So I did it.
I quit my job, again, and ran with reckless abandon in the totally opposite direction from my meticulously planned stratagem into the food writing world through the back door. Or through the "back of the house" door as it were.
I quit.
I admit it.
I gave up.
It was too hard, it wasn't rewarding enough, and I couldn't physically or mentally handle the rigors and trials of being a 34 year-old entry level line cook.
I don't regret trying.
I don't regret one decision I made, or one step, or misstep along the way. I don't begrudge anyone, or point an accusatory finger in any directions other than at myself. I fully and honestly admit that I misjudged my level of commitment, and got carried away with a fantasy that I thought would ultimately carry me to the place that I knew I wanted to be from the beginning, but would have been a drastically longer route then just shutting the fuck up and doing it.
I admit I got lulled into the fantasy of being a chef. I was seduced by the knives and the heat and the war stories and the perceived "brotherhood" that being a chef affords. I fell into a trap set by every Anthony Bourdain wannabe, or Top Chef douche bag that being a chef would make me better somehow than I would be if I were just a really good writer that knows how to cook.
I honestly thought that.
I honestly thought that if I cooked for 5 or 6 years that I could bridge the gap between Chef, and the chef-maligned Food Writer. That I could somehow become a modern day Demigod, half man, half Chef. Born of the fires of the kitchen but written in the voice of a mortal...
I even convinced myself that I might champion the voice of the working-class line cook by writing about their struggles and become the Working Class Hero I've always envisioned myself eventually becoming.
I could be the one food writer that chefs and cooks would actually read because I was one of them...
Then I met some chefs.
Rock stars right down to the petty jealousy and over-compensating insecurity that they're better than everybody else and everything that they do is the best way to do it and everybody else is overrated, or a douche bag, or is somehow not worthy of any of the praise that they've received.
In other words, they wouldn't read a non-big-name-chef food writer whether they cooked for a billion years, had just graduated from culinary school, or had never even stepped foot in a restaurant or near food before in their lives.
In other other words: I was wasting my time.
I could have cooked my way up to sous chef in any restaurant in the world, and no one would have cared outside of a byline or an interesting bio blurb, kitchen or otherwise. In this world that we live in, as far as cooks and other chefs are concerned, if you're not a Chef, you're not a chef, and I don't have 10-15 years to become a big name, well respected Chef.
My going to culinary school and working in a restaurant for a few years is just as deplorable and unrespectable to them as the douche bag line cooks that go on Top Chef or some other reality show and come out of it calling themselves "Chefs such-and-such" and opening mediocre restaurants based on their flash-in-the-pan fame that close in a year (obviously Season One winners aside).
So basically I was putting myself through 50-60 hour work weeks for very, very little money for a pipe dream.
I was leaving my children every weekend and missing their ballet classes and their growth for an empty gesture.
I was expecting my partner to make up the difference in income, and the difference in hours that I couldn't provide.
It wasn't fair to them, and it wasn't fair to me.
It also wasn't fair to my job.
Eventually, with every $400 paycheck I received, I began checking out a little more. With every insult thrown my way I began rolling my eyes instead of determining myself to do a better job next time.
I can't even begin to express how thankful I am to my chefs for hiring me and taking me under their wings, and I value my time there and the lessons I learned, but it became pretty clear pretty early on to everyone there that I wasn't fast enough to keep up, and it became pretty clear to me that being screamed at wasn't going to make me faster.
I miss being in the kitchen. I really liked being in there, and in some weird way I hope that I end up there again someday, but under a different set of circumstances and for different reasons than this last time around. I still love the back of the house and have the upmost respect for who they are and what they do. I hope that I never lose sight of the lessons I learned there or forget how hard it is for them and the struggles they go through everyday. But that world isn't for me.
I was recently presented with an opportunity that I wouldn't have imagined as an even remote possibility not so long ago to become a front of house manager working for a good friend in a well known, well respected restaurant in Manhattan.
I struggled with the decision even as I agreed to do it and right up to the moment of my first shift.
And then something strange happened.
I felt normal.
I looked out into the floor and knew everything that was happening. I was completely comfortable in my roll as opposed to the shame tinged, unsure-of-myself existence I'd lived through for the past year.
I felt like me again, and as much as I thought I hated the front of the house and the pitfalls associated with it, I felt infinitely more at home there then I ever did in the kitchen.
Make no mistake, I still feel the same way about the front of the house that I've written about in other posts, but there's something to be said for over 15 years of experience doing something and being comfortable and good at it.
Instead of starting over at the bottom of the ladder and being the slowest, least experienced person on the floor, they guy that has to work the triples, the weekends, the brunches, the 8 -10-12 days in a row, I was the manager. The guy who's worked every front of house position for years and years and years. The guy who knows about food and wine and service and the computer system better than anyone else. The guy with the war stories of horrible shifts, amazing tips, celebrity nakedness seen with my own eyes (boobs!).
I was suddenly the equivalent of a sous chef, but in the front of the house, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was where I deserved to be. I felt I had earned the respect of my peers in the same way that the bad ass sous chefs at my internship and at my jobs had earned theirs, by doing it the hard way, and being really good at their jobs.
There's no reason for me to start over in the kitchen. I've already put in the time and the effort to be a respected voice in the restaurant scene. When it comes to being a food writer no one is going to care where I worked in the restaurant industry. The vast amounts of knowledge I've accumulated over the years doesn't become void because it wasn't gathered in a kitchen specifically. My experience speaks for itself, and I have a lot of experience. What's great is that now have even more experience than I did before...
This isn't a bad thing...
So now I find myself with more than a couple of things I didn't think I could have for a long, long time.
Number one is a decent paycheck.
It's amazing how degrading and humiliating making less than you did when you were a teenager can be when you're working longer hours and infinitely harder than you ever have before in your life.
Number two is a livable schedule in a comfortable job.
I have a life again. It's amazing to be able to see Liz and my children everyday, go to the gym, take a photography class, cook dinners, read books, and actually be able to make plans with foreknowledge of both physical availability and availability physically (and mentally for that matter, days off used to be spent on the couch licking my wounds).
It's amazing how much more at ease I am with a job that I don't have to take home with me. I can be fully present at home and away from work in a way I never was while living in a state of fear and trepidation over my next shift with what I was going to do wrong and what I was going to get screamed at for.
Number three, and most importantly, is Opportunity. I have an opportunity to follow through on the promises I've made to myself, and of course to this blog. If I take advantage of my time and my position I'm able to devote more energy than I've ever had to the pursuit of writing. Writing without the distractions, or the fantasies, or the excuses that I've hidden behind, seemingly my whole life.
I've eluded to some of this on prior posts, and I really mean it when I say I've done everything that I can to position myself in a manner to take advantage of time better and have my wits about me a little more. I know it sound contrite to say that everything I've done, I've done for you (and by "you" I speaking to the literal, physical existence of this blog, not to "you" my 18 readers, even though I do love you guys and, hey, 18 is up from the 3 or 4 I'd been used to), but in a way, I sort of have.
If I can actually stick to it this time and not go chasing white-aproned rabbits down rabbit holes or whatever the next easily-explained-why-it's-super-important-albeit-time-consuming distraction may be...
All the pieces are coming together. The time-affording-and-better-money-giving job. The gym membership to help me regain a stronger mental focus through exercise. The CSA's to give me a weekly excuse to cook and write. Weekends off to hopefully food travel with. Weather, support from family and friends, a new bike to hit up new neighborhoods and markets, a new lens for my new camera to help with the photography class I'm going to take to help with my photos that will help my blog look better, a new computer (more eventually than imminently) to plan it all out on...
I mean it's all there for the taking. It's so impossible to find an excuse to not write that even I can find one.
And that's saying something...
Hopefully anyways...
Anyways, to brighter days my friends... Brighter days...
Farts-and-kisses,
n*
