Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The Odyssey Continues

Sometimes, you get an onion ring in your basket of fries. Sometimes, you get some beef in your chicken curry. For some, this is an insult, for others, this is a bonus. It's all about perspective.

Many things have happened since my last full-on entry 2014/04/02, today is 2014/11/12 (that's year, month, day f.y.i. -- it's how I write dates naturally), pretty much half a year. I've had guitar students come and go, I've been to Vegas three times, been back to Kaua'i twice -- once for a wedding, once for a couple gigs SWEET, met Asa Akira, my bass player from Leviathan Hawaii has returned thus rounding out Leviathan 2.0., I've been constantly upgrading my guitar lessons, and enrolled in school taking Japanese. Needless to say, I've been busy. I've been, I've been, I've been. I've been doesn't really matter, that's come and gone. What now?

I now work at the restaurant ≤ 2 shifts a week. It is quite literally a sinking ship and due to my (lack of) availability, I've gotten the shaft as far as getting promoted to "Varsity" from "JV," my jokingly but accurate portrayal of the section division. It's very one sided, refer to figure A.
Figure A
Two employees (at bottom) get the lion's share of tables, versus the 4 up top.

In many ways though this has been a blessing. If I actually made money at this place, I'd probably be less inclined to hustle in other aspects of my life, such as music. If I made more money working at the restaurant than I did doing guitar lessons, I might be reluctant to give up the restaurant time, which normally would be the case, but in this instance, it is not. Blessing in disguise?

#ShittyTips & #FatTips have been going well. Whenever I get a ludicrous tip, I post it to my Instagram @brianroberts30 with a short demographic and story behind it. A < 10% warrants a #ShittyTip entry, and a < 30% warrants a #FatTip entry. I'm sure you can imagine that regardless of level of skill of service, one would statistically get more #ShittyTips than #FatTips see figure B.

Figure B
#ServerLife nearly illegible numerology. Could of been mistaken for a #FatTip but sadly, no... Demographic: family of 6; 2 children, a middle aged white couple and a semi-elderly white couple. Did the "Oh and... [item name]" running through hoops later in service. Celebrating military promotion. Used 10% off military card. Used GB promo card. Semi-elderly man paid. Tip<10% = #ShittyTips happy Sunday! #DayJob of a #StarvingMusician

Met Asa Akira, that was rad. Figure C.

Figure C
@AsaAkira #939 award winning #DP #DA and author, very nice to meet you! I hope you liked my rose. What a wonderful person!! @asahole @asahole3@ja3farmanyak

I was invited to a distant friends bachelor party that wounded up being a front for a pseudo-class reunion. Way fun. So, I decided to implement the martingale blackjack system during this adventure. I trained with this blackjack app that I had downloaded to my phone; and every night before bed I'd play a quick half hour session and win $1000 fake dollars or so. In theory, it should work right? Figure D.

Figure D
Portable access to all your gambling addiction needs

And it fucking worked! So I went again a few months later just to gamble, and it worked again! But, such is the nature of gambling, and Vegas is the city with only one story; I was winning, then I lost it all. So the last time I went (about a week ago) I had lost some of my previous winnings. I blame it partially on luck, and partially from deviating from my logical strategy, adopting more of a mainstream (basic strategy) due to over-research. Maybe 2015 will be the full realization of the professional gambler? Or... I'll be a bum in no time.

The Brian Roberts Guitar Academy. B.R.G.A. one word. Yelp: Figure E

Figure E
No. 7 baby for guitar lessons in Honolulu, HI hell yeah

I also have a promo video that I can't seem to find through this blog searcher... so here's the link: http://youtu.be/kwfByAT-AWI

Been doing the BJJ but still a white belt. Figure F:
Figure F
No-Shave-November in full swing

Finally got a real tube amp, and I love it. Figure G:

Figure G
The Carvin V3, extremely versatile -- perfect for me (for now)

And I'm back in school, which has been pretty neat. It's a trip, I actually want to be there and actually want to learn. Way different than when I was last in school which was... 2007. I think also, that because I'm only taking the one Japanese class, I'm not getting too buried in the scholastic work load. These past few months have been a little meager however due to the fact that this one class takes up 4 of my afternoons during the week. Missing out on a lot of chances to work! But, soon will be Christmas aka service workers gold rush aka no day off for 40 days. I embrace the work though, as cliche and cheesy at it sounds; if you actually like what you do, it's not really work.

I (am trying to) get paid to do whatever the fuck I want.

More later

*trying to do these bi-weekly (once every two weeks), like my flag-ship guitar package -- bi-weekly. No, I'm serious; it's on my calendar, which means it shall be done. Figure H

Figure H
This thing rules my life

No comments:

Post a Comment