Being anxious and worrying about the future will not take away any challenges that are in my future, but they sure as hell will take away any peace that I have today.
I have only ever been a bartender you see
When I got sober, I was a chef and restaurant owner. My counselor in rehab had been a restaurant owner prior to sobering up. He strongly recommended that I not go back to my profession. He even said I would probably not be able to stay sober if I went back to my business.
Cooking and the restaurant business is my passion. It is the second biggest parameter that defines me. Alcoholic being the number one defining parameter, but an alcoholic in recovery as an asterisk. I decided that if I was to know recovery, I couldn't hide from alcohol. It may not have been the smartest, thing to do and certainly not the easiest path; but I have made it work for 16 years by remembering that the number one thing is that I am an alcoholic in recovery before anything else. Cooking and the restaurant business are a passion, but recovery is my number one passion.
That being said, unless bartending is a passion, I would think long and hard about it because being constantly around alcohol was not easy. I bought it. I sold it. I cooked with it. I opened it for guests. I talked about it with guests and made recommendations. I paired it with food. I looked deeply into the eyes of the beast every single day. It was hard, but I needed to do it. If you don't need to do it, my recommendation would be don't do it. There are plenty of other options out there and you might find your passion or it might find you. That is what happened to me years ago when I took a job as a dishwasher until I could figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
For me, recovery is about trusting the process, participating in the process, and remembering that I am not part of the management team of the process so I don't need to direct the process.
Be well.