My first day working at a café

Welcome back, this is my second entry in my mental health diaries. Whilst I am trying to keep these short, I do hope that these maybe helpful to someone else as well.

NOTE: While this series is about my mental health and how I am trying to deal with my anxiety issues. NOTHING in here should be taken as advice or copied. If you struggle with anxiety, or with your mental health in general, go talk to a professional!

Yesterday, Saturday the 17th of September, I had my first day, at my new weekend part-time job, working at a café. It’s of course way too early to comment on my over all plans to figure out, if and how this whole process helps with my anxiety in general. However, my anxiety, before my shift started, was uncomfortably high. Anyone who has ever dealt with anxiety knows how difficult it gets at that point, to actually do the thing you are supposed to do. Thankfully Mel was around and seemed more excited for me to do something so far out of my comfort zone (gastronomy work) than usual, that it actually helped me a lot to focus on just getting on with it, getting out of the house and to go to the café.

Anxiety is dumb

As soon as I got there and got to meet everyone I was going to be working with, my anxiousness then finally started to fade away as well. As always, anxiety is dumb. There’s nothing useful about it, it serves no other purpose, other than to make you feel useless and hold you back, for no reason even. I don’t remember when exactly I first started having to deal with it, but I know it was some time between 2014 and 2015. At that point I didn’t really take it seriously and people would just see you as lazy and that you should “Just get off your lazy arse and do the thing!”. Even trying to explain what’s going on in your head wasn’t really an option, as it’s hard enough to put it into words when your mind is clear, while it’s actually happening though, forget it. So I just believed it to be me being lazy as well. Having a better understanding of the situation these days, makes dealing with it a little easier.

Actually working at the café and that’s just talking about my first day of course, was surprisingly fun. It’s simple and being physical, instead of a job where I have to think for a living, it’s a far cry from my actual job, but that’s exactly what I was looking for. There was nothing I didn’t understand immediately, nothing I was unable to do immediately and time went by relatively quickly as well. Being a café, Saturdays and Sundays are generally the busiest days, so it kind of helps when you are constantly busy, with tasks that don’t require a lot of brain power, have non-committal exchanges with your co-workers and even the customers, to keep the clock moving. Between taking orders, preparing the orders, clearing tables, cleaning up, re-stocking dishes and cutlery, I never really felt bored and I also never felt annoyed. 

Eating is important

My feet were a little sore at the end of the day, as I am not really used to stand up all day, but as my training menu at the gym focuses heavily on my quads, hamstrings, calves and ankles, this really wasn’t too much of an issue. What was an issue came after my shift. I can’t eat before I do anything, I learned that many years ago. As soon as I eat anything, I become absolutely lethargic, which is why I practice intermittent fasting and train fasted as well. It has nothing to do with BS “fat burning” narratives mind you, it’s just that as soon as I eat, I am pretty much useless for several hours to come. That doesn’t mean I don’t need food, or that I don’t like eating though, quite the opposite.

Mel picked me up after my shift, as we wanted to go check out the Hafengeburtstag (Port Anniversary). She needed to go buy something first though and with that in mind we took the train towards Hauptbahnhof first and made our way to Reeperbahn following that. 

As she was working on a project not related to her actual job as well, she hadn’t anything either. On our way back from the Hafengeburtstag, roughly 8:30 PM we finally bought two portions of large fries from McD (fyi McD fries are vegan in Germany) and then ordered some vegan Pizzas. This is far from optimal nutrition of course and made for a bad night’s sleep as well, but at least at the time it was predictably blissful. It’s decent insight for next week though… we should just eat immediately after my shift and everything is most likely going to be fine.

That is about it for my first day at my new part-time job. The next round will be next weekend. See you next time.