Meditations On: Staying Power... - JosephBruceBustillos.com

I don’t know how I used to do it. On any given Friday (or Monday during football season) I’d make my way to my favorite pub before happy hour and often stick around until closing. I was also perfectly comfortable consuming a full pitcher of my favorite beer all on my own (Pyramid Hefeweizen at Taco Beach). It got to the point where I could easily down one pitcher during the first half of a football game and then debate on whether to get a second pitcher for the second half or just a couple pints. It’s not too surprising that by 2012 my little 5’-8” frame ballooned to over 200 pounds and I became a type 2 diabetic. Ack.

**2010-08-28 Friday Jazz Jam at Holly & Dolly’s (Orlando)**

Even then, even when I was able to stay “on station” on my faithful bar stool, I always seemed to miss any after-hours “fun.” A very drunk and very cute off-duty bartender pointed this out to me one night, saying that I was always there drinking my beer, being friendly and all, but I always went home alone. Damn. So much for flying under the radar. This was obviously a distinctly different issue from having a high(er) alcohol tolerance. Ah, the good ol’ days, when the lights came on and I politely grabbed my jacket and walked home without issues, complaints or complications. I still felt like that was a “win” even though a part of me fantasized about the random hookups. Where was I? Oh yeah, spending whole nights listening to local bands, drinking beer and people watching.

Now that I think about it maybe one reason I have such fond memories about this time in my life is that, except for high school dances, I didn’t drink or really do the “party thing” until my 20s, stepping things up after my divorce. And even then it was the Friday Happy Hour reward after for a hard week of work (and usually very tame). Also I was lucky enough to find places that catered to great live music like The Blues Cafe and Taco Beach in Long Beach in the 2000s or Holly & Dolly’s in Orlando and The Alley and Big Fish Little Pond in Sanford from 2008 to 2016. Great live music had a way of helping one remember the good and forget the bad.

**2016-07-22 Oak Hill Drifters at Foxhead Lounge (Osteen FL)**

I just find it funny that these days I usually nurse two pints of my favorite IPA for a couple hours and then call it a night, whereas in the before times I would often have two pints with lunch and then go right back to work during the Full Sail University days. One of the first times I did this a co-worker was amazed saying that if she drank that much at lunch she’d be worthless the rest of the day. I guess all the beer I drank in Long Beach prepared me for lunch time drinking once I got to Florida. There were a lot of Fridays in Long Beach where I order my pitcher of beer, my tacos and I’d spend part of my night grading papers. One of the locals said that he would have had more respect for his teachers if he knew that’s what they did when they graded his work. So, it was like I had trained for lunch time drinking in Florida when I was in Long Beach.

**2010-01-17 Grades and Friendly Confines (Orlando FL)**

Obviously a lot has changed since then, beginning with the kinds of “work” lunches we did back then and having a sense that I could afford to do all of the eating and drinking that I did. This past week I posed a meme:

Some time ago I was going over all of the photos (and videos) during the Taco Beach years and that led me to check any records that I had on my bar tab from those days. While I felt like I had no life outside of teaching, one would be excused for thinking that I spent all of the rest of my time on a bar stool in that establishment. That’s an exaggeration but you’d never know it given the digital evidence of my apparent residency at said drinking establishment(s) posted in my photography/video websites… (see links below).

Several lifetimes ago a Biola University classmate told me about a paper she wrote at her Christian high school in which she shared her belief that dancing was evil because it was a waste of time, it didn’t bring “Glory to God,” didn’t bring others to Jesus or promote the Gospel. Even back then I thought that it was a bit cruel to expect an immature adolescent to have a real understanding on the value of how one spends one time (especially given how little choice teenagers have in how they spend their time) or to think that anything not church related was wasteful. Funny thing is, all these decades later, I’ve heard my fellow “olds” lament the time they wasted doing x, y and z when that should have been doing [insert important activity here]. I’m just amazed at how much time I apparently spent drinking beer, eating good food and enjoying live music… often while pretending to work (grading papers) or writing. I must have given up the pretense of “work” when I went to OHD shows and I started bringing my camera. Of course I should have spent more time writing, but it was all the time on my faithful barstool with my beer and later my camera that has given me something more to write about than what would have been possible otherwise.

I’ve definitely dropped off the frequency of my attending (or participating in) live music events since the pandemic. Someone who goes to more live music events than I can even imagine, reminded me of one particular venue (Sand Dollar Lounge) where I could indulge in live music pretty much on a daily basis if I were so inclined. That might be a bit much, but there’s definitely room for improvement. I just need to find the monetary and time rhythm that works best for me and all the other things that I want to do with the remaining time I hope to spend bothering y’all.

Maybe it’s a blessing that I don’t feel compelled to consume a whole pitcher of beer whenever I go out. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t frequent the places that I discovered the first few years of living here in Las Vegas. It’s hard to get to know folks when you only walk through their doors once or twice a year. Funny how many friendships and relationships happened because I got off my ass and went and did the things that I love. Let’s just see if I can find a way to balance making more of these memories and sharing the stories that I’ve already experienced. Enjoy the journey, my friends.