack of sleep. It’s all of those things, yes, I guess. But the truth
is, you don’t get to my age and not have already gone through the
detox of those things. In a way, I’ve been in that particular process
for years. It was a slow incremental process. I feel like as we age,
it’s the gradual coming off of all the bullshit. So, in a way, I’ve
been detoxing for years.
This whole conversation is about a
waiter detox, and I haven’t needed to mention the physical vices,
because they aren’t the main focus. Sure, I like to stay up all
night, and I have to get up early so my sleep has never been great.
When I drink, I over do it. Alas, I don’t drink as much as I once
did, nor with the same frequency. I don’t eat bad food. I don’t
smoke. I don’t do drugs. So, when I think of this detox, it’s a much
deeper thing. It’s a mental detox. A detox of old ideas, old modes of
doing things and thought processes.
Working in a restaurant is not
gratifying work. You have to have something else driving your
passions just to offset the tedium and the boredom of working in a
restaurant. For instance, for one third of my time working in a
restaurant, I was in school. I have always been one to pursue
education. Admittedly, going through a program, whether it was grad
school, or the current graphic design program I’m in, having school
to occupy my imagine sure waylaid the boredom of the service
industry.
What about all the years I didn’t have
some other influence to think about? Well, they were tough years.
They were years of excessive partying. They were years of a great
deal of writing. After all, there were several years in there that I
wrote three to five novels a year. Anything to keep going.
The notion of a detox now, it means
conquering old habits and old mindsets. I wonder if some of these
habits and mindsets will be easy to fix? For instance, I was on a
walk this afternoon and I passed at least a dozen older people and I
couldn’t get over how much hatred I had for them. It comes from years
and years in the service industry. If you’re one of those people who
think you should respect your elders, then don’t work in the service
industry. These baby boomer types, after all, I knew when they
weren’t so old, and I thought they were mostly assholes then. How
much detoxification will it take for me not to be totally repulsed
when I see one walking in the park? Well, I suppose if I don’t have
to interact with them, I can probably get over it very easily.
I think there needs to be a
detoxification from being a waiter because I’m really just trying to
make sense, or get a sense of perspective on the last 21 years of my
life. It would be easy to try to make all the good times stick out
and live inside this sort of nostalgia and have good memories. This
is not the sense of perspective I’m looking for. What I want to have
for all the years of sheer boredom and frustration to have a deeper
meaning. Or at least I hope I can square up from where I came as I
walk into this new phase of life.
On February 10, when I finished my last
shift, I did not see fireworks, I did not feel relieved or lighter or
enlightened. I just felt tired. What I wanted was for a weight to
have left my head. It just felt like another night.
Comparatively, I remember all too well
how I felt on February 10, 2001. I felt excited and relieved and I
had a sense of being able to make my way in the work. I got a job
working at a coffeehouse and I saw it as a road to independence. How
funny that 21 years later, I felt like that path was confining,
boring, stifling and a near death sentence.
Boredom set in, long ago. The booze
followed. When the booze got old, boredom followed.
And now, how much of the detox happens
in the mind? How much of it happens emotionally? And how long will it
take to have perspective on this?