On Work and an Identity
Or: the pitfall of putting too much heart into work
On Work and an Identity
Note: this post was originally written in 2020, and it’s been slightly changed and adapted for substack.
Bakeliet Kaffee, Möllingstr. 11, 24103 Kiel
To say that that address changed my life would not be an overstatement.
From September 2016 to the end of 2018, coffee, and this small shop on a street corner, were my life.
Unassuming, as I walked into my first shift. Determined to do good work, and maybe have a little bit of fun while supporting myself throughout my studies, I couldn’t have expected that it would shape so much of my life, even years removed from all of it.
Over the first six months I spent working there, it progressed from a part-time job, to a full-time obsession, to a new identity.
It’s hard to pinpoint when it happened. Maybe it was the time I went in on one calm morning, unpaid, to have my first chance to work with the espresso machine. Maybe it was the time my supervisor sat me down after a particularly hectic Saturday shift and gave me some fairly harsh criticism, but ended with “I’m only telling you this because I know how much you care. I believe you can do better.” Maybe it was the day I opened a Saturday for the first time, or the first time I did an entire Saturday morning shift alone when a colleague fell ill. Maybe it was the day my supervisor quit and I insisted to take over most of her responsibilities. Maybe it was the day I gave my first, or second, or tenth, sensory workshop.
All I know is that along the way, Vinnie became “barista Vinnie.” I would bike past the shop on the way to uni, talk to my colleague opening and have a quick drink, leave uni early for the afternoon shift, close the shop, and repeat it all the next day. I would say to no parties to open both days on weekends (my favorite shifts). I would go out and run into regulars, have a drink and chat with them in the evening, and greet them from behind the counter on the next morning.
I would go on dates, and would respond to “tell me about you” with my love for coffee, my job, and the shop.
I stopped reading, I stopped thinking. My hobby was coffee, and my life was compressed into that street corner. I went in when we were closed to clean grinders and test recipes, and I went in when we were open to chit chat with colleagues when I had to kill some time.
I had so much love for what we did that I had no other needs; or maybe I just didn’t notice them. I had a short feedback loop, I knew day in and day out that I made the lives of hundreds of people a lot better. A smile across the counter meant the world; the reactions of guests after taking a sip were priceless.
And eventually, the rollercoaster went down a little too far, and I had to face the beast and leave. The gradual process of distancing myself while my responsibilities were redistributed took the best of four months. Four exhausting months of working in an office in the week and behind the counter on weekends, while walking past the shop every single day and watching my self, my old self, slip away.
Barista Vinnie wasn’t a barista anymore. He was doing analytics, and he was trying to become “Analytics Vinnie.”
That never happened, though my self from back then would have liked it to.
Ever since I left coffee, I’ve been looking for “the next thing.” The next thing that I could dive into, the next thing that I could become. I’ve tried delving into books, into writing, into online marketing, into programming, and into data.
Some were more successful than others, some fulfilled me more than others, some put me in better circles than others (data was a home run in all regards).
But none became my identity. Though I still pour my heart and soul into work; try as I might, I still couldn’t become my work.
How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes while at court, at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators.
Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 20.2
Now, with nothing else left, I have no choice but to become myself.