PI LAMBDA PHI

I’ve never written a blog post before. Films and television portrayed diaries as a normal part of a youth’s development, an outlet to help process the events happening in the most tumultuous changes in one’s pubescent life. Those actors could look back on their feelings or previous actions and grin nostalgically at their immaturity years later. That was something I couldn’t do. And, as an adult, I still have difficulty expressing myself in writing. Twenty-six characters with limitless potential to express my understanding of what the human condition is. Or am I supposed to write a fluff piece on something of little substance? How does one approach writing, and what’s the point? If it’s to share opinions, then diaries were pointless. Writing is an expression of ourselves and by taking up poetry years ago, I’ve tried to therapeutically process who I am in certain external contexts. The problem I find lies in that the deeper I dig, the more contradictions I find. My transcribed musings reflect that.

A career is a lifelong commitment, and since grappling with my mortality, I have had trouble committing to much of anything. We all will die eventually. Every second not enjoying what life has to offer is wasted, sucked into the ether of ‘Nowhere’ beyond our comprehension. Commitment can lead to complacency, and complacency is, again, wasted time. When this all will be over soon, our ephemeral human experience shouldn’t make room for complacency. The career I chose mirrors that belief; yet, the product of my labors are just as fleeting.

I had opportunities to pursue careers that would land me more money, but I’m a materialistic minimalist. Money makes me uncomfortable. Possessions distract and cushion us from the terrifying ironies that comprise our existence (and yet I enjoy collecting and wearing Hawaiian shirts). You are asking where I am going with this. Do blogs and diaries address the reader? I have no idea if I’m doing this correctly.

Anyways, I decided to create for living. Strive to one day be able to call myself a 'Brewmaster'. Combine science, art, and physical labor into a product that is growing ever ‘trendier’. I take pride in what I do, and I want it to be noticed and appreciated. At the same time, I never want it to be the focus. Many people who approach me seem to treat beer and drinking as a fetish. They must try them all. They must have the rarest of beer just to say they did. They must tell the world - through pictures - their opinions on beer, how it doesn’t live up to the hype they’ve fallen for. Their dissections of how a bartender’s choice in glassware ruined a pour and thus their experience. They forget that beer is just beer - Hell, I’m occasionally guilty of this too. I never saved anyone’s life doing what I do, but I may have provided a device that augmented an experience. The greatest beer can only be consumed in good company. No beer will rival the Steel Reserve swill I enjoyed as an undergraduate with my fraternity pledge brothers week in and week out in a Chapel Hill basement. No beer can come close to the Coronas my family and I consume on the beaches on the hottest days of the year. The Dogfish Head Theobroma I had in hand while watching a Sam Adams commercial on a lunch break in between college classes helped me decide my career path. And, God knows what beer I had in hand the evening my depression finally dissipated, meeting my now-girlfriend for the first time in an overcrowded bar, raving about the miracle of some shitty mozzarella sticks – but that beer was the finest I had in years. These beers were never ranked in the ‘World’s Top 10’, but they were the best because taste, like experience, is subjective. Sometimes the best meal you can get isn’t from a Michelin star restaurant. What I create is meant to be paired with experiences because the memories of those experiences are all we really have.

At the end of the day, I exhaustedly shower, relish the dawning of my slippers, and know that I created something that added to someone else’s experience. For me, that’s enough.

Am I supposed to sign off like I do in letters? I’m sure I could Google this…
-Nikko Carlson

Author/Blogger’s Note: On reading this over, I should apologize for sounding like a technologically incompetent Voltaire-Proust lovechild. But I’m not going to.