early mornings | little sarah Big World

August 16, 2012

Crosswords

Mornings when I open at the coffee shop start early, 6:15am, though I often get there closer to 6:30. I have the opening duties distilled down to a single fluid sweep. Then I unlock the doors, serve the regulars. Wipe coffee grounds and pastry flakes from too many surfaces, weigh out the day’s beans.

And then I make myself a beverage and do the crossword puzzle. A little mid-morning break.

My dad’s a crossword savant, breezing through the Sunday Time’s puzzles (even the diagram-less!), while I’m proud to have finished a Tuesday in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Still, you’ve got to start somewhere. Keep yourself occupied.

May 10, 2012

Early Morning, Hostel

Hello, Mendoza!

After a long and very fancy bus ride…

…I arrived at my hostel in Mendoza!

…with grotesquely swollen feet and ankles:

Ah, well. You can’t have it all. Fingers crossed that this is from my non-vegan meat-fest yesterday (I was so hungry, and so tired of snacking. Argentina is the worst place not to eat meat or dairy), or maybe from too much running? I would hate to have to go to any sort of doctor here.

February 23, 2012

Scenes from a Coffee Shop

Early mornings, watching the city wake up with the sun outside and the busying street. Hot, black coffee. Regulars, like Art, who always gets a glass mug, a palmier, a refill, and tips at the end.

Chatting with the bakers, filling orders, grinding beans. Coffee dust everywhere, perfuming my hair and clothes for hours afterwards.

The hiss and purr of steaming milks, delicate dripping filling huge pots of coffee, and light crunch of flaky pastries. Clinking plates and silverware.

* * *

It is not my dream job, not my life’s work, but it is a satisfying way to pass the time.

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February 14, 2012

Pants on Fire

So I lied. I acted like everything was sunshine and rainbows and self-improvement and growth. And it was.

Until it wasn’t.

Last night I cried myself to sleep, and not even softly, but in a major freak-out style. Bedtime is not my best time. Sometimes I lie in bed thinking of what I’ve posted for the day, and I’m like “Ugh, shut the fuck UP, Sarah.”

Sometimes the PMA and general optimism is too much even for me. The can-do attitude. You should know that’s not who I am, or at least not all the time. You should know that I’m moody, and that I am still having Spain-related regrets, and that I bawled loud enough last night that I’m pretty sure my neighbors heard me.

I tend to get super emotional around my birthday. Probably something to do with “another year passed” -style introspection.

Because I am not where I want to be, Friends. My jobs are fine, but they are not my life’s work. They are a way to make money, to mark the days flying past. Everything’s moved so quickly, since I got back from Spain, and I don’t like it. I’m all for being industrious, but not if being so busy means not a moment to spare to look at my life and ask myself what it is that I think I am doing.

Last night I realized I don’t know what I’m doing. I know what I wanted, what could have been, but those ships have sailed. Now all I know is that I don’t want this–to live in Salt Lake, surrounded by children, and weddings, to have so many empty social engagements and not enough opportunities to just sit down and talk, to be working nearly every day, early mornings and late nights, all in an effort to save up money, and for WHAT?

I don’t know for what, Friends. I don’t know what comes next. And so I cry.

* * *

Incidentally, the sight of my clean, dry dishes in the sunlight this morning pleased me in an inexplicably deep and sincere way. I have not forgotten how I felt last night. I need to look into that. But today I have a rack full of clean dishes, an example of some measure of foresight. And that pleases me.

For now.

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