― Confucius
Confucious had it almost right (if you ask him about wisdom I'm guessing he'd say I'm taking the 'easiest' route). But to the point, choosing a job you love is only half the battle. Put it this way, if you're job was to drink beer (delicous craft beer, not that light lager business, no one loves that) every day (or only on days you wanted to) it would be pretty amazing, right? Sure, but what if you had to do it alongside a grumpy co-worker (co-drinker) or worse, all by your lonesome? It would still be great!...for a while. But there would come a day in your life (like 30 years in?) where you just didn't want to talk to that grumpy co-worker anymore, or in the lonesome instance a point where you just wanted to talk to a co-worker, grumpy or otherwise, and it would kind of feel like working.
So I would modify the words of Confucius just a bit:
"Choose a job you love, do it with your closest friends, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
-Confucius, with a little help from his friends
I brew almost every week, and as many of my previous blog posts suggest, I love to brew. But as the realities of opening a brewery turned towards doing research on legal documents, licenses, locations, cost analysis, etc and the purpose of brewing became more of finding a beer list for the brewery than creating the most ridiculous beer we could think of, or just something we wanted to drink, I oftentimes felt like I was working. Luckily, last weekend, I was reminded why I started down this path in the first place.
Last weekend I had the privedge of finally visiting Clemente in Los Angeles. As most of you know, Clemente and I started brewing together and continued to do so until he moved to LA, almost two years ago exactly. Even though he is across the country he is very much an essential part of the brewing process as we spend our 'free' time constructing recipes together via gchat. We also have recently started bi-(more lile tri or quad) weekly skype sessions to stay on top of the aforementioned research. But even though we talk recipes and skype, at the end of the day I am the one brewing by myself on Sunday afternoons watching the Giants beat their previous weeks' record low rushing yardage, and it recently started to feel like work...until last week.
While visiting Clemente and Ila, ironically not brewing but at a Passion Pit concert at the Greek (amazing show), I had the thought: "oh yeah! THIS is why I love brewing and why I want to do it for a living." In my head 'THIS' was many things all at once. First and foremost it was spending time with great people. Clemente and I have a great time brewing and doing anything else (especially while listening to Passion Pit, but that was a bonus, not a necessity). But on top of that it was looking around and seeing tons of people having a great time. And for better or worst, most of those people had a beer in hand! (or wine decanters, but you can't win 'em all). I said it in my very first post and it still is true (whether or not I forget it because I focus on the wrong things), people enjoy drinking good beer and I enjoy providing it. I was reminded not to lose sight of why I want to brew, and why I am going to love owning a brewery. Jon Taffer would probably take this opportunity to slap me across the face, but before he does I would like to retort that I am still fully aware of the business side of things. I just have to remember to not lose sight of why I started down this road in the first place.
So as we continue this process of creating Otium I will continue to remind myself that Confucius was right (or half right)
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