(Full Disclosure: I wrote this post last week, but then… well, last week happened and I was exhausted, and this week is Christmas weekend so my brain is pretty much an electrified potato right now. Thank you for your patience!)

If you follow my Instagram, you’ve noticed I’ve been posting a lot of stories about beer in Portland lately. Not unusual in general maybe (#drinkerwithawritingproblem,) but just especially lately.

I found out casually while getting a post-shift beer at Von Ebert Brewing that they and several of my favorite local breweries decided to do a holiday “ale trail” called “The 12 Days of Gristmas”- “grist” being the term for the milled grain and mash bill used to make beer.

12 breweries.
12 holiday beers.
Get a stamp for each one, turn them in at the end for up to 12 raffle tickets to win swag.

It’s silly. I probably don’t need swag. No one needs beer enough to strategize how to hit as many breweries on the list as possible in one day on foot. I certainly don’t.

I love beer though.
I love supporting my local businesses that make good things.
I love walking around through Portland.
and I didn’t mind questing for something where the only thing at stake is my liver… but that’s what the walking is for.

Whatever breaks the despair and gets you out and moving is worth it.

I thoroughly admire and enjoy Chris Guillebeau’s books, but there was one book of his that I got and then put down because I didn’t think it would apply to me. I still haven’t picked it up again, but I think I may soon.

The Happiness of Pursuit is, put simply, about goalsetting. A little more obliquely, it’s about questing, and why achieving a given goal is arguably less important than having one in the first place. Whatever it is the gets you up. Gets you moving. Gets you to take the Next Good Step, and then keep going.

If I’m honest, as exhausting and stressful as the winery can be, working there has been a rest and a detox for me. After the Famous Place, the French Place, and the Pie Shop, I needed room to breathe and recuperate as much as I needed a paycheck. I needed a chance to stop sweating the next paycheck, fall back in love with baking professionally, and decide what will come next.

I’m not sure how ready I am to tackle that next Thing yet. I’m certainly not ready financially, and funds aren’t going to fall out of the sky. There’s always a deal with the devil waiting to go down, and I’m not interested in signing off on anything.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have ambitions- “humble” as they may be- but I think I really wanted to remember what it was like to have a low-stakes, short-term, just-for-fun quest.

So I seized on to the 12 Days of Gristmas. I seized on to getting a hat pin from every microbrewery I could find that sold them. They go on the same hat that I’ve taken to wearing around town on these one-man bar crawls.

This world demands so much of us. It demands our time, our lives, our patience, our will, and even our self-respect and self-esteem more often than not.

Find a quest for you. Pick a goal- large or small, noble or silly. It can be for charity or for a cause, but make it mostly for you. Then go out and seek it. Be in the world. Talk to people. Engage with them, hear them, be around them. Just see if the world isn’t a bit more bearable… and if that won’t encourage you to tackle a grander quest next time.

Stay Classy,