our lives

Over the past week and a half or so, there have been quite a few existential chef posts, so to speak, starting with mine...a lifestyle...and continuing with Shuna...Cooking Professionally- Is it "Sustainable-" and bouncing back to Sarah...Cook Body and then to linecook...On the Ethical Treatment of Cooks.

And while these are all unrelated in themselves...they are bringing a picture together of a thing of much larger scope than all of us. And it makes me ask ’what is happening in all of our lives right now?’; I mean, there has to be something that is giving rise to similar thoughts from people in such different places and lives. Yes yes, I know that one might have read someone else’s post and been inspired...but only if that person already felt what was happening.

I personally feel that I am having a midlife crisis. I am doubting whether I made the right decisions long ago...and what I would do differently. I am also at a loss on what I could do now, if I wasn’t a chef/cook. I mean its not like I have much of any other skill sets...I am not an artist, only a mediocre writer...(although I still, after four years of college and no degree, could do technical writing in my sleep), I am not a sales person, not a craftsman, hate getting dirty, dont much care for people, am not athletic, dont have great interpersonal skills, am not competitive...and well, you get the picture...I am one of those people that Bourdain says, naturally fall into the kitchen and are good at it. So its not like I am going to change...but why does it make me so depressed and angry.

I have never really been happy working at any of the places I have worked in the last fourteen years. Is this me or the places I have worked? Yes, on occasion, I have been happy, as when I began teaching, or when I was working with Claudine on top of the mountain, or when I took over my current restaurant, but I have never been able to sustain that ’I want to get up and go to work’ mentality for longer than six months...like now...I dont want to go to work tomorrow...it is Monday...I have a ton of work to do because we are crazy busy...and I know I wont want to be there. Its not the work...its the place...I like working the line most nights...I like the solitude of my prep time...its everything else that goes into working where I have worked...the lack of passion, the politics, the drama, the arguments, the difference of ideals.

Sarah always says that the people I befriend are the people that ’get me the most, and the ones that dont will never like me. What does that mean? Well, I am sarcastic above all else, dry humored, focused on details and quality, passionate about cooking and being a chef, uncompromising, blunt, argumentative, stubborn, and apparently full of pride. But there have been people I have worked very well together with. Sarah, Claudine, Moosah, Gary, Heather, Jill, others... But now that I look at them, these are definitely all people who a) are either as passionate about what they are doing as I, or b) who have been ’forced’ to be under my influence, i.e. students with whom I have had a great rapport, and whom I respect. But now all those people are scattered to the four winds and I am in a place where I dont have the friendship at work...because I dont really respect any of them, I suppose.

Within all this, I am suffering from depression. Not clinically proven, but you know those commercials where the say ’do you have four or more of these symptoms?" well I kinda have them all...And I am egging it on...by listening to music over and over that evokes thoughts of my past, and contemplating what could/would/should have been. Its not even music that was around in those early years of my personality development or lack there of...but a ’sound’ that takes me back to ex girlfriends and different friends, different dreams, different lifestyles...not exactly healthy. My life is in shambles...I am lacking motivation...I am looking for change but unwilling to work at it, home life is suffering, work is on a razors edge of when will get fired or layed off.

Through all this...those that I respect online are asking similar question...’can we keep doing what we are doing now?’

And the answer is...’I dont know, but do we have a choice?’

From linecook...

"On one particularly hard night, I came to a realization. On my best nights running the kitchen, I never yelled. Everything ran smoothly, and mistakes were few. Cooking was supposed to be fun. My favorite moments had been talking to new cooks about what we were doing...why I thought we were at least. It was my craft. It was meant to be taught to less experienced cooks."

From Shuna

"We each have reached 40. Neither of us are married nor own the places we inhabit. Neither of us have a 401K. Both of us pay for our own health insurance. We’ve taught, owned, managed, struggled, learned, given, opened, closed and now we’re thinking. A lot. Our minds could be a dangerous place.

But instead we supported. Heard each other out. Dished. Nodded heads. Shared industry secrets. Laughed because we knew. And then we did something else.

We thought of what the other person could do, besides. Instead of. I wrote some notes. We gave each other feedback, and received. We expanded our minds beyond the jail bars of this industry. We fought ’the voice.’

and...

"Cooking professionally is not sustainable. Selling food that people cook in real time is not sustainable. Not sustainable based on 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, year round. Not based on paying all food producers a market value living wage.
Not based on treating soil and mountains and air and the water table the way we would if we really wanted to keep it viable for future peoples, not just "first world" peoples, in the future."

and finally...

"What would we be grateful for if every time we got something, we weren’t expecting more?"

Shuna, as always...the most poignant. What would I be grateful for if I could pull my head out of my ass and live.