It is Friday and I am kind of proud of myself for not hitting the snooze button once this week. In the grand scheme of things it is a small accomplishment, but I think it is one worth celebrating. I am far more of a 2 am person than a seven am one. Oh if that were only a viable option. But alas it is not, so timers set and let’s see what we come up with for the morning prompt. Fifteen Minutes please.
I like the idea of having the drama of a collapse dream followed by a readjustment that uses the core of the dream in a different way. Clearly this would need to be teased apart, more made of the drama of the collapse and the wallowing after before the resurrections. I often find myself collapsing a story during these prompts so I can get the whole Idea down. it makes it easier to come back to it and make it a full story later. Like a preview to an outline, rather than a prompt. Still useful in getting my brain going though. And it is a story I want to come back to.
Friday, October 6th: The deal fell through at the last minute.
The deal fell through at the last minute. He was left scrambling. He called all of his contacts and nothing panned out. He searched for funds. There were none available. He looked for anything he could to save the deal, but it was a no go. It fell through completely and utterly.
His dreams of owning a restaurant were gone. This had been his last effort. His last attempt. While he lost money trying to pull the deal together, it wasn’t a devastating blow to his finances. He was not in debt, he just had far less capitol than before.
His dreams, however, were crushed. Sure, he could still afford to pay his bills, but why bother? What was there to love for? He always dreamed of having a restaurant and worked hard pursuing that dream. He worked, he trained. He endured the terror of many an egotistical monster. He worked under the best and learned. He worked for the not so great and learned too. He saw success and he saw failure. He knew his dream would be hard, but he felt that anything worth doing took effort. He was willing to work for his dream.
He just hadn’t anticipated the world changing around him.
Trends came and went, but a global pandemic shifted the landscape in ways that had little to do with the palette and as a result, he could not garner the confidence of success he thought he could rely on. Restaurants were always a risky business, but the pay offs could be worth it. Now, the risk, at least where he was concerned were not worth it.
He wallowed. His dream was gone and he found himself at loose ends. He consoled himself that not opening a restaurant left him with savings. He half heartedly looked for another job. Several restaurants closed and most of the ones near him were only hiring servers. The few looking for cooks thought he was overqualified and passed him by for those who the owners expected to be more content with minimum wage and not just use the restaurant as a stop gap.
He supposed he couldn’t blame them.
And just when he thought there was no point, Theresa came in riding into his depression with a ray of light. While restaurants weren’t exactly thriving in his area, food trucks were. He knew of food trucks of course, he had eaten at a number of them and saw them around. He knew nothing of them beyond that. He wanted a restaurant, not a vehicle.
But she seemed adamant that he look into it and to please her, he did. He started with the menus and was surprised to find they offered more than just burgers and tacos. Some had menus that would easily compete with fine dining restaurants, even if the presentation varied. His search became something more than appeasement and slowly he began to take notes, to see the possibilities.
It was still a risk, but it was still a possibility. He dream, altered. He began to think about his dishes in a way that made them more presentable in what he was thinking of as a food truck format. ‘Equipment,’ he thought. While some of it he was certain would be familiar, other items especially dealing with the truck part of the food truck were foreign. Investigations needed to be done.
Ten til Midnight 