I work in tacos now.

I work in tacos now.

I served on my own for the first time today.

I did my last shift of server training yesterday.

In tacos, you get three days of training then they let you start serving the tacos without the guidance of a trainer.

Our menu includes cheezburger, carnitas, brisket, fried chicken, and veggie tacos. We also have delicious enchiladas that you can order with your choice of the aforementioned meats and covered in green chili sauce, red chili sauce, salsa verde, lemon cream, or fritas sauce.

After my fourth shift working in tacos, I’m not yet confident in my ability to serve our food with the accuracy and speed my bosses will require of me and, if asked, I’d tell them I’d like to continue training until I’m more comfortable. But, I also know that, if asked how long I want to continue training, I’d probably tell them I’d like to continue training indefinitely.

In training, you’re not responsible for mistakes and you enjoy the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong. You’re given grace that non-trainees aren’t afforded. What I’m saying is: you can’t fail.

Thinking about my taco serving work, I’m reminded of a past time in my life.

I’m reminded of the time in my life when I’d graduated from Duquesne University with my Bachelor’s of Business Administration. I’m reminded of how my stomach tied itself in knots at the thought of trying to carve out a life of my own now that society considered me a fully-functioning adult.

I remember feeling like I wanted to stay a kid forever. I wanted to sidestep real life responsibilities for as long as I could.

As a new graduate, I felt like the helpless character in a movie marveling at the towering tidal wave mounting before his very eyes. The tidal wave was real life and all the responsibilities that I knew came along with it.

Up until the moment I received my diploma, I’d leaned on the idea that I’d graduate from college and begin working for my family’s senior living business. I’d long been swiping that plan through any conversation about my future like a Platinum American Express card without limits. I swiped like the balance would never come due. Nonetheless, graduation was finally the time where that balance did come due and I finally had to come to grips with the idea that I had no idea what I actually wanted to do with my life.

Yes. I’d been telling everyone since I was a child that I wanted to grow up and work for mommy and daddy’s senior living business. But, I was just a kid. What did I know about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life?

I’d really just been using the family business as a pawn in the master game of my life. I’d use it as defense any time I’d ever been confronted with the uncomfortable reality that I had to decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

It was a reliable weapon that I’d been brandishing since I was a child. Unfortunately for me, the weapon was running out of ammunition. The weapon that’d been so useful protecting me from the reality of life was losing its firing power and I was becoming desperate.

Subconsciously, I’d always known that relying on my family’s business was a short-sighted decision.

At a young age, I remember acknowledging how lucky I was to have such a fortunate opportunity at my fingertips and growing suspicious of how seamless my life was shaping up to be. Sure. My life had its ups and downs, but I wasn’t forced to consider the impending and ever-dreaded question of what I want to do with my life once I graduated from college like the rest of my friends had to do. My decision had been made and my path had been laid long ago. I was astonished at how little effort I’d had to put forth in school and the lack of time I’d spent considering an eventual career path all to just be given the keys to the business my parents had been building for the last twenty years.

On the outside, I might’ve had everyone else fooled, but, on the inside I knew, eventually, I was going to have to pay the piper for my short-sighted decision making. And, I knew it wasn’t going to be cheap.

But, I didn’t care.

So, when I graduated, unable to articulate why I knew the family business was wrong for me, I, cowardly, leaned into it. I acted as if I was excited about the prospect of joining, learning, and, ultimately, overseeing the family business. I convinced myself that participating in the family business would afford me the depth, richness, and security in life that’d make me a happy man.

In hindsight, it would’ve been wise to listen to myself about my disinterest in the business. But, I guess that’d require wisdom I hadn’t yet accrued at age 22.

Rather than being truthful with my parents about my disinterest in the business, I attempted to buy myself more time by enrolling in accounting school at UCLA in Los Angeles immediately following graduation from Duquesne.

I thought by enrolling in another year of business school, I was doing myself a service. I thought by moving to Los Angeles to pursue a bogus accounting certificate, which I had less interest in than I had in the family business, I’d eventually find myself, my career, and my calling.

Unfortunately, all I found was loneliness, despair, and a raging hatred towards accounting.

However, in that process, I did successfully manage to wreck the relationship with my girlfriend whom I adored. It’d be years before I’d realize it but by moving away, I intentionally sabotaged the relationship I knew I wasn’t mature enough to participate in.

Therefore, I moved into a high-end studio apartment in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Los Angeles that was paid for by my dad because he supported the idea of me getting said accounting education. He’d always wanted me to study accounting in undergrad but I refused. I told him that my Business Administration degree would give me the well-rounded business acumen I’d eventually need to run his business, although I became fairly certain my degree wouldn’t so much as allow me to manage a virtual Animal Farm on Facebook, let alone a portfolio of senior living communities.

So, when I told him I wanted to attend an additional year of school to focus on my accounting skills, he was delighted. To him, it meant I was taking the appropriate steps to follow the path he’d laid out for me.

Living in the studio apartment and attending accounting school in the evenings, it wasn’t long before I became miserable. I spent all day studying something I knew I didn’t want to study all for an eventual profession I knew I didn’t want.

In that studio apartment, the hours became days. The days became weeks. The weeks became months. And, before I knew it, it’d been six months since I moved to Los Angeles.

At around that time, I’d found a part-time accounting job for a real estate investment monger in West Hollywood. The people I was working with were great but I couldn’t stand the actual accounting work I was doing. I’d spend entire days holed up in an office with towering stacks of invoices that never seemed to go away. It was a mountainous range of manilla folders stuffed generously with invoices that had to be manually entered into spreadsheets and it was all my responsibility. I hate the word ‘literally’ — but, I was literally being buried alive by utilities invoices. Looking for reprieve, I’d wander away from my office and begin conversations with my buddies in the office. Momentarily, I’d forget the number of invoices I had waiting for me once I’d return to my office.

Back in Pittsburgh, the relationship I had with my girlfriend had been over for a good while. I’d managed to destroy that within the first few months of being in Los Angeles and blamed it on the distance

All while I continued listening to voices irrespective of my own and I continued to feel helpless.

I’d begun to fail my accounting classes and recognized I was never going to excel at accounting, no matter how much time and energy I sunk into it.

And so, unable to consider alternatives, I made another regrettable decision.

After a few short months, I resigned from my position at the real estate company. I thanked them for the opportunity and told them I was going back to Pittsburgh.

I called my dad and told him I felt it was unfair for him that I was on the West coast working for someone else when I could be at home working for him and learning the business. I told him I was ready to return to Pittsburgh and sink my teeth, professionally, into the business he’d spent so much time building.

He was delighted.

Like that, I threw in the towel, forewent any chance of finding a career and life on my own, tucked my tail between my legs, and started to pack my studio apartment.

Within a month, I’d communicated to all of my friends and family that I’d be returning to Pittsburgh in a few weeks.

In that time, I’d managed to convince the girlfriend I’d left behind that I was returning home to be with her and to work for the family business and that I wanted to seriously start a life with her.

Again, I recognized the nearsightedness in my decision making but I couldn’t stand the idea of trying to make it on my own any longer. I couldn’t come to terms with my shortcomings in school and I couldn’t stand the thought of not being able to make it on my own.

By returning home, I knew I was returning to a padded environment with safety everywhere. By returning home and joining the family business, I was sure failure was impossible.

At once, I did it. With my mom, I drove back across the country to the city where it all began.

And, when I returned home, suddenly, I was met with a hell as hot and fiery as any hell could possibly burn.

By this time, I’d ruined the relationship with the girl once and for all.

I’d become familiar with a depression working for my family’s business that I never knew possible. Even worse, I felt as if there was nothing I could do to fix any of it.

After all, I’d been telling everyone that I was going to graduate from college and run my family’s business since I was a kid. To everyone else, this was the moment I’d been working towards me entire life. Realistically, it was the moment I’d been dreading my entire life.

Nobody else knew it but I felt trapped.

I still remember my first day of work after moving home from Los Angeles. I was sitting in my car, looking out the windshield, contemplating the mistake I knew I was getting ready to make and a familiar song came on the radio.

It’s a moment I’ll never be able to wipe from my memory.

“Hideaway” by Daya.

The memory is so hearty because Daya was a contemporary of mine. I sang and took voice lessons with Daya just three years earlier while I was in college. Daya made the decision to pursue her artistry and I decided, against my better judgment, to pursue my business degree and employment within the family business.

Now, Daya was on the radio chasing her dreams. And, I was preparing to walk into my first day of work at my family’s nursing home business.

It felt, in that moment, that by walking into work that day that I was gently tucking myself into the padded coffin where I’d spend the rest of my life lying until my heart decided to stop beating

But, I twisted the ignition towards myself, stepped onto the pavement, walked into the building that day anyway, and, deliberately, slaughtered any idea I had of my hopes and dreams outside of the family business.

Walking through the sliding glass doors that morning felt like the first day of the rest of my life. At that moment, I knew that if I didn’t decide to fight and scream, and kick like hell to make make a path of my own, the only days of my life worth living were long behind me.

I’d continue to work for my family’s business for about 4.5 years after that day.

In that 4.5 years, my life spiraled downward in ways I’d never imagined it could’ve.

I did the bare minimum at work. I did enough to get by but, truth be told, if I wasn’t the owner’s son, I likely would’ve been terminated.

I got arrested for a DUI. Then, shortly thereafter, I was arrested again at a country music concert.

I continued to dig myself deeper and deeper into the depression that already had its fists wrapped tightly around my throat. At some points, I felt hopeless.

These feelings continued for 4.5 years before I’d finally put a plan together to take my life back.

Eventually, I’d muster the courage to tell my dad I was unhappy at the company and that I was taking a job in Nashville at another senior living company.

It was a leap that scared me but nothing could be scarier than staying where I was as miserable as I was. So, I took it.

I decided to leave my family, my friends, my hometown, and any perceived safety my work in the family business presented to me.

I packed my life into my Chevy Tahoe and I hit the road for Nashville in a desperate search for a life.

As of right now, I’ve lived in Nashville for just less than two years.

Almost two years after making the decision to leave Pittsburgh and everything I knew about life behind, I sit in a coffee shop, I drink an iced coffee that I spent way too much money on, and I write this story.

I started out writing about how I work in tacos now but now I’m writing about how the safe route almost always leads to despair.

And, somehow, I think I managed to write about tacos and learning to serve tacos and nursing homes and my family’s business and living in Los Angeles then moving to Nashville all at once.

And, somehow, after writing this, I think I managed to teach myself how to spot the traps in life.

Anyway.

I work in tacos now.

Not as a trainee.

I work in tacos now.

Independently.