Over It

There is exhaustion, and then there is whatever is after exhaustion. Whatever that emotion is set it's precedent and etched itself in to my heart almost a year ago. Unable to identify it's source, that emotion transformed in to a depression that was intense and aggressive even by my standards. Accenting that was a daily onslaught of panic attacks, an ordeal far worse than the once-a-month surprise panic that usually peppers my life.

This virulent shit was all cyclical in nature. Depression made me panic, panic exhausted me and made me depressed. I was angry at everyone and everything. Further complicating that was a deepening in my tendency to catastrophize expectation. If something could go wrong, I knew it would. As you can imagine, this is not a particularly great mindset for a hypochondriac to adopt. I was an abject mess. 

What was most unnerving about all of this is that I could not for the life of me determine the source of the anguish that had mysteriously manifested itself in my life. I was still basking in the afterglow of my less than a year old marriage, I was developing new and exciting friendships while enhancing old ones, I enjoyed my life and my personal schedule. I didn't allow myself to accept what the obvious triggers were for my anxiety, and ignoring them only turned what was a molehill in to a minefield of complications. Letting the few things that were truly damaging me fester made everything horrible. I allowed my issues to exacerbate so intensely that my new marriage was in actual jeopardy. I needed to identify what was wrong. I needed to ingratiate myself to back in to existence. 

With some help and some patience and a whole lot of cognitive sifting I determined that the category of my life that I found most unfulfilling was my job. To a lot of people this isn't a big deal. A lot of jobs actually encourage you to shut off any part of yourself that craves an identity. If you hate working at Best Buy, you can just quit. Odds are if you did develop an emotional attachment to the place or your coworkers, not only were you not a good fit, you were probably violating company protocol. That mentality can't exist when the company you work for is familial and participatory and lets you know you are cared. But there I was, clocking in to that company looking like a kicked dog, sad and stressed out and pathetic.

I wasn't working in restaurants to get me through school, or because I was waiting to figure myself out, or because I was waiting for something better to come along. The idea putting on whites and working insane hours for little-to-no tangible reward was exciting to me. I loved the aesthetic, the grind, the push, the post shift beers. Waking up with sore knees and a bad back had fulfillment written all over it in my head. Furthermore, food is absolutely integral to my existence. There are probably fewer people in my life than I can count on both hands that I love more than good food. Fucked up, I know, but it's true. I wanted to be a lifer.

So, what was the problem? Well aside from the mental limitations implicit in living with anxiety, my mechanical skills aren't exactly a sight to behold. The name "Rough Chop" is more self-identifying than you might assume, and my handwriting looks like it's being executed with all the skill and precision of an eight year old. Self-effacement aside though, the "problem", for a lack of better words, went far beyond mechanical capacity. Almost like I hadn't realized it, enough time had gone by that I was a year from 30 years old and doing nothing but aggressively treading water. I wasn't a chef and god knows I didn't want to be one. Working nights stopped being fun once my wife got out of the service industry, started working normal hours and never saw me anymore. My time off became a balancing act between having time with my wife, time to myself, and maintaining my social life. 

Trying something and quitting because you don't like it is one thing, trying something you love and failing because you don't have the capacity to execute can break your heart. I had become the embodiment of lessons learned from investing an industry without being willing to put my whole heart in it. My brain burned out just slightly before my heart did, and my inability to accept what was happening reality sent me in to a spiral of self-defeat. So something had to be done, and done that thing was. I quit working in restaurants. Out of necessity, out of desire, out of my love for my family and friends and even food. I had to amputate the part of my identity that time and circumstance had let become infected.

I think the extrapolated result is a good one, despite the rocky road it took to get here. I also think listening when your body and brain is demanding you get the fuck out of a situation is a lesson a lot of people could learn. I'm not positive I've found my niche just yet, or that what I'm doing now is a logical means to a fulfilling life. Having said that I do know ripping the bandage off, and with it an obsolete skill set, has been a beneficial change. Sometimes its better to jettison yourself in to the unknown than to cling on to something that isn't working for you. I value the time I spent working in restaurants, and this entry isn't meant to shit on the people who have the ethic and passion to make a life out of it. If anything, I envy the people willing and able to uphold the aesthetic I fell in and then dramatically out of love with. 

It took me a while to write this post because I wanted the dust to settle in my head a little bit before I chose to write my feelings down. My reflexive side wanted to explode in to a cathartic writing rampage and just tear apart every element of what I didn't love about cooking, like a petulant teenage boy who just got dumped for the first time. That wouldn't have done justice to an experience that I was 90% in love with. That 10% was so grating and frustrating that a love sonnet wouldn't necessarily have been an appropriate send off either. So I chose to avoid the maudlin dirge approach all together and write something kind of analytical and straightforward.

This isn't to say that my departure from the world of restaurants is completely without criticism for the industry itself. While you are allowed to have an identity and personality in the kitchen, any part of that identity that doesn't pertain to working in a kitchen is pretty much useless. It helps to be a yes man. Also, their is a rigid bureaucracy that plays itself out in ways that are often painfully arbitrary and idiotic. Sensitivity and kindness have almost no place on the clock. If you're sick, if someone you know is dying, if you're wrought with anxiety and depression, you better get your shift covered or you better be at work. Being the prototypical family man (or woman) is also totally impossible if you want to fulfill some serious role in a kitchen. These are all just realities that I've gleaned from my personal experience of 10+ years of working in various kitchens, but if those realities are somehow vastly different from anyone else's experience, I'd be willing to bet that those other people are the exception to the rule. 

Whenever I write these more personal entries I always feel compelled to end with some moral or a summation of my emotions based on what I just wrote, but this feels a little different. It's hard for me to project my own personal feelings on this matter as they pertain to someone else, because that's fucking with someone's most core passion. Cooking isn't something ever succeeds at if they aren't completely in love with it and aren't completely driven. So I guess my advice is to always read the writing on the wall. Perfection will always be unattainable, but unless you're willing to try and get there, the long term kitchen life just isn't for you. After a decade of trying, I realized it wasn't for me.