An Unexpected Poop Of Happiness.

An Unexpected Poop Of Happiness
If your life has been like mine, you do a lot of different things. You are a lot of different people with lots of different interests. Maybe you are several different people to different people. I've never known who the fuck I am and have always craved some sort of consistency. But that consistency has never been there.
Right now I'm the co-owner of a small and banged up little cafe on a cool street in Melbourne, hands-down the coolest city in Australia. We do good, unpretentious food and good, unpretentious coffee, all served by - I hope - good, unpretentious staff. I'm enjoying my work life right now. Lately, especially, I've been humbled by the good workers I've managed to find. Properly awesome people.
But 10 years and little bit more ago, this was not what I was doing or who I was. 10 years ago I was bumbling my way through a steep learning curve of magazine editorship and writing, and starting to realize that my sense of humor was worth putting out there. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did enjoy being in this rare position of writing stuff that amused me and putting it out there, and I enjoyed the limited feedback from friends and occasionally strangers who told me that they enjoyed my writing/humour. Most of my working days were spent writing stuff that I knew amused me, sometimes found out amused the rest of the office, and rare occasions found out amused anonymous civilians.
But I did get feedback. And it's cool and nice to get positive feedback. The random text saying I've just made a twat of myself laughing at your latest column. Or talking to a new friend who, upon finding out which magazine I worked for, asked if I knew Grumpy.
And I got to say yeah... I am Grumpy.
Another friend recently said dude, always loved your writing - it was always the first thing I read in the magazine. Hearing this is weird because I didn't know this last friend at the time I was doing this writing.
But all of that is history. 10 years later I'm still Grumpy, partner of The Dreaded One in Grumpy & The Dreaded One's Little Cafe Of Awesome. The many years of my Grumpy column appearing in the pages of Tsunami mag have long ended. I make coffee now. I enjoy hospitality. I care about service and gathering a team that makes working together a pleasure. I'm not perfect on this last part, but I'm working on it and I'm getting better.
Yesterday... I get a message from the partner of a kind of oldish friend. He says that his girlfriend has mentioned that I used to write for a mag in Sydney - which one was it and what was the name of my column? I tell him about 3D World, about Acid Tongue, about Grumpy and my other writings, thinking he is maybe a writer thinking I might still have contacts, which I don't. I'm so out of the loop these days.
Turns out he was just curious. Had thought about the name of the cafe, the fact that I used to write and maybe I was a writer whose stuff he used to read. Things fell into place and his reply was something along the lines of... no fuck it I'll copy and paste... "I fuckin knew it, used to love that column. Thats why i asked.You sir are the man."
This was a little, unexpected poop of happiness. Made me wonder how many complete strangers out there enjoyed the thing and were made happy by my idiotic musings.
Now awaiting the PS: "Sorry man - I was thinking about another column written by another dude. You're probably okay, but you're not the man. Soz."