“A Journey Through The Grease Trap” or “So long, thanks for all the burritos.”
I was FINALLY fired last Friday from Illegal Pete’s.
Thank you to Pete’s for the literally hundreds of opportunities you have given me. I have been working and growing and very upfront about my mental health journey. They gave me more than enough chances to get my shit together. Working in a restaurant is putting out hundreds of fires over and over again all day long, and I just didn’t have enough of the right equipment to keep putting out those fires day in and day out.
For those of you who are unaware of what an Illegal Pete’s is, let me tell you. It’s a fast casual burrito joint, mission style burrito, with a full service bar. Pete’s hates the comparison to Chipotle, so we’ll go with Subway. Pete’s is like Subway only, you know burritos, bowls, tacos & other offerings. You come in, pick the vessel for you food and the protein and the employees help you make the choices for your food.
You had a person on the “Hot” table to welcome you and start you on your journey. On the second half of your trek, you would meet the person at the “Cold” table with all your delicious toppings. If you ventured off the well known trail, you’re order could be sent to the back-line, where all Quesadillas, deep fried roll tacos (taquitos), or fish items were prepared. Finally as this part of your journey ends, you meet the cashier who takes your payment. If you wanted to be a little more adventurous you could talk the bartender into a Margarita or beer.
As a supervisor, my job was to oversee this of this glorious land. It was my job to make sure everything went smoothly, everyone got their breaks and everything got done. It could be rewarding work, but at the same time being a supervisor was a lot of work for one person, especially one person usually tethered to a single position. So if something goes wrong at the wrong time, life at Pete’s could get very… tricky.
In this new world of Covid, things got even more complicated with even more moving parts, most of it to protect the employees. Customers were expected to place online orders, pay via card on their phone. The customers had been use to coming through the line to tell us just what they wanted, but in this brave new world, they were the ones in charge of their complete destiny. The biggest problem with this move? There was an absolute lack of marketing on how our world had changed, and it was on us to explain it to each and every single customer who walked into the doors.
Managers for Illegal Pete’s do not have a long shelf lives. Hourly staff can and will last for a long time in the restaurants, but once you start to reach for the golden ladder of leadership, your lifespan with the company is cut in half. It’s a stressful job, with a lot expected of you. Hourly managers can last a few years, but the salary managers drop like flies. Most don’t make it the first year before stepping down or being fired. It’s an incredibly taxing job that most people, and I guess myself included, can not handle.
I myself had been wanting to leave for a long time. I just wasn’t happy. I’m nearing 40 years old and wanted to do more with my life than run a burrito shop. I didn’t know what to do yet, or where this path was taking me. So I stayed on the road. I could see an end in the distance, I just didn’t know how much further down the road I should go.
I’ve been looking into career changes for a while, but in the last few months things have been picking up steam. I picked up a #1 bestselling Non-fiction book of all time, What Color is Your Parachute, that explores the challenges of career changes. Two weeks ago, I foolishly started an LLC with the idea that I could buy bulk vinyl records at wholesale prices, Having no overhead, make a few extra bucks on the side selling them online!
I even started a side hustle called UseYourFuckingManners.com, which made merchandise for those in the service industry who just want the people to use a little more kindness. Through that side hustle, I’ve even been toying with starting up a non-profit that works to provide Mental Health support for restaurant/retail workers who can not get insurance (a group I suddenly find myself a member of.)
When the quarantine ended, I just didn’t want to go back to the stress and life of Pete’s. I was worried about just how awful the America people had become since the beginning of this year, and I didn’t know if I could mentally handle it, since I have had issues with becoming irascible with rude people. I didn’t know if going back was right for me.
The company had paid for my health care for all those months of quarantine. It was something “stable” and on top of it, I made a good wage. So I felt I owed it to them. I signed up and went back to the burrito factory.
Over the summer, I began seeing a therapist. In our talks, we explored the roots of my anxiety and how it relates to my formative years and how those stresses relates to my mindset in my work life.
We discovered that from years of growing up in a depressive/bi-polar house, I have boundary and control issues. My life has felt so incredibly out of control at times, that I crave that safety of the predictably from a “safe space.” When I don’t find that safe space, I struggle to find my footing. Years ago, I had not been able to find the right footing at Pete’s as an hourly worker. So I started climbing the ladder at work. At the next level I could “fix” the problems I saw. On that ladder I could affect change over my environment.
That’s why I became a trainer in the store, so I could have more control over my environment. Then when we lost two supervisors to bad cocaine problems, I stepped up to take a position so I could take more control. It might have went to my head, and I might have alienated a few of my co-workers for a while, until I was talked down off my high horse and decided not to be a MANAGER, and reworked myself into a leader.
I learned growing up, that my life could spiral out of control at any given moment. I don’t know if my father has ever been diagnosed as bi-polar, but growing up we never knew which version of my father would be coming home. What would his mood tonight be? Would he be in a good mood? Would he be tired? Would he have brought us stuff from his travels? Is his diabetes acting up? Did he just want to nap in his arm chair while Wheel of Fortune was on? Did he want to see us? Or would he come home on the warpath? OR would he be in a great mood, and then moments later…. screaming at us for something that felt small and insignificant.
Our house growing up was the type of southern home that was built on cinder blocks and a good two feet off the ground so it would not flood in the heavy rains. You could hear every footstep in that shaky middle class home. I’m the oldest of four siblings and we had six people, and twenty cats (not a joke), piled into that three bedroom house. You had to walk lightly always. Every movement you made in that house reverberated throughout the house.
We were kids. We fought, made noise and raised hell anyways! It echoed through the house. We stomped and the walls shook, but nothing shook as much as we did when we awoke the slumbering beast inside our father. There was always this underlining current of fear underneath you, wondering what kind of trouble you’d get yourself into, and which father would do the punishment.
It’s not lost on me that as an adult, people would often worry the same thing about me coming through those doors at work. Would I be in a good mood? Would tonight be a good night? Or would I get super stressed out and in turn stress everyone else out?
I had become what I most despised. What’s funny is I’ve tried my whole life to make sure I did not become my father. For years growing up, I tried everything I could think of to make sure I was not like him. I hoped and even prayed that I would have inherited his bi-polar temper. I had already been blessed with the darkness of depression, that I was sure came from his branch of the family tree.
Whenever I am at my most angry, it would feel like my father was right there in the room with me. All those years of fighting and failing to stop myself from becoming my father…. It turns out, I never had to worry about becoming that MONSTER he would become. I just found out this summer that he is not my biological father after-all. I was becoming something else all together.
How much of this temper is learned? How much of it is hereditary? How much of it is me? How much of it is my environment? These are the new lessons I am working on learning for myself. It’s been a long a strange year, but I feel good about the road I am heading down.
— — -
March of 2019, I started taking Zoloft. The temper and depression had been on overload. I was exploding regularly and fearing I’d lose my job at any moment. I felt like I was drowning in my head. At the time I was still working at the DU Pete’s and if there was any stress on any given night… I got drunk or stoned. I dealt with my temper and that cloak of depression, the only way I knew how. Abusing substances. I’d start to feel that blood pressure rising, and I’d hit the vape pen or sneak a Sauza Tequila shot. Anything to take the edge off.
The turning point was that a acquaintance, Brittany, had killed herself suddenly. I had already seen the hurt and the pain when another co-worker had killed themselves. Here I was watching it all over again. I felt low, real low. I didn’t want my friends to suffer like this over me. I had ten year earlier watched my parents bury my youngest sibling to a rare disease. I decided I didn’t want them to bury ME, just yet.
So I sat down the then GM & AGM at the time and talked to them about my problems and the help I needed and was getting. I quit drinking for a time and slowly, very, very slowly things have been on the up and up, with a few hiccups along the way.
We received a new GM at the DU store and she was an absolute nightmare of a human being. I was told by the then AGM that she was looking for the first opportunity to fire me. So under the (somewhat real) guise of mental health, I transferred to the Denver Tech Center store. It’s a store in south Denver that focuses on the heavy business clientele of the neighborhood. It was a slower store, with shorter hours. It seemed like that was the right place to escape into, and that gave me another solid year with the company.
Don’t get me wrong, things were good for a time, but those old demons just kept resurfacing. The stress just kept coming and some days felt absolutely out of control.
At the Tech Center, life was a little more predictable. We had a clientele of mostly business men and high school children. We would be hit hard from 11:30ish till 2pm, almost every single day. During those times, you’re trying to push 60–80 people through the line an hour. You have got to rush. You have got to hustle. You’ve got to move move move.
I found my old friend anxiety coming to visit me during those mornings before the rush would hit. I’d be running around trying to make sure everything was in place and everything was in order. One small hiccup in our prep-work and it could royally screw us at the worst times.
So I added this level of anxiety to my daily work life. You know in horror movies where the main character knows something is wrong and they trying to warn the others and no one is listening or taking any precautions? (Think Rosemary’s Baby) That’s how it felt for me at work on those days.
I would work myself up to prepare for this battle of lunch, and people would wander around without a care in the world. My anxiety and frustration would grow from the indifference from the staff. I just didn’t have the tools in my tool box to motivate the team to move faster, unless I lost my cool. I would find myself tied to a station and just watching my world burn down around me. So I just worked to bury it all inside and watched as our world was invaded, and how our preparations were not enough.
Now was the world actually on fire? No, but try explaining that to that inner voice in your head that’s spinning out of control while everything else was spinning out of control around you. There is nothing to hold onto. The ground beneath you has turned to quicksand and you’re sinking slowly into the darkness.
I get why people cut themselves. I was reading Stephen King describe the “bad gunky” in Lisey’s Story and how as boys, the main characters would cut themselves to let the “evil” or “bad gunky” out of them. I immediately understood what King was referencing, because I had felt that gunky inside myself. I wasn’t cutting myself, but at the same thing I was using the vape pen or Tequila shots as a cutting device. I was trying to exorcise the villain in my blood.
I am thankful that I never picked up the habit of cutting, or even hard drugs. Still, the anger, the fear, the darkness, you can feel it taking over your body slowly. You can feel it working it’s way deeper and deeper into you, and you have to get it out, but at the same time it feels like you’re drowning. It feels like water is all around you, but it’s not around you. It’s in your head. You can’t breathe and it’s coming from inside you. The color of the room changes, it turns red. Everything goes sideways. You have to let it out or it will kill you from within.
When some people hit this point they cry, some people shut down, some people shake and some people punch things. I have put my fist through my fair share of walls in my time and have been working to not be that person. But it has to come out of you somehow, and I was never taught the right way to vent those feelings.
So rather than punch a wall, sometimes the words themselves can carry that power out of you. Sometimes all it takes is a simple message out loud to yourself that, “I’m about to lose my shit,” or “God damn it” to deescalate the monster within and put you back into the orbit of normal.
Or sometimes when you are having an already hard night, your very obviously drugged out co-worker is making mistake after mistake after mistake The night is harder because of you don’t have the tools to handle the situation, and it keeps getting worse with their erratic behavior. You have a piece of trash in front of you and you decide to throw trash at the can, but you know… like a baseball. You “think” that the action will get the “bad gunky” out of you, but then that queso lands in the trash can and explodes all over the wall. It makes you laugh, the absurdity of it all.
Getting upset when someone is very obviously struggling, and you can’t handle their struggle, much less your own… Hell, all you are doing is selling BURRITOS. What is there to stress about?!?! Some days, no amount of watching your breath can help you. No amount of breathing. No amount of recognition of your feelings can save you.
I don’t want you to think I’m making excuses for my actions. Absolutely not. I have been in therapy this year working on finding the tools and the training to figure out how to work better with that anxiety/anger/loss of control. I can’t keep throwing things like baseballs, and those words coming out of my mouth, “I’m about to lose my shit,” do not help the world around you, and guess what? It actually makes things WORSE. Surprise! Surprise!
After the quarantine, I finally figured out that the Zoloft was giving me panic attacks. I noticed that every day my chest felt like a vice. Every day I felt like I was about to have a heart attack, and that was just my morning commute before I got to work. But it didn’t feel real. I don’t know how else to explain it. It felt like the drugs themselves were causing this. It felt different from the darkness inside. It felt like… I had never had panic attacks before. This was something new to me and it felt chemically educed.
The turning point was the day I blacked out while driving on the wild streets of Glendale, Colorado. A man had passed me, illegally, in the parking lane of the street we were driving on. I blacked out, hit the gas and got in front of his car. I hit my brakes. I hit my rock bottom.
Moments later, I found myself yelling at the man in the middle of the street about how he should “Use your fucking manners!!!!” It’s not lost on me now, that my reaction caused more harm than good in that situation.
I decided enough was enough. I talked to my doctor about switching medications. It was hard to talk her into the switch. Sigh. She had never heard of an SSRI causing Panic Attacks in people with Anxiety disorders. (She was the one who had decided I had an anxiety disorder. I just thought for years I was Bi-polar.)
This was the first real indication from her that there is probably something a lot deeper within that was at play here. Finally, it was talking about my E.D. problems that talked her into making the switch. I also don’t think it helped that I always walked into the doctor’s office in a pretty good mood and mental place. They don’t see the things that the people at work were seeing every day. Even my therapist told me she really wanted to see me lose “it” sometime. She was fascinated by this calm, cool, charming person sitting in her office telling her how he could turn into the Incredible Hulk at great times of duress. I think because she didn’t believe it to be there at all.
When we switched to Prozac I immediately felt a difference. Suddenly, the daily panic attacks were gone. I had started meditation and I began studying Taoist & Buddhist writings., mostly other memoirs of people’s personal struggles and how they found help. With these new tools, I was slowly but surely finding my footing and becoming a stronger person.
I told my co-workers and management that if I seemed crazy, I was switching drugs and there would be side effects. I don’t really remember those days, but I freaked out my girlfriend Claire one bad night with my “weirdness.” It probably doesn’t help that I was reading books on meditation and ranting and raving about the metaphysical junk I was learning. Eventually most of the side effects worked themselves out and I really did feel like a more complete version of myself.
Depression/Anxiety is a long uphill battle, but many of my friends and co-workers at work had noticed and praised my more focused, less stressed attitude. But it was as if I was trying to run a marathon only after a couple weeks in training. I just wasn’t anywhere near the finish line.
That’s the thing that really pisses me off about getting fired for my “intensity” at work. I was in a much better place, and working very so hard to finding my Zen.
I will say this about Illegal Pete’s and Pete Turner. The man cares. The man cares a lot. Pete’s gave me many, many chances, when they really should have let me go a long time ago. And I have to look at it like this, If you have an alcoholic working for you and he keeps coming in drunk, it doesn’t matter how open they are about their alcoholism, they’re still coming in drunk. You’re going to have to fire them. They are a liability. I get it. But fuck. I was making such great progress.
But as much as Pete’s cares about the employee’s quality of life outside of work so much, I often felt like they had forgotten to take care of the employees when they were in the restaurant.
Some examples: Most stores have very little, to no AC. Some stores barely have heat. So you’re constantly covered in sweat or wearing extra layers. A lot of the equipment (brand new or old) was often broken or in disrepair. Our business was based on getting 50–100 people through the line as fast as you could. And the people, were terrible, and no matter how terrible the customer you were expected to just smile and take their terribleness. This is nothing new to those in the service industry. This has been my life for most of these four years.
Last year’s tax form said I made $49,000 for making burritos, margaritas and telling kids to do their damned job. I loved it when the starting wage was raised to $15 and hour (plus tips), I had never made that much money or been that comfortable in my entire adult life. I could pay all my bills and a good chunk left over to lead a happy, healthy life. I had never, ever been able to do that before. I had never been able to have money sitting in my savings account for months on end. I’m so thankful for that experience of financial independence that Pete’s gave to me.
But what happened with that $15 raise, was that we had to cut labor. Sure, we raised the prices a little bit at a time, but mostly we cut labor down, while pushing sales to go up. We were trying to hard to make more sales, so we could open up more restaurants. In order to do make the money to open more restaurants, we had to cut the labor. Cutting labor means less people, but the same amount of customers.
So the manager position changed from one of a floating position, helping where needed, managers became tied to a station for most of their shift. I didn’t get to float or jump around where needed, I was stuck to one station every single day. On top of that I was in charge of giving people breaks. I was in charge of customer complaints. I was in charge of putting out fire after fire after fire. If anything went wrong, I felt that the whole infrastructure could go down with it. So I always had to be on my game. Always had to be alert. Always had to be ready. Always had to be preparing for the worse, because it could and would happen.
Here is an average experience as a Manager at Pete’s. Only, think of it like a video game. You know the 90’s side scrolling hit and punch video game like the classic Simpsons Arcade Game or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Game.
In those games, you run down the street hitting bad guys and they hit you back. You keep running down the street trying to complete the level and go to the next. Every time you get hit, your character turns red and you lose “HEALTH,”You can find health along the way to refuel your health bar, but if you don’t collect enough…. As you get closer to the end of your “Health Bar,” your character starts blinking bright red until you either finish the level, or get hit enough times to die.
Everything effects your health. You start the day with an 100% Health Meter. Here’s how the “stage” plays out:
*You don’t work till 3pm! Time for yourself! +5
*You look at sales on your phone and the sales are down really, really bad -2
*You closed last night and the opening manager had bad notes about your close. You try not to take it too hard. They’re just doing their job. -2
* On your way to work, lady cuts you off and looks at you like you’re the asshole. -5
*Marcus has called out for work. -10
*But Lucy is going to stay late. +5
*You’ve run out of tortillas and there is no way you’ll make the night with out them. Send Lucy to get more. -10
*Openers didn’t complete the shift change, so there is a TON of stuff still left to do. -10
*Customers don’t understand the new Online Ordering only system because nothing in the marketing is telling them to expect it. You stop what you’re working on to help them. -10
*Orders start coming in. You’re trying to work two different positions at once while Lucy is still getting tortillas. -5
*Lucy still not back yet. Customer on the phone is mad because his burrito didn’t have the guacamole they paid for. You have to stop working orders and answer the complaint and make the customer feel better, all while the orders and customers keep coming in. -10
*Orders are piling up because you’ve been split between three different tasks and there is no rhyme or reason to what you are sorting. -10
*Tommy is missing from his post, you have to jump in and do that one now too, but Lucy is finally back. -5
*Did I mention the AC isn’t working and you’re covered in sweat? -5
*Take quick 8 minute break. Eat burrito as fast as you can. +10
*Ian is working the register and not doing anything at all in-between orders. Just standing there. You remind him his jobs are This, this, this this and this and he nods in agreement. -5
*You just ran out of Taquitos, but no one told you they were running out. So you suddenly have 4 different orders of Taqiutos, but you’re giving Abigail a break and you’re stuck to your spot. You have to ask the bartender to handle it, but you’re still frustrated there isn’t enough -5
*Two bartenders are fighting over stupid shit. Peter is annoyed at Colt, Colt is annoyed at Peter. No time to deal with it at this moment. Mental note to put it in the manager log. -3
*No one backed up the XXX Hot salsa, and suddenly your out. You have to back it up on the fly, but there is 10 orders in line and you’re already running behind. You have to run and rush and do it all half-assed. -5
*IAN IS STILL STANDING AROUND NOT DOING A FUCKING THING. -7
*Rush dies down. You finally get a chance to give Taylor his break. Your shoulders relax. You’ve made it through the rush. You can let your guard back down. +3
*You send Ian on break because he’s still fucking standing around not doing anything and you’re about to start yelling at him. So you just send him to break. -3
*10 people walk in. -3 & They all want taquitos. -5
*You sent the bartender on break and someone needs a drink. So you have to run over there to make the drink, abandoning your station. -5
So if my math is right, I’m at 1 point on my HEALTH bar. I don’t have a lot of options. I’m sitting there reminding myself to breath. I’m focusing on my breath. I’m blinking RED with not ANGER, but a sense of needing to protect myself from getting hit more. I have a few options here to bring my health bar back up. I can go into the walk-in and scream. I can do a shot at the bar. I can go outside and hit the vape pen, but those are not healthy options and you’re trying to be better. There is no time to step aside and focus on myself. Stopping means that fire will grow and you have these other people to take care of, first.
So I do the only thing my Neanderthal brain knows how to do. I say the words, “GOD DAMN IT!” out-loud to myself. But I’m a loud person and everyone hears it. That vocalization can help bring the health bar to 6 points. It’s the life raft I need to get me through to my lunch time, but it’s also a weapon against myself.
When I finally have a chance to remove myself from the situation, I go and sit in the car. I do another guided meditation. (+10) I come back feeling better. The co-workers and I talk about how shitty the night has been (+5), I talk to the one co-worker about how I’ve been practicing meditation, but it’s not 100% yet. They give me some kind words. (+5). Eventually the night ends. We drink our shift drinks and commiserate. (+10) We survived another battle. Rinse and repeat.
This “fictional” night described is pretty common, in the restaurant world. And it isn’t a “terrible” night. It is the Groundhog’s Day of it all that wears down upon you. Every day another battle to survive to try get to the next level, but it’s the same level every single day. “Don’t you tell me you don’t remember me, because I sure as heck-fire remember you!”
Some people will read this, and think to themselves, “You should have done this, this or this,” but I’m not that skilled. Some people work their magic and their skills and stay relatively alive in these levels, and others just plow through with out a care. I think I am a “plow through” player of the game of Illegal Pete’s. We just didn’t have enough quarters to win the game.
As a Supervisor, you’re always stressed out. If you’re not stressed, you’re not doing your job. You’re trying to do 10 jobs at once, under the umbrella of “Supervisor.” Anything that goes wrong in your time as MOD (Manager on Duty) comes down on you, and how you handled it. There is very little cushion for your fall. It’s all on your shoulders. I got better about passing some of that weight around to my more trusted co-workers, but I never felt it was fair to that weight onto them. They didn’t sign up for the responsibility that I signed up for. I was there to take care of them, the restaurant, and the customers. I was left with very little time to take care of myself.
When you also suffer from a mental “illness,” on top of all the things you’re carrying on your shoulders… It’s a lot to handle. So saying my “Health Bar” was at 100 at the start of every day isn’t truthful. Most days, I think I’d be lucky to be at a 85–90 level. I’m 39 years old and I don’t bounce back like I once could. It takes days of alone time to put me back at 100 Health Points.
I wrote about these issues in the manager log every day. I did (eventually) ask for help. I wrote to the other managers and let them know I was working on my mental health, and working hard on it. I did talk openly with my co-workers about my struggles. I always felt my openness made me more relatable to the rest of the staff.
They say you get more flies with honey, so why not happier employees get more customers? Fix the Heating and Air Conditioning. Fix the broken things ASAP. Staff UP more. Get rid of the bonuses for the managers who beat the grid and start making the grid the way you pad up the line. Make sure the managers are actually doing things, and not just in hiding in the parking lot trying to sell houses, while vaping like a chimney.
Give your employees more clay to work with and teach them to mold that clay into better days. Stop giving the people less to work with and then asking them for more. Get rid of those employees, like IAN, who are real hard strains on the hard working staff around you. Hold more people accountable other than the MOD, which as an MOD, I always felt like I was about to get in trouble. I could feel those eggshells of my youth under my feet yet again.
Make sure the marketing is working. Stop putting so much extra on your employees, when you have the power in your hands to tell your new stories and spread your new messages. Work to listen to those working in the field every day, so that they don’t feel like they need to write their own customer complaints about bad the marketing had become.
I wish the upper management had taken more of an effort to be inside their stores each and every day. I wish they really worked along side their team and learned what could be done better. There, they could work to ensure the quality of life inside the store, matched the quality of life they wanted for people outside the store.
In the end, Illegal Pete’s wasn’t the place for me.
I was up for an AGM position and I had been doing much of the bar manager duties while we were open for 2020. I inquired about the position in our store, but ultimately it was decided I wouldn’t I wasn’t given a chance to interview for it.
I told people I was happy not to get the job. I didn’t want it. I still don’t really know if really wanted the job, but it would have been nice to be invited to the party that I had already been attending. It was when I didn’t get the chance to interview, that I made the choice to leave. I was done, and moving on from a place I cared so greatly about. I just wish I had left on my own terms.
I had drinks this week with a couple of managers who are still with the company. It was good to sit down with them and hear their side of their lives in the company post-Covid. It’s a hard and uncertain world, but it is with great certainty that I was not alone in my feelings. The people running the stores day in and day out are burnt out and ready to flee. It was good to hear the stories of the other stores and know that I was not alone, and while I am crazy, I was not crazy in my frustration, just how I handled that frustration.
I’m sitting here sipping on the very last of my bottle of Jameson IPA Cask. I was gifted the bottle for doing such a great job stepping up and being the acting AGM. It’s going down smooth, but with just a little bit of bite. That bite is to remind me I’m not done working yet, either on myself or in this world. I’m not going to stop this journey, but the sweetness reminds me to look forward to the good times beyond the bad. And even thought I’m mad I got fired for my intensity, I’m on the right path.
I don’t see myself being set back on my Mental Health Journey. This is just another stepping stone, and maybe the right one for me to take. I was just so unhappy and burnt out being in those walls. I think just even being able to write these words down and recognize my own mistakes, I’m so much further on my journey than I realized.
I am going to keep meditating. I am going to keep working on myself. I am going to keep reading the Buddhism books. I’m going to keep bugging you guys with my new found knowledge and unsolicited advice. For a while I’ll be without insurance and I’ll have to do keep this going without the Prozac and therapist, but I’m looking for good, honest work to take that monster inside me and train it to be the puppy dog I know it can be.
Once I get insurance again, I’ll re-start therapy. I ‘m going to do a deep within myself and really uncover a lot of those childhood trauma’s and learn how to squash them. I want to learn how to not only control my stress, but find ways to become one with it. I want to keep learning and growing and becoming the best Damian.
And while this road has been rough, great things have been appearing in my life while on this journey. When I started working on healing myself, I met the love of my life. All because I was working to be a better ME. I’ve rediscovered my joy for reading. I have a new found love of JAZZ & Classical music. I’ve been writing sooooo much lately and not really cringing at my output.
Maybe I’ll take this time to actually hammer out my time travel-zombie book that has been itching away at the back of my head. Maybe I’ll start my podcast back up, with a focus on mental health & recovery. Maybe I will start that non-profit. I’m really focus on doing things that make me happy, those things will make me feel more complete.
Illegal Pete’s wasn’t the end of my path. I’ll never forget my time there. It brought me a lot of joy, pain, friends, enemies, family, and life. I’ll never lose the PTSD that comes with Hockey Nights at DU or Friday lunches at DTC. I’ll never forget sitting at DU, drinking and talking about life the universe and nothing until the sun came up. I’ll never forget those fireside chats in Tempe, AZ talking philosophy and making life long friends. I’ll never forget that Pete Turner, THE PETE, is my friend and knows who I am and has complemented the things I’ve done with my little life.
It’s a well meaning company and I expect it to learn and grow and do better. I’m sad that I won’t be a part of that growth, but maybe if they read this, maybe they will work to shape the company with some of my suggestions. I hope they really start working on taking care of the people inside the restaurant, as well as they do outside of the restaurant.
I write all these words out. I tell all these stories about working with Mental “illness” and I’ve been reading about Buddhism and teaching and I wonder… I wonder if these writings and this openness isn’t what I’m suppose to be doing? I learned from Pete’s that I love teaching and training, but can you imagine me teaching a room full of middle school children, and not going completely mad? Maybe I’m just out here because I can teach a lot of health and healing to those, who need it.
I hope when I look back at this “low” spot in my life, I will instead see the starting point of some new journey.
Thanks Pete’s for the for the literally hundreds of opportunities you have given me.
-Damian Burford
10/10/2020
