It’s not so great, however, when I look at how much time I’ve put into it, then consider how little (financially speaking) I have to show for it. It sucks when customer after customer comes in looking for “a regular cup of coffee,” interspersed with yuppies who want to order everything “grande” and “skinny.” And it really, really bothers me that most of my employees still don’t have a true appreciation of coffees — the differences in origins, roast profiles, brewing methods, etc.

That last one, of course, is my own fault. And it pisses me off.

I usually place the blame on them — lazy college kids with 15 things on their minds, 14 of which don’t matter in the slightest. (This is, at least, what my brain says to me in true self-righteous fashion.) But it has hit me of late that if coffee is an art, the artists certainly need training… and it’s up to me to make that happen.

There are positive things happening despite me: we’re selling much more French pressed coffee these days — drip is convenient, but ranks at least fourth on the list of Reasonable Ways to Brew Coffee — and selling more beans for home use than ever before. Yet I still sense a general lack of coffee knowledge, in Bowling Green generally, as well as among my employees.

This was made all the more painfully evident upon my visit today to stumptowncoffee.com, the website of a Portland, Ore.-based cafe chain that does everything coffee on an unbelievable scale. For starters, there’s no drip coffee at all… they brew their straight coffees in French presses all day long, yet keep their price points competitive in their market. Their employees are not only coffee experts, but dressed to impress and driven to please. Outside of their sole New York location, you probably won’t find a better cup of retail coffee outside the West Coast.

Of course, I’m in Bowling Green and have a far different clientele; I won’t be getting rid of my Bunn brewer anytime soon, nor denying customers “espresso drinks” that contain nearly as much flavoring as coffee. But just surfing through their website was a bit like visiting a monastery: I’m humbled at Stumptown’s dedication, ashamed at my lack of it, and left wishing I could flip a switch and become as holy as they. But whether we’re talking spirit or coffee, there’s no way to simply leap into enlightenment… it’s a journey, and it starts with a few small steps. I plan to try taking one or two, and with a little luck (or blessing?) I may look back years from now, only to find that my origin is out of sight and my destination much nearer than I could have imagined.

A glimpse at the interior of my new career... the old newsroom has no windows! But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I didn’t even know what a copy editor did, but soon I was in charge of the thing, overseeing a revolving staff of 0-2 people in the proofreading of stories. I did a stint as opinion editor, where I really crafted my writing style, but soon took a part-time job at the town’s actual newspaper, the Bowling Green Daily News.

A few months later, part-time became full-time; a few months after that, I got promoted to weekend editor: basically, the guy who runs the show when no one else wants to because they have lives outside the office. Here I added to my knowledge, learning page design and news judgment and some management skills.

A couple years later, burnt out from all that jazz, I bought a coffeeshop. (Note, I had not — and still have not — returned to college). Which I still have, and which is cool, but it doesn’t quite “pay the bills” for a married dad of two kiddos, one of whom is special-needs. So I headed back to the newspaper, got my old job back, and kept the coffeeshop… thus making me a “beancounting journalist,” to paraphrase my friend Nathan’s astute observation, which links back to a Kurt Vonnegut quote.

Well, late last night the beancounting journalist made yet another stark departure: I accepted an offer to become the Creative Director of Earnhart+Friends, a boutique (read: small but good) marketing firm based here in Bowling Green.

It’s truly a blessing, for a number of reasons. The schedule is more flexible (this helps my family and my business), the job is more creative and less cyclical (new projects every day, few if any “rules” that have to be followed), and — let’s face it — journalism isn’t the field anyone wants to find him/herself stuck in these days. (It’s not a terrible gig, but an escape plan is a must.) A close friend of mine is the Art Director, which means he and I will essentially be the firm’s top-tier tag team (underneath the owner, of course). And to find a job like this in a town like this is a dream come true… I am certain it is the only one of its kind in a 90-mile radius, at least.

In the previous few months I’ve taken part in writing TV scripts, rebranding a widely available retail milk, conceptualizing a new restaurant, crafting a new direction for the company itself — and all freelance, while keeping the other flaming clubs of my life going up and down in this juggling routine. Come July, however, my days as a muckraker are over — at least for now. What the future holds, I can’t tell. But the present is looking pretty good.

Oh! And the millions of you reading this will be glad to know that I’ll probably be able to get a bit more blogging done too.

Now, my jaw is sore from all the numbing shots, but the tooth feels good. I got to listen to the dentist’s iPod while he drilled… Counting Crows’ classic “August and Everything After,” which I haven’t heard in years and which brought back great memories. (He noted that the Jonas Brothers was not his, but his daughter’s… I’m not sure whether to believe him or not.)

After that fun experience, I went to the shop, where I was met with a refrigerated display case that refuses to work, a trio of credit card processing salesladies (why do they travel in threes?) who proceeded to ask lots of questions about coffee drinks, buy nothing, hassle me about my provider, tell me their rates were better, and then not show me a single reason to believe them.

Then, I had to lay someone off. Not fire, but lay off, simply because I don’t have the hours to give. She informed me that many of her friends come to the shop specifically to see her, and this is why I should lay someone else off. Eesh! This is not the fun part of being a business owner. (I’ve long since forgotten, actually, what the fun part is.)

Now, Shelley’s off to Nashville to see some friends, and I’m taking care of a mute 2-year-old and a wide-awake 2-month-old.

Life is so very, very strange.

1.) Pat Buchanan has a sense of humor:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=blnduEgwBH0]

2.) Oprah has decided to try strolling down the Maury route:

3.) Creepy music and decent editing make absolutely baseless conspiracy theories seem credible.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=JvGByJ65lRs]

1.) Pat Buchanan has a sense of humor:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=blnduEgwBH0]

2.) Oprah has decided to try strolling down the Maury route:

3.) Creepy music and decent editing make absolutely baseless conspiracy theories seem credible.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=JvGByJ65lRs]

Used to be, whenever there was a “good show” (performance by a band I liked) anywhere within a couple of hours, I gathered a few friends and went. These days, it takes a free performance by Radiohead or something equally rare to get me to a show. It gets me down sometimes… I wonder if I haven’t lost the capacity for spontaneous fun. But it’s part of growing up, I guess… two jobs, a child and a lot of extracurricular nonsense make “spare time” hard to come by.

When I was just starting in college and beginning my life as a rock star, I liked to “chat” with the artists I went to see, when and if I could pull it off. And, invariably, I tried (subconsciously, I think) to steer the conversation toward how I am in a band, too! and attempting to get some sort of verification that I was really someone.

Looking back, I’m certain, the people on the other end of this conversation just wanted to get out.

•••

This is how I feel, nowadays, when people—good, fine people who have no ill intent or hidden agendas—try to talk to me about coffee, particularly ®Starbucks®. It usually starts like this:

Hey Justin, have you heard that ®Starbucks® is doing xxx?

Uh, nope, haven’t heard that. (I attempt a subtle but direct signal of disinterest.)

Yeah! They’re facing competition from xxx and so they’re trying xxx to get back some business!

Oh, that’s interesting. (I attempt, again, to signal that this is, in fact, NOT interesting.)

Well, you know, I went the other day and this new xxx thing is really pretty good!

At this point, if Shelley’s around, she tries to steer the conversation, as Mr. Lebowski would say, “into the mountain.” This rarely works, but shifts the conversation like so:

Oh yeah (snark snark)! I guess I can’t say “®Starbucks®” around  you, huh? (Snark snark!)

No, it’s okay. (I attempt to convey that, just maybe, there is a whole world of things we could talk about vis a vis ®Starbucks® that would illuminate this instigator and somewhat justify my by-this-time-irritated demeanor.)

The conversation ends here, generally… and I get the feeling that both sides go away extremely unhappy. Me, confounded that I had to endure this yet again and pissed off generally with the state of coffee knowledge; the other person, flabbergasted at my aloof demeanor and thinking that I think that I’m better than them.

But that’s not it at all. It’s that, No. 1, as someone in the coffee industry, I don’t really care about a layperson’s perspective on a corporation that is wholly different from my operation, save for the fact that the earthborn product we sell is the same; and No. 2, that the person doesn’t see that ®Starbucks® is in some ways a legitimate threat to my livelihood, that the idea that ®Starbucks® IS COFFEE is a hindrance to what I’m spending my time and hard-earned money (not that of shareholders) on.

I don’t mind that people go to ®Starbucks®. It is what it is, the Wal-Mart of coffee (although the clientelé may be, on average, considerably better dressed), and it’s not likely to disappear anytime soon. It can even be seen as a help to a business like mine, helping move “boutique coffee” into the mainstream. But I’m a husband/father/entrepreneur with considerably meager means… the David to the drive-thru Goliath. I’m out hunting down my business, armed only with the slingshot of a quality product and knowledgable staff, while the big bad wolf is drawing in prey by means of neon signs and slick plastic interiors and genius marketing.

So no, I’m sorry, I’m not all that interested in what ®Starbucks® is doing this week. I don’t go there—and I don’t mind if you do. But I’m too busy trying to provide for my family to think about the neat new ways some rich guys in an office building found to make another penny per cup.

Today, that’s 12 ounces of rich espresso, diluted with a bit of water, touched with a bit of cream and accented by a dash of turbinado sugar (it’s grown in volcanic areas of Hawaii).

There are some days—growing more frequent as my responsibilities continue to multiply—that I wish I didn’t own a business at all. There’s taxes to do, systems to improve, business to build; it’s all so damn tiring. But then I walk in and half the customers say “Hi,” and I grind a few beans and push a couple of buttons.

And there it is. Real, honest-to-God pleasure. The pleasure of the unnecessary. The pleasure of a beverage whose roots I know well (but not well enough), whose journey I can trace on a map with geographical certainty.

And a beverage whose true beauties, if it weren’t for me, might not be known by a few accountants and lawyers and artists and other downtown folk. Most of them, admittedly, don’t notice those beauties. But I’ve opened a few eyes to the lesser-known qualities (and opened countless sleepy eyes by sheer virtue of caffeination).

So here’s to a small Americano. You might think that it’s free, for me. But I’ve paid for it many times over… and at this moment, it’s worth every penny.

• A good number of black people are upset over the selection of a Chinese sculptor to fashion a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As if Chinese-Americans don’t benefit from the civil rights movement.

• A sizable contingent in my own town of Bowling Green think it’s unfair to non-smokers that any business should be allowed to decide for itself whether or not to ban smoking. My libertarian sensibilities are glad that the majority of city commissioners aren’t buying it.

• Examples abound of non-Christians upset over any display of Christianity in the public realm, even if it’s not condoned or endorsed by the state. It’s unfair for a religious person, apparently, to talk about his articles of faith—even though faith by definition is something unprovable and based on opinion.

In my own workplace, similar situations are prevalent right now. First off, we have a now-demoted news editor and now-demoted sports editor. Both were told for years to shape up and made little if any attempt to do so. And both are upset over their loss of position and salary—not, it must be noted, over their loss of responsibilities. Secondly, I’ve sensed growing disdain from a fellow colleague or two over the hours I’ve been working lately. Justin’s not at his desk on Tuesday afternoons! Even though there’s nothing for him to do? Scandalous! The nerve!

And that’s where my own notion of “fairness” differs… namely, I rarely know anyone’s situations at all as closely as I know my own. If those colleague thought for a second, “Well, Justin in fact works 10-hour days two days a week,” and “Well, Justin in fact does the majority of supplemental work,” and “Well, Justin also runs a business,” they might (I emphasize that word) see that they actually have a much better deal than I. Flip the coin and you get the same result: I see all kinds of things, at work and elsewhere, that initially inflame my senses. “Why’s that guy got all this free time, and all this money? Why don’t I have it?” But sooner or later, it dawns on me that I have no idea what that guy’s going through, what he went through, what he will go through… and maybe, just maybe, I’m a lot better off.

That’s an article of faith, I guess. But it’s one I try to hold on to—my life is going great, despite the many difficulties. Because I’m sure it could be worse, and I don’t deserve most of what I have, and I don’t need half of what I want.

Sports and elections should be fair… and “life’s not fair” sounds nice, but it’s built on a flawed premise. Life can’t be judged that way… it’s not a game, and it’s not governed by rules that we made up and can hold others to. No… life is a mystery, or a drama, or a journey. But it’s not fair because it can’t be, wasn’t meant to be, and wouldn’t be much fun if it was.

• A good number of black people are upset over the selection of a Chinese sculptor to fashion a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As if Chinese-Americans don’t benefit from the civil rights movement.

• A sizable contingent in my own town of Bowling Green think it’s unfair to non-smokers that any business should be allowed to decide for itself whether or not to ban smoking. My libertarian sensibilities are glad that the majority of city commissioners aren’t buying it.

• Examples abound of non-Christians upset over any display of Christianity in the public realm, even if it’s not condoned or endorsed by the state. It’s unfair for a religious person, apparently, to talk about his articles of faith—even though faith by definition is something unprovable and based on opinion.

In my own workplace, similar situations are prevalent right now. First off, we have a now-demoted news editor and now-demoted sports editor. Both were told for years to shape up and made little if any attempt to do so. And both are upset over their loss of position and salary—not, it must be noted, over their loss of responsibilities. Secondly, I’ve sensed growing disdain from a fellow colleague or two over the hours I’ve been working lately. Justin’s not at his desk on Tuesday afternoons! Even though there’s nothing for him to do? Scandalous! The nerve!

And that’s where my own notion of “fairness” differs… namely, I rarely know anyone’s situations at all as closely as I know my own. If those colleague thought for a second, “Well, Justin in fact works 10-hour days two days a week,” and “Well, Justin in fact does the majority of supplemental work,” and “Well, Justin also runs a business,” they might (I emphasize that word) see that they actually have a much better deal than I. Flip the coin and you get the same result: I see all kinds of things, at work and elsewhere, that initially inflame my senses. “Why’s that guy got all this free time, and all this money? Why don’t I have it?” But sooner or later, it dawns on me that I have no idea what that guy’s going through, what he went through, what he will go through… and maybe, just maybe, I’m a lot better off.

That’s an article of faith, I guess. But it’s one I try to hold on to—my life is going great, despite the many difficulties. Because I’m sure it could be worse, and I don’t deserve most of what I have, and I don’t need half of what I want.

Sports and elections should be fair… and “life’s not fair” sounds nice, but it’s built on a flawed premise. Life can’t be judged that way… it’s not a game, and it’s not governed by rules that we made up and can hold others to. No… life is a mystery, or a drama, or a journey. But it’s not fair because it can’t be, wasn’t meant to be, and wouldn’t be much fun if it was.

So I use Firefox to post (I’m using it now), and it generally does what I want it to do.

Now Shelley is a PC person, and in fact we just bought a new Compaq laptop for her, and it’s running Windows Vista. Of course, it comes setup with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which I’ve always found to be the worst browser on the planet. But the new look of Vista—along with all the Safari features that the Big M has ripped off—reassured me, and I didn’t install anything else.

So, I arrived at home yesterday to find Shelley irritated over her attempt at blog posting—via Internet Explorer—on the family blog; basically, the formatting of the pictures and text wasn’t coming out anything like the preview. I immediately said, “Let’s download Firefox,” and she, frustrated, said, “Well, we’ll do it when I’m done, but I’m gonna fix this now because if people look at the blog I don’t want it to be all jacked up.” So I went ahead and fixed my lunch, while she continued to post, evaluate, edit, repost, and so on, adding minimal hard returns and such to try to get the alignment corrected.

It was at this point that I wondered, “How can we possibly be so different?”

In my mind, it would’ve made more sense to stop editing and just download and install Firefox—a task that later took me less than 3 minutes—and then use Firefox to edit the blog. What was the likelihood that anyone was going to look at the blog during that 3 or 5 minutes of bad alignment, whilst Firefox was being installed? Virtually none, I think.

All this to say: Other people are often the biggest stumbling block to my faith. I have no doubt whatsoever of a creator; I know enough about the history and origins of the Bible to trust it. But every time I deal with someone (anyone) who acts in a way that’s incomprehensible to me, I have the strong urge to turn individualistically new-age: Is all this a dream, and I’m the only real person? Is it some sort of cosmic challenge, in which I’m tested on my dealings with people whose entire way of thinking is (to my mind) broken? The difference in thought I’ve mentioned may not seem significant… but what about the many employees I’ve had, to whom it hasn’t occurred to change a light bulb if it burns out? The reporters who don’t understand why “The festival included many activities, like ring toss, face-painting, etc.” gives the impression that the festival didn’t actually include those activities? The Dairy Queen employee who wouldn’t make my wife a Mocha Chip Blizzard® because it wasn’t on the menu, despite the fact that they had all the ingredients?

I have a hard time believing these people are real in the sense that I’m real. I can understand differences of opinion on politics, religion, art, music, etc. But I really can’t fathom that so many people would operate in such senseless ways. It causes me a lot of grief, really, and a lot of wondering what God is up to, exactly. Were I to meet him, maybe I’d get the same vibe from him.