The Last Shift

Still in shock, I got ready for my final shift.

Ever.

Mondays were usually slow at the restaurant, so there were only two servers scheduled. But after the company announced the closure on social media, more customers came in than usual, hoping to visit before the doors closed for good.

By the time I closed out my last table, completed my last checkout, finished my sidework, and clocked out for the final time, something in me already knew:

I would never work in a restaurant again.

I recognized it as the kind of inner knowing I associate with my splenic authority in Human Design. But because I was still in survival mode, I couldn’t fully trust it yet.

About a week later, I reluctantly applied to another restaurant. A former coworker had become a manager there, so I asked for a referral. Since referrals had helped me get many of my previous jobs, I assumed this one would work out too.

But within the first minute of the Zoom group interview, I had that same inner knowing again:

I wasn’t going to get the job.

A few days later, an email confirmed what I already knew.

To my surprise, I was more relieved than disappointed.

Looking back, I think my body already understood something my mind was still trying to negotiate. I remember tensing up over parking, imagining how I would navigate new coworkers and managers, and dreading the thought of returning to the same kind of environment I had just left.

I didn’t actually want another restaurant job.

So I filed for unemployment while I tried to figure out how I could make money online.

Still operating from survival mode, I was more focused on making money than creating something meaningful. I tried selling random digital products on Etsy. Then I tried becoming a fashion influencer on Youtube.

Needless to say, I gave up on both.

Once I did, I returned to an idea I had for a restaurant app—an idea that had come to me about two months before the restaurant closed. I hadn’t told anyone I worked with about it. I had decided to keep the idea to myself.

Now, with nowhere to clock in and no restaurant job waiting for me, I finally had the space to see where the idea might lead.

At first, I approached the app from the same place I’d approached everything else: urgency.

I asked ChatGPT how I could create it as quickly as possible and start making money.

The answer wasn’t particularly glamorous.

Building it would be a process.

So I began.

At the time, I thought I was creating an app that could change the hospitality industry.

But somewhere along the way, I began asking a different question:

Who would I have to become to make this app a reality?

That question eventually led me to examine something I had never seriously considered: the state of my nervous system.

Looking back, I can see that something else was happening.

The app I was building was also building me.