The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

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Dwight Wilmerding, the protagonist of Benjamin Kunkel's 2005 novel Indecision, is acutely aware that other people have trod in his existential shoes. An ambivalent part-time tech support worker, he feels "like a scrap of sociology blown into its designated corner of the world. But knowing the clichés are clichés doesn't help you to escape them. You still have to go on experiencing your experience as if no one else has ever done it."

Sometimes I like to view my own life as a series of progressing archetypes. Just in the last five years, there was what might be called the 'tweed phase,' then the 'On-the-road phase,' and now I'm squarely in the middle of an aspiring-artist-in-a-restaurant phase.' Maybe I enjoy this because viewing life as an archetype is the first step toward viewing life as a narrative, which then leads seamlessly into exploiting one's own life for fictive or ostensibly non-fictive purposes.

Regardless, in this latest incarnation, I work with about a dozen other server-artists - actors, musicians, writers, DJs, a couple divas without a particular craft - some accomplished, some aspiring, many in-between. And while we grumble about our job-job, all of us need it. But not necessarily just to pay rent.

There's the money aspect, for sure. But for a lot of us, it keeps us sane. Last summer I quit the restaurant game just to freelance. About two weeks later I started talking to myself uncontrollably. Like I had inside jokes with only me. Not long after that I pretty much lost any capacity to interact with other humans. This is what happens when you sit in a room with a keyboard for too long, and no internet connection. When I started working for tips again, it was a welcome exit from the world that is my laptop.

So I found solidarity this weekend, like happens sometimes, in an article from the New York Times (thanks Max2 for the link). Caitlin Kelly, a bona fide journalist - and beyond that, an author - writes about her job as a salesperson peddling fru-fru garments in an affluent New York 'burb.

Something had to change. Working alone at home as a freelance writer, which many people dream of, wasn't working for me. The relentless isolation of connecting primarily with others online and by telephone was killing me.

I needed a steady, secure, part-time job, something I could leave behind at day's end, with lots of people contact. I craved a new challenge, a chance to learn and perfect some fresh, useful skills.

She goes on to describe her double-life, a daytime intellectual who moonlights getting bossed around by soccer moms. Pretty existential stuff. I like the message though, which is that artists don't have to be artists all the time - oftentimes it's detrimental to mental health.

Why I'm really writing this blog post: See, Mom? See, Dad?

Saturday mornings we do a wicked brunch. In winter, we get to work at 6:30 am and leave after 4pm, which means we usually don't get to see the sun. The kitchen sends out literally a thousand plates or more, in about a four-hour time period (10-2; the other hours are for side work). Each server ends up watching roughly eighty people go in and out of his or her section, many of these people requesting a medley of drinks because for some reason people really like liquids with their breakfast - coffee, oj, tomato juice, bloody mary, beer chaser, and a round of waters for the table (please). After the shift, the kitchen still a chaotic mess (though unseen to civilians), the Ecuadorian line cooks all hug each other and the bar sends them a shot of tequila. The servers high five and breathe our collective sighs of relief as the last customers leave. We clean the restaurant, roll our silverware, bitch about our tables, count our money and go home to nap before going out before waking up to do it again on Sunday. It's exhausting, but there's camaraderie. Best of all, I get to forget about all my deadlines. Why would I want to give that up?