lifestyle

Something Worth Saving

/ The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you can guess what my state of mind has been like this last week and why I wound up skipping a blog post.

I’m not going to go over the recent election here except to say that while I’m frustrated and disappointed, I’m not wholly surprised. That can also be said for the anti-Jewish pogroms that seem to be all the rage in Europe again. Clearly going “vintage” doesn’t just mean aesthetics anymore- it also covers racial violence, and several groups appear to be giving 1939.

The Outrage and Angst Machines are running full tilt and their product remains what it always has been- Fear and Exhaustion, getting dumped into our lives faster than ever.

The idea is not to drown us, but to make it so we drown ourselves. To make us isolate ourselves in fear of everyone and everything and burn out all our energy over The Next Big Bummer so we’ll throw up our hands, sit down, shut up, and get on with dying quietly.

“Engage with the world around you at your own risk,” it all yells at us from the TV, from our phones, from stickers and posters and placards and screaming strangers. “Better and safer to Trust Us, give us your money and voices, and let us tell you who to hate today while we swaddle you in little luxuries. You can even choose which ones.”

hands reaching up in a darkened room to touch a ray of light
Photo by Luis Dalvan on Pexels.com
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It’s Okay To Not Know

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The rain is coming down in fits and starts outside. I’ve had to break out my Irish sweater and cloak for the first time this year, but the sky pivots between sunshine and downpour. As it is, I’ve settled for the moment with shedding my cloak, rolling up the sleeves of the sweater, and watching the weather through the window of Holmans. The young bartender calls me “hun” as she fixes up a martini (dirty, extra dry, Beefeater Gin because I’m not trying to be spendy. She tips some extra “Dirty Sue” in there, but I’m alright with it.)

Back to settling in. Back to winding down. Back to being inside, taking stock, and taking a breath.

How’d we manage the summer? How’d we manage the year? How’s it all going? What’s different? What needs to be different?

Sitting where I am, when I am, the confluence of an election in the US, the change of the seasons, the change of weather, and the (Jewish) first anniversary of October 7th isn’t lost on me.

Photo by Hedaetul Islam on Pexels.com
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How Cooking Became a Flex

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“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable stages, those of Survival, Inquiry, and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where stages. For instance, the first stage is characterized by the questions “How can we eat?” the second by the question, “Why do we eat?” and the third by the question “Where shall we have lunch?”

-Douglas Adams,
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy #2)

If you are biological, you need to eat. You need to consume the energy you need to live somehow, no way around it. Plants photosynthesize, animals graze or hunt, and humans go to Wawa. It’s part of the whole “being alive” thing.

For most of our history as a species, what we ate was of greater concern than how we ate it. Douglas Adams hilariously but accurately described it in The Hitchhiker’s Guide quote I gave above. What Adams left to food historians, sociologists, barstool philosophers, and other nerds like myself to debate was how we felt about the act of cooking. Even within the lifetime of the last couple of generations here in the USA, the change in how we as a culture approach cooking and food in general has been massive.

If one is curious enough, one can twist out the wild story from the influences of changing cultural norms, gender roles and expectations, technological developments, and world events like twisting yarn out of cobwebs.

Several books and personalities have investigated this question in depth before- I’ve dipped a couple toes in that ocean myself. I’ll link some of those books throughout this post, but I want to focus on one interesting aspect of it- when and how did cooking for yourself become something to brag about?

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One Deep Breath

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You can absolutely love what you do and still be fucking tired.

Compared to a lot of folks, I’m lucky. I have a wonderful wife. I live in a decent town, and between the two of us we manage to make enough to live comfortably working in fields we love and trained for.

I’m going to go ahead and toot my own horn a bit here (my therapist said I need to improve my self-talk) and share that I am objectively very good at my job. The work of being a pastry chef, running and training a small team, and developing recipes is not an unmanageable burden for me. My team and I deliver excellent work for our employers and our customers.

Just because someone carries a burden well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy, and even people who perform well at work they enjoy feel the need to put down their tools, scream into the void for a bit, and then take a nap.

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