The More Things Stay The Same…

To suggest the last sixteen months have been challenging and in some cases, life-altering, is to suggest Donald Trump has a few eccentricities. 

Let’s face it, we’ve all had to face some unsettling truths and make some hard choices in the last year- and-a-half – and it looks like this wildly-dark ride isn’t quite over yet.

However, while civilization has been irrevocably altered by the damnable nightmare that is Covid-19, some things, like Mother Nature’s impact on this globe, never change. Sure, it feels like Momma N has an entire swarm of bees in her organic bonnet these days, with all the wildfires, mudslides and a host of other natural disasters humanity is facing these days, but at least she’s left the seasons untouched.

To that point, I was walking home from the hotel the other night just before midnight and I took the opportunity to take stock of the events of the day.

• The hotel was “sold out” for the first time in months. (An unprecedented North American labor shortage has led to the hotel being unable to clean more than sixty percent of the rooms, thus giving the term “sold out” less weight than ever before.)
• We’ve switched from a full service property offering bell service to one that allows guests to take their own cart if they don’t wish to avail themselves of the services of someone who actually knows what they’re doing. So now guests are placing fully loaded coolers on top of smooth suitcases and gym bags. What could possibly go wrong?
• Guests are hostile.
• Guests are raging over minor issues.
• Guests have, quite frankly, lost their fucking minds over the past year-and-a-half and have thrown reason and good manners out the window.
• The air is crisp and humid.
• Horny skunks are roaming the streets once the sun goes down.
• There’s an electricity in the Niagara air.
• A few guests allowed nostalgia to overtake them and actually engaged my services. It was glorious. The feeling of walking home with pockets that weren’t empty was deeply unfamiliar.

What did all this pondering, done over the course of a mere ten-minute walk lead to, you ask? An inescapable revelation, friends…

The closest thing to an actual Niagara Falls summer is finally here.

It will be agonizingly brief, but summer is actually here. It certainly doesn’t feel the same, but then again, what does anymore? And there’s one more significant change that cannot be ignored…

My immediate supervisor of twenty-two years, who didn’t work a single shift in the last sixteen months while the rest of us toiled in Hell, has resigned and his assistant has stepped down. That left a vacancy waiting to be filled. Granted, the job and the department no longer resemble the pre-2020 version, but the role of Bell Captain still needed to be filled.

And now it has.

So yes, you may now proceed to unleash as many Captain Hook jokes as your fevered, social media attuned brains can manifest, my children. I can take it, I’m a captain.

What does this mean for my life as an indie author, you may be wondering?

Well, I’ve never been a manager before, so making schedules and filing payroll is all new to me and will no doubt be taking up a lot of my time. But promoting Into The Dark and writing Into The Grey and Into The Light is going to be put on the backburner for the time being, at least.

But I’ll get back to mining my creative depths eventually. In the meantime, I have a lot of studying to do, so wish me luck.

See you in the lobby, and the virtual book aisles, friends…

• 

  Ah, to be back in the bellman saddle again…