DRINKING POISON FOR FUN AND PROFIT

I’m fairly sure that there’s a word for the moment when you start to evaluate how much you don’t know about something. Specifically, whisky. Was it the US Defense Secretary Colin Powell with his “known unknowns”? Waking up and smelling the espresso martini?

rooney2 wake up and smell the coffee_resize

Nine times.

Earlier in the timeline I didn’t mind how much or how little I knew, because I was having fun and learning as I went. But things change, I’m still having fun ( + learning) but others seem to be having more professional fun and now it seems to matter because life moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller – a famous 1980s life coach – once observed.

I got to thinking that maybe I’m going off track. Should my enjoyment of drinks with a very high ABV simply remain a recreational habit? At what point does my liver resign because it knows alcohol can be a poison?

Also, dangerous goods.

Is my aim to earn money in the realm of the (distilled) spirits? With whisky specifically, although I could live with rum, or cognac?

So in the interests of freedom, here is my cut-through no-holds-barred, fearless, based on nothing other than the concept of whisky, career options brainstorm list. It’s a work in progress.

Work in a bar that serves whisky. (I promised myself that my next career move would very specifically not involve me filling in a timesheet, and I last worked in a bar when I was 24.)
Work in a bar that serves only whisky. (but pouring whisky for people who are curious and nice & brainy + cool enough to come to a whisky bar would be so much fun. Plus, all that whisky)
Own a bar that serves whisky (I could really make it my own and I could even open one in Finland or France or northern Italy, and the margins might be OK if it wasn’t in Sydney).
The interior of the Smallest Bar in the World, in Milan: unfortunately it was full on the night I wandered past 🙂
Manage a bar that serves whisky. (own and manage?)
Create whisky-related commodities. (could be fun, and does not appear to involve timesheets.)
Make whisky. (may I please borrow $500k and a small team of dedicated individuals, I will have a crack at the planning approval)
Work in a place that makes whisky. (I believe it’s called a distillery.) (timesheets maybe, but there’s chemistry and, well, everything else, so that’s actually fun)
Own a place that makes whisky. (in art and film, a ‘still’ is a frame capture from a moving image: But in whisky world, a ‘still’ is a mysterious copper orb made of steamy magic). (not sure how this is different from #7, other than the steamy magic bit.)
H. Heijenbrock, 1905.
Own a company that owns a place that makes whisky (well it never hurts to have goals. Or …revenue. Hi Diageo, Chivas Bros, Beam Suntory, Remy Cointreau, William Grant, Edrington, et al., like I know all about them)
Work with a company that owns a place that makes whisky (timesheets though) (nice budgets though.)
Be a cask broker. (Like magical networking with whisky as the result. Talking to winemakers and whisky makers. These would be nice conversations)
Get academic. (research funding y/n)
Edouard Manet, The Absinthe Drinker, 1836. Back then, you could still enjoy your drink outside the bar.
Alcoholic. (It’s a little out of fashion, and not really my style anyway: I’m no good with hangovers. Also a bit tricky to make a living.)
General Hedonist. (I can’t work out if it is the Italian sensualist in me or the Viking genes or just an aussie upbringing. Either way it’s a part-time volunteer gig.)
Talk to people about whisky. (there are some seriously talented people out there who have drinked and talked more whisky than I have drunk water and talked about .. anything, which is hard to imagine as I talk a Lot)
Write about whisky. (writing is fun. I’m not sure if I’m ready for more than a current audience of about 31, but what an audience: you’re here reading my errant take on things, and by the way you look super-hot today. If you’ve read this far, the whisky’s on me)
Just keep drinking whisky. (“Look at more art.” An artist/lecturer once gave me this advice when I – a grown woman returning to undergrad study – confessed my fear that I had no idea what I was doing. I had thought this was rubbish advice, and later came to understand that I’d wanted her to solve all my problems: the definition of not taking responsibility for myself. Later realising that deep down, I was also facing a lot of self-doubt. You certainly can’t make good art (or music) by ceding to other people’s directions all the time and avoiding your self, and I definitely won’t get any further with whisky by not tasting it.)
Relax. Even if I’m clueless and remain forever so, I still really love talking, writing, and thinking about everything to do with the whisky. Magic is just the things we don’t yet understand.