One of the prompts this week is the watering hole, and have you ever been in a situation where you’ve felt out of place.
And it’s not that big of a leap to think of a bar as a watering hole and one of my first jobs out of college, we had occasional after hours get-togethers at a local bar. And being one of the younger members of the staff, also in a position where I didn’t necessarily have a relationship or a family to get home to, I would at least be invited and informally expected to spend some time at the after hours gatherings, just, you know, ideally to socialize, or to, you know, celebrate staff coming together. Sometimes we’d have them when we have field inspectors come in from across, you know, the country for training sessions or occasional, you know, yearly or semi-yearly meetings.
But I did have feelings of being out of place sometimes in just my life experience as what I was into musically, or socially just not necessarily meshing with the rest of the group. And even to a certain extent, kinda feeling like the folks with families kind of had a little bit of an edge. That they had a reason, maybe sometimes, to go home early if they weren’t having quite as much fun, because, yeah, they had kid activities to take care of, meals to prep, or time with their significant other.