The Question

I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of my friends reaching out to me after reading my last post.

"Are you okay?"
"What happened?"
"You're bumming me out, bro, get your shit together."

It was both a reminder that there are people who still read this thing and that even though the distance between us has grown, our lives very different from days of college past, that we still have compassion for one another, that every now and again you think about me.

But to the matter at hand... what is the matter?

If any of you have ever witnessed me writing one of these posts you'll know that it's a prolonged emotional ejaculation with little editing or much structure.  They get spat out in one go, the less I proof read it the better because the longer I look at it the dumber I think it is and fuck me, but it's just going to sit there in the draft box never having seen the light of day.  No shit, I have probably 40-50 pages of poorly inserted sexual innuendo amongst streams of cooking-related rambling tinged with first world problems, a strong distaste for my fellow man and a lifetime of resentment towards women just sitting there... rotting, festering, decomposing until one day the Blogger servers go down, I'll curse myself for never having saved this stuff, and some IT guy is going to come across this file and go ... "What the actual fuck is this?  A university graduate complaining about how hard his chosen blue-collar life path is?"


And maybe that's being too hard on myself, or maybe it's me trying to be too honest.  But either way the point is... this isn't being written for any major publications, it's more for me and the handful of people who for whatever reason, find it interesting.  It's to give me a little framework for my thought process, to let out a little steam.  I wouldn't take it too seriously.

Until one day I did start to take it seriously...

I came across one of those stupid Facebook posts along the lines of "Less-than-20-to-keep-your-interest-but-more-than-10-to-be-somewhat-substantial things that will make your life/sex life/body image/relationships/dick better."  I'm a sucker for those things, because while they are grossly overgeneralized and lacking in contextual relevance, they give me ammunition for the questions I constantly ask myself.  Am I happy with this?  How does my life compare to my peers, and do I really give a fuck?  Do I want a family?  Does celery actually increase the volume of my seminal fluid and inevitably improve my fertility much like the Panama Canal improved American commerce?  Should I try not eating gluten? (Answer: no, that's stupid, bread is delicious)

For whatever reason I find it to be a fun exercise as I'm constantly keeping stats and progress logged in my life much like a game of Grand Theft Auto.  I am constantly reevaluating my situation and if I find I'm wasting too much money on Indian food (specifically garlic naan, I don't understand why all Indian restaurants charge at least $3.95 for something that is about $0.35 in food cost... one of the greatest injustices in the New York food scene), or too much time on tailoring my Spotify playlist so that it's full of guilty pleasures but not completely embarrassing if someone were to scroll through it (the formula is for every song by Britney Spears or Alanis Morrisette, you need one classic rock song and one small label hip hop track), I do absolutely nothing about it.  I just like to know about it.

But then one day I actually came across an interesting way of looking at my life.  A woman posited, in regards to choosing a career path, what would you want to do every day of your life?  When you wake up, what is the one thing you would look forward to doing?

Now, obviously, I've asked myself that question a million times.  I would never have ended up in this solid $11.00/hour position if I hadn't considered it thoroughly.  But somehow, the way the question was framed, suddenly brought a different answer.

What would I be happy to wake up to every day?

Well, that I'm not so sure.  As of now, every day I wake up because my stupid fat cat does not recognize Daylight Savings Time, much like the state of Arizona, and now demands breakfast at 6:30 as opposed to 7:30 AM, which gives me enough time for one REM cycle before I'm awoken by the incessant meowing of an overweight cat whose blood sugar is a shade too low.  I wake up completely exhausted, going down my five floor walk up is extremely painful and it seems my knees do not receive proper circulation until noon.  I fiend for caffeine, I fiend for nicotine, I fiend for one night of undisturbed sleep and for the 2/3 train to just be a little smoother so I get a little less unwanted elbow and genitalia thrust in to my body on my way to work.  (The N/Q/R is better than you! I fucking said it, you West side hack!)

I think at some point I resigned myself to the mindset that unless you're a freak of nature that produces ungodly amounts of dopamine for no reason at all, nobody wakes up in the morning really fucking excited to go to work.  The only time I experience that kind of excitement upon awaking prematurely is when I'm somehow convinced I'm going to play a full day of temperate, not windy ultimate, or I have a full day of zero obligations.

But other than those now extinct life options, what the hell actually gets me excited to get up?

I think there was a time cooking got me that excited.  But it was quashed by the scaling difficulty of the restaurants I chose to work at.  It kept getting harder and harder to the point that no matter what the day, it was guaranteed to be filled with PTSD-level conditions, unfair situations you constantly have to fight your way out of, and mountains of bitch-work.  Mountains of tedious, unpleasant tasks, that even an automaton tailor-made to perform such a task would quickly develop sentience, ask itself why the fuck is it wasting its wholly artificial marvel of a life doing it, and come to the ultimate conclusion to self-destruct.

So I got more specific.

Okay, so you just straight up find hard work unpleasant.  You're a lazy piece of shit who is pursuing an incredibly difficult craft, and your peers seem to fiend for chaos, stress and disorder like a contraband hamburger at fat camp.  I mean these guys are going to suck the sugar coating off an Advil they love this shit so much.  And here you are, grumbling about front of house management choices and how everything can be better suited to me, me, me.

What, specifically, would you like to do every day?

Well, if we throw out the possibility of a four day work week, then I would say cook, but at a much more manageable pace.  I'm a hideously useless perfectionist, and the ability to control a small volume of excellent dinners is incredibly appealing to me.  But every restaurant in New York depends upon absurd volume and service to pay the rent.  If I had the time to manage some really great meals, if I had the time to work with proteins, respect an animal, take it apart and get maximum and delicious utility out of it, if I got to work with fucking fire again instead of plating cold salad after cold salad, if I got to make something I truly believed was delicious... maybe... maybe then again I would wake up every day excited to break out my knives and cut.

But that may not be the case right now ... and there are a few reasons why I'm not giving up.

I'm a strong believer that putting oneself through great adversity almost always results in a net gain of positive outcome.  Hard work now will pay dividends later.  I hate the crushing volume, I'm not crazy about the food, and the environment is complete chaos, but if I can taste this pain now maybe everything in the future won't seem so bad.

I'm not a quitter.  I signed up for at least a couple of years and that's what I intend to give.  This is a highly ironic statement given that I quit nearly everything in my life prior to cooking, but as of now, my record is golden and I plan to keep it that way.

I have a strong tendency to just be a complete pussy and am unable to take the frame of my current suffering out in to the bigger picture.  Through almost every awful thing I've gone through in life, I've managed to take a somewhat positive spin and outlook on it later in life.  (Also a highly ironic statement given that every failed relationship made me an ever-increasingly miserable person to be around, especially if you happen to be female)

I remember working the line at Va Pensiero.  Looking back, it was hack show food, but I had maybe been cooking for two months and now I was slinging pasta on the hot line like a pro (read: a n00b).  But the fire, the juggling of pans, the call backs, the communication, the plating, the ferocious crush of a restaurant desperate for some business (read: they'll take anyone anytime, so when all the demand is for 7:00 PM and the restaurant gives it to them... pucker up your buttholes, it's going to be a wild night) unleashed an incredibly intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins.  That's really what chefs are; sensory junkies, and when a service is firing on all cylinders, it's an overload that makes your dick hard (but not really because let's face it, it would be really easy to injure your penis in a kitchen).  All successful chefs are, in at least some way, junkies for that adrenaline rush you get in a good service.  I remember that feeling and smiling through crazy amounts of stress, feeling like a warrior, feeling like you could raze villages, spread your seed like Genghis Khan, hear your enemies wail, just fucking destroy.  It's addicting.  So much so that people make careers based off of this temporary rush.

But for whatever reason that rush is gone and I desperately want it back.  I need that culinary methadone, and maybe it's my purposeful removal from the moment, my stupid manner of observing everything in Vulcun, objective pretentiousness, or I don't know what, but I can't simply enjoy the moment anymore.  I'm too worried about what my partner thinks, what my sous chef thinks, how I'm perceived, all the things I have to do, what I have to do tomorrow... there are so many voices and I want shut them all out and say, "Fuck you, it's time to cook."  But it's gone and that rush is no longer.  Now it's just stress and pain and worry and Fucked up, Insecure, Nervous and Emotional...

But there are moments... moments when it comes through and they are so strong they remind me why I'm doing this.  They remind me why I love this woman, this fucking bitch of a career, this tempestuous whore, why I have this love affair to begin with.  It's fighting all the time, shouting, punching walls, hating yourself, hating her, wanting to choke, wanting to kill and then sudden passion... clearing of clouds, wanting to embrace, I love you, take me back, take me back, you're incredible, you're sexy, you're sex... and then back to more hate, more anger, more frustration...

I think you're starting to get a better picture of why chefs are the way they are.. generally maladjusted human beings who are capricious and volatile at the same time.

Those moments are strong, that adrenaline-laced succor so sweet, but they are becoming less frequent and maybe that's why I'm freaking out.  I don't want peace, I don't want to sit around all day, I do actually want work, but I just want to love it again.  I want to want it again, to desire it, to lust for it.

But I hold out.  Maybe we're in a rough phase, maybe her cousins living with us and it's causing a lot of stress.  Maybe when I get back on the hot line in front of a fire, maybe when I'm cutting up animals again it'll come back.  Maybe the yelling, the anger, the ferocity of a nasty kitchen is what I want... maybe I like the abuse, maybe fucking burn me, hate me, slap me...

I'm not sure.  It's been a very confusing couple of months.  The sudden confrontation with adulthood and an adult life.  A career, a new environment but unfortunately a stale responsibility.  I'm still figuring it out, and if this post is evidence of anything, it's that I'm really fucked up in the head right now and it needs to clear.

So I don't know.

I think back to the days of playing college ultimate.  I was robbed, being a fatass and a smoker cost me so many years of what could have been good ultimate.  But those days were great, however short they were.  Waking up on a bitterly frosty Saturday morning, shaking the cobwebs off, setting your body on fire until 40 F is positively pleasant.  The serenity of a misty, dew-streaked field is greatly underrated as a natural wonder.  Hunting the disc as it hung in the air, that shoving match against your opponent.  It's predatory, it ignites this primal instinct in you, I don't know why.  In that moment, ripping it out of the air, establishing dominance, beating-your-chest excitement, you roar, you pound, you scream.  There's no better feeling in the world, it's out-of-body and yet so totally overwhelming in how aware you are of it.  Camaraderie, that feeling of success through many, synergy, laughter, the carefree days of running and pushing yourself...

That's my love song to ultimate, a nonsensical paragraph that best encapsulates how much I miss the game and how I remember it.  How in those moments I think I was truly happy.

I was never very good at being happy, but I always look back at those moments with fondness, as a frame of reference as to what we hope to get out of life.

And I hope more of them lay in wait for me in my future.

But as of now it's unclear.

So here's to hoping.

EP6