David Amidon
MARCH 19, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.
I’m grateful that there are people that have been reaching out to us the past few days. They’re regulars and we know them pretty well, and they very clearly don’t need to support us or anything, they’re just getting a meal plan because we’re offering it so they say, here we’ll do this, cause that’s a subscription thing so it’s kind of like here’s an ongoing payment we’ll give you guys and you know, then the food is good and they love the food too, but it starts out as just like “Hey I see you’re doing this thing we’re I can guarantee that I can help you out.” So that’s super awesome, plus family and friends. It’s kind of nice that I get to come here and see a couple of people without having to start up a FaceTime at home. I’m just mostly thankful that not walking in here and nothing is happening. And the people I work with also have been super creative in trying to come up with all kinds of ways to help out the people that can’t be here, like the people we’ve had to furlough for now. The fighting spirit, the community aspect of it has been oddly refreshing in a way despite everything else.
Make sure you’re following up every single thing you possibly can, like unemployment benefits, looking stuff online, there’s all kinds of work from home opportunities that don’t always sound super fun like Amazon customer service or you know, there’s some really some interesting ones too, you can teach children from other countries which you can do online and you don’t need a certification for it. Just finding different creative ways to maybe not just drown in your debt or whatever you have going on…but also not getting to morbid about it. Six weeks sounds like a very long time but you know there’s Fifty Two weeks in a year, so hopefully whatever that math is, Forty Seven weeks or whatever, all go the way we expect them too in the start of the year. I haven’t really thought too much about what to advise people to do. Keep in mind that for now we have some kind of end date or end goal, or something and yeah it’s an opportunity to find a creative impulse to find a way to keep yourself occupied, keep yourself busy. Maybe shake up your routine a little bit. I know I had a routine where I would go to work, go to Mr. Toads, and then go home. I don’t really have that anymore so I’m taking walks. I’m reading more books instead of internet articles cause I’m running out of articles that aren’t apocalyptic in nature to read (Laughs).
I’ve reassessed my smoking habit a lot. I don’t typically smoke on days off of work and then I have been. And you know, as someone that smokes, you get that tightness in your chest sometimes and then you get anxious and then it amplifies that and then I start to get anxious about what if it’s not that, what if I’m getting sick? (Laughs) So I’ve left one of my two packs at home earlier today and might get thrown away later because I’ve been feeling that tightness a lot today. It’s really helped me reconsider my health in a lot of ways cause I’ve been one of those people, you know I’m 31 years old and I’ve kind of perpetually lived like I’m 24 and you know, I just haven’t always taken my health that seriously because I don’t typically get sick or get injured so I’ve been really kind of taking more stock to those kind of things. Like thinking of ways to maintain my body in a better and mindful way, not just go through the emotions and anticipate that I’ll always feel young and spry.
I’m hopeful that we can find some kind of normalcy. I’m hopeful that this industry is not gone. Because I know for a lot of people that’s not an impossible thought and that’s really scary. But I’m hopeful for that, and I’m hopeful that the NBA will put on some kind of playoff (Laughs) and I can watch LeBron and the Lakers do some cool stuff again. There’s such a strong fighting spirit and community to everyone that I’ve talked to and there’s so many companies from huge corporations like The Jameson Group has put out this fund together for bartenders and Blackstone set up a fund and have already raised $150,000 for restaurant workers. It’s just nice to see that people are really rallying around each other and I would hope that would continue. Especially having working in the Old Market for 6 years now, we all have that like V.Mertz, Boiler Room, Us, and Mr. Toads. We all know each other and get along really well and it’s been kind of heart warming because all my focus has been down here most of the time. It’s been really nice to see that that’s a full city wide feeling.
There are people like Ben Maides that I think about and I hope that he still has his restaurant. He’s got an awesome family life, he’s got an incredible family. I’ve always known Tim better than I’ve known Ben because we were the same range in high school, but I worked for Ben and Ben is just an incredible dude and he puts everything he’s got into whatever he’s doing. But from the moment that I met that dude he’s just so overwhelmingly incredible to me that no matter how hard things are right now I just can’t imagine that he’s not doing something productive and good and keeping himself focused on the one closest to him. I’ve always found him as a really inspiring person, and uh, I don’t think he’s going to lose that so I think he’s going to be great.
I was telling one of our cooks earlier that sometimes it feels like I dreamt an entire profession and then I woke up and now it doesn’t exist. So I’m hopeful that this is the dream and reality is what we were previously experiencing and we get back to that in some kind of short order. That’s kind of what I’m clinging to right now I suppose.
