Bushwick Beach

We sit like vagabonds on the stage outside of the neighboring café. Musicians, artists, students, and shamans. We convene like we have nothing to do, and we do, in fact, do nothing. We are Bushwick in the spring, drinking in sun and coffee, working on our tans like that’s our only goal for the day. We mislead, however. As lazy as we may look in this moment, we, in fact, are not.  Each of us have personal definitions of what it means to be a part of the “New York hustle.” We two-step for employers, gigs, galleries, shimmying for recognition and bustling for rent. We get it done, do it right, and write our memoirs. We are Bushwick, out on “Bushwick Beach” taking our breaks.

This hustle, however, has temporarily left me once again unemployed. After leaving my retail job in hopes of a serving job, I have yet to actually land that serving job. In one light, I now have more time to devote to my final papers. In another, I have less cash than I had hoped. Alas, this is part of the cycle. As my mother always told me, you can’t grab the next trapeze bar without first letting go of the last one. That brief moment, in between bars, is not only the scariest moment by far, but also the moment in which you briefly fly. That’s what I have to keep in mind, though it’s not as easy as you might hope. Anxiety keeps nagging in the back of my mind while I’m continually pushed forward into the void.

I did have an interview that may prove to be promising, however, as bizarre as it was. Not that the interview itself was bizarre, but rather the entire process of interviewing is rather interesting. You stand before your potential employer, your vocational history on paper with minor description, trying to personify everything the position you seek desires in your personality and being, in a ten to fifteen minute snippet, if that. Interviews are really terrible ways to see how someone will be as an employee, especially since more employers make up their minds within a minute of getting their first impression of you. Knowing all this makes the process all the more intimidating. Maybe ignorance is bliss.

A Thought: Despite previous comments, I think I’ve come up with an interviewing method. It requires a balance of confidence and humility: confidence in that you are the perfect employee and everything your employer could want, humility to recognize that you are still the employee and that the other is the employer. Be personable, yet direct. Make them like and remember you, but don’t waste their time. Be honest, yet in a positive light.

A Find: Black Brick café in south Williamsburg. One of the finer espresso bars in Brooklyn, I’d say. Really knows their stuff and makes fantastic lattes and cortados.