everything stays

believe it or not we drink on the job, it’s rude to decline a drink offered to you by a customer

yes. I’ve gotten drunk on the job. yes it was cause I was bought a number of jagerbombs. no I didn’t go home or fuck up.

‘kiss the bartender’ is a popular dare at small bars and private functions. whether it’s on the cheek or on the lips is totally up to you

I have been offered people’s number in a variety of ways. sometimes I’ve been handed a note, other times I’ve just been handed someone’s phone on the 'add a new contact’ page. girls are more direct, guys try the subtler approach of flirting until declined

Your average bartender doesn’t always know cocktails. Especially if they’re not on the menu.

Y'all cocktails are potent. If your character is downing ten long Island iced teas they’re going to hospital

we live for tips. You could be the biggest cunt in the world but if tip me a fiver I’ll put on a fake af smile and pretend you’re a sound guy

speaking of. Young people tend to buy you drinks, older people tend to tip you.

There’s a number of bar calls we use. 86 means we’re out of stock. 68 means we’re back in stock. More relevant for fic writers however: 700 means a hot customer, usually aimed at women but can be used for guys too. eg. 'lady in red. 700’

If someone asks what 700 means when asked. We lie through our teeth. We usually say it means you need serving or you look drunk.

Every cellar in a bar looks like a serial killers basement don’t @ me (I have asked someone to come with me on 2 occasions when I needed to change a barrel when the electricity wasn’t working down there)

(side note. If its a cellar like, hatch in the floor cellar, there is some solid content there for injuries and whatnot. I have seen people not realise the hatch is open and just,, step into a hole)

I dress for tips. My managers actively encourages this. A lot of managers at bars are kinda sleazy.

bartenders fight over who’s serving the hot customer through extreme staring and power walking

Nobody is more attractive than the person who brings their empty glasses back to the bar (ily)

in the UK it is ILLEGAL to pour someone a triple. You can pour someone a double and a shot on the side and if the customer pours the shot into their double then that’s on them, but you as a bartender cannot serve a triple in one glass.

Its also illegal to have a happy hour but if y'all wanna forget that for a 'I’ll make it a happy hour *wink wink nudge nudge*’ pun, go feral

my absolute favourite term in bartending is lizard. If someone orders a round and then at the end is like 'oh and two guinness’ absolute lizard behaviour

someone clicks their fingers to get your attention? Lizard. Also not getting served.

I love it.

Otherwise, the Guinness doesn’t achieve the distinctive head that it’s known for.

So with Guinness having the wait time built in, most bartenders will pour the Guinness first, and do the rest of the orders during the wait, then finish the Guinness. Ordering a Guinness last means they have to drop the drink they’re currently making (because they will have started making your order as you speak, especially for a round order) to make the Guinness, or otherwise they will have to wait the minute and half alongside you. Which would really piss them off.

And as an extra note: you can’t drink the Guinness immediately after the second pour. You need to wait for the second pour to settle. You’ll known it has done this when the brown frothy liquid beneath the head has turned a uniform black.

“Naruto, you see me like this every day…” Sasuke says with a tired sigh. 

“I see the sunrise everyday too….Doesn’t make it less pretty.” 

when you write something that inexplicably just cracks you up and you have to stop writing to laugh

when the words go all by themselves

when you write something awesome and think “damn. I really just wrote that.” Bonus points if you read it out loud to yourself softly.

when you get a really good comment/feedback and you can’t stop smiling for the rest of the day

“I’m convinced some dogs just KNOW they’re cute and take full advantage of it lol”

*casually picks up ballet au again after almost a year*

If you knew that nobody would ever read your work, would you keep writing?

Let’s be honest, most of us probably wouldn’t. Regardless of what people say, I doubt that most would keep writing stories for 30, 40 or 50 years without even thinking about readers or publication. We’re social animals, after all. Then there’s the tree in the forest stuff. If nobody has ever seen it, does it even exist?

Most writers (and artists) hope that one day, someone will appreciate what they did. There’s nothing wrong with that. I certainly wouldn’t be publishing my musings here on the blog if I didn’t want people to read them. It’s important to stay motivated. But there’s a downside to this too.

When you’re thinking about your readers while writing, pretty soon you’ll realise that you’ll also be judged. That someone will read it and think it’s the stupidest shit they’ve ever seen. We’ve all read something and thought that.

For some people, this self-doubt can be crippling. Most writers struggle with it in one way or another. Steven Pressfield called this resistance (check out the War of Art — it’s a fantastic read).

The hope that people will enjoy your work helps you stay motivated in the long run, but it can slow you down when you’re actually doing the work. You can’t give it up! So what do you do?

Here are some things that helped me get over myself.

Free-writing

I’ve been journaling for many years now. The way I do it evolves constantly. At one point, I used free-writing.

Every morning, I set a timer for 30 minutes. I started writing anything that came to mind as fast as I possibly could. I never share my journal entries with anyone, so the quality didn’t matter to me.

My original intention was to teach myself that words are cheap. That I can write more at any point. That I have an endless supply of them. I did this for over a year, and it helped me a ton. But I also discovered that when I was just writing for myself, I wrote more than 4x faster than usual.

The sheer quantity of words I was able to churn out in under 30 minutes was insane.

Throwaway Stories

This is another way to learn the same lesson.

Some writing teachers and courses use an exercise that asks the students to spend an hour working on a short story. The class expects to be presenting it at the end in some form. They work hard on making it the best they can.

At the end of the hour, the teacher asks the students to destroy what they wrote without showing anyone. Pretty harsh but effective.

The lesson is simple: what you write now doesn’t matter. You can always write something else.

Writing for Yourself

Sometimes, the best way to write for an audience is to write for yourself. Write as if nobody will ever see it, as if you will tear it up and throw it into the fire (or hit CTRL+A and DELETE).

After all, you don’t have to publish every story you finish. If you don’t like it, you can delete it later. Or you can revise the hell out of it so even you won’t recognise the original.

When in doubt, just write for yourself.

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Past Editions

#186: A Stimulus Check for Your Mind, March 2021

#185: Always Behind the Schedule. March 2021

#184: The Most Important Skill for Writers, February 2021

#183: The Writers’ Love-Hate Relationship With Writing, February 2021

Loving you is not expecting something from you; is simply waiting for you, silent, night and day.

Loving you is not demanding of you, it is not forcing you, It is not to pressure you, it is not to convince you, It is not defeating yourself; is to help you free yourself from yourself, of me, of everything, is to lend you my breath, to seduce you without desires, or objectives, is to enjoy yourself.

Loving you is not reject your flaws; is to make me sensitive to them and make you sensitive to them, never expecting you to change them.

Loving you is not take refuge in your person; is to build a shelter together, with our own hands, where the whole world can fit.

Loving you is not wishing be the center of your life; is to drive you, If you let me, if I can do it, to the life of your center, without seeking rewards.

Loving you is not giving up to my dreams for you; is waking up from my dreams, with you, taken from your hand.

Loving you is not flattering you is not puffed up, It is not weakening you is not to get your attention, it is not confusing you; is to show you worth of your shadow, the wonder of your own light, is to help you live alert, is wanting you to fly while I look at you, absorbed, happy.

Loving you is not fearing you is not owning you, it is not guarding you, It is not watching over you; is hugging you warmly, is to open my door for you, is to observe you in full light, in total darkness, with the soul’s eyes.

Loving you is not just looking at you, smell you, or taste you; is looking with you at the same time anything, make me one with your smell, be part of you.

Loving you is not tell you that I love you, It’s not to think that I loved you that I will love you; is asking myself Yes I love you, is to feel it, leaving let it develop in me, without any need to tell you.

Loving you is not always be by your side, It is not always thinking of you It is not always dreaming of you; is to be available to you, is to be you, to become one with you, is to be aware of your dreams, and of mine with you, is to allow know me completely to the very center of my pain, and of my love.

Loving you is not look at you from above, or from below, from behind, from the front; is to cultivate a balance that again and again feel what happens for our common center.

Loving you is not projecting ideas about you is not idealizing yourself; is to see you from afar, from close, from within (from you), from outside, see you from beyond me.

Loving you is not loving you only when you love me, when you’re pretty when you smile at yourself, when you kiss me, when you caress me, when you walk gracefully, when you are calm, when you are happy; is to accept you whole As you are, always and everywhere, with simplicity, gladly.

Loving you is not writing you my love poems; is to be love when I write to you, and when not.

Loving you is not writing that I love you; is to share with you the best of me (love), no return, without horizon.

Ousía Poética ©

Amarte no es esperar algo de ti; es simplemente esperarte, en silencio, de noche y de día.

Amarte no es exigirte, no es obligarte, no es presionarte, no es convencerte, no es derrotarte; es ayudarte a liberarte de ti, de mí, de todo, es prestarte mi aliento, seducirte sin deseos, ni objetivos, es disfrutar de ti.

Amarte no es rechazar tus defectos; es hacerme sensible a ellos y hacerte sensible a ellos, sin esperar jamás que los cambies.

Amarte no es refugiarme en tu persona; es construir un refugio juntos, con nuestras propias manos, donde pueda caber el mundo entero.

Amarte no es desear ser el centro de tu vida; es conducirte, si tú me lo permites, si soy capaz de hacerlo, a la vida de tu centro, sin buscar recompensas.

Amarte no es renunciar a mis sueños por ti; es despertar de mis sueños, contigo, tomado de tu mano.

Amarte no es halagarte, no es envanecerte, no es debilitarte, no es llamar tu atención, no es confundirte; es mostrarte la valía de tu sombra, la maravilla de tu propia luz, es ayudarte a vivir alerta, es querer que vueles mientras te miro, absorto, dichoso.

Amarte no es temerte, no es poseerte, no es custodiarte, no es vigilarte; es abrazarte cálidamente, es abrirte mi puerta, es observarte a plena luz, en total oscuridad, con los ojos del alma.

Amarte no es sólo mirarte, olerte, o probarte; es mirar contigo a la vez cualquier cosa, hacerme uno con tu olor, formar parte de ti.

Amarte no es decirte que te amo, no es pensar que te amé, que te amaré; es preguntarme a mí mismo si te amo, es sentirlo, dejando que se desarrolle en mí, sin necesidad alguna de decírtelo.

Amarte no es estar siempre a tu lado, no es pensar siempre en ti, no es soñar siempre contigo; es estar disponible para ti, es ser tú, hacerme uno contigo, es ser consciente de tus sueños, y de los míos contigo, es permitir que me conozcas por entero hasta el mismo centro de mi dolor, y de mi amor.

Amarte no es mirarte desde arriba, o desde abajo, desde atrás, desde delante; es cultivar un equilibrio que una y otra vez sienta que pasa por nuestro centro común.

Amarte no es proyectar ideas sobre ti, no es idealizarte; es verte desde lejos, desde cerca, desde dentro (desde ti), desde fuera, verte desde más allá de mí.

Amarte no es quererte únicamente cuando me amas, cuando estás guapa, cuando te sonríes, cuando me besas, cuando me acaricias, cuando caminas con elegancia, cuando estás tranquila, cuando estás feliz; es aceptarte entera tal cual eres, siempre y en todo lugar, con sencillez, con alegría.

Amarte no es escribirte mis poemas de amor; es ser amor cuando te escribo, y cuando no.

Amarte no es escribir que te amo; es compartir contigo lo mejor de mí (el amor), sin vuelta atrás, sin horizonte.