Why This, Why Now

I just graduated from a culinary school in Seattle. I find myself going over and over the time line of my life thus far in my head, looking for a pattern that will indicate the future, hoping that the string of successes, failures, and adventures will make me confident that this life will turn out the way I envision it. At 27, I left my corporate job to pursue a cooking career. Two years later I am trading silk suit pants for flame retardant checkered pants with an elastic waist (and seriously, now I need that flexibility).

It all began when I woke up one morning and realized that the path I was on led to somewhere I didn’t recognize from my daydreams. It did, however, lead to financial security, the promise of five weeks off a year, and restful sleep. While these aspects made me hopeful for something deeper to fill in the gaps, I realized that it was not going to compensate for what I was losing each day. There is an old saying that there are two ways to lose your life: all at once or one day at a time. Each day that I continued to be unfulfilled at work, each moment I spent dreading walking into that office, I was losing the most precious gift we have.

Why am I spending so much time talking about the part of my life that has nothing to do with cooking? The purpose of this blog is to inspire others to follow their passion, regardless of how far out of their comfort zone it takes them. Sometimes our wildest adventures begin with a mere flicker of imagination. Mine began with a daydream of opening a restaurant: tending a vegetable garden with my mother, building a long oak bar with my dad, welcoming guests and taking their coats, all the while feeling the thrill of knowing that I had a large part in creating the experience they were about to have.

This blog will surely provide evidence that staying on track to a goal can be tricky. I get distracted easily by shiny things. A co-worker leaves to work at a 3 star Michelin restaurant, and suddenly I think I want to as well. Our mushroom forager comes in smelling of moss with leaves in his hair, and I start fantasizing about being a forager in the mountains. I hope you enjoy following me on my adventure. Perhaps someday you will be reading about my experience as I begin the physical construction of the foundation of knowledge I am building today.