The past few weeks have been a little crazy to say the least and now somehow I’m in New Orleans and clueless which way is up. After what happened, it’s a bit hard to stay focused and motivated. It’s hard to retain a sense of humor right after my entire life gets flipped upside down, yet again. Ahhh, but it’s clear I’m not alone and while the details might be a bit different, most of you can relate to the concept of burning out.
It happens to the best us.
I’ve been doing this shit for almost 27 years and I’ve crashed hard a few times. Mostly because of my own ego and arrogance but there have been a few times such as these past few weeks and when my Old Man passed that I just simply lose my Mojo and can’t force myself to give a fuck about anything.
Even now, the only reason I’m writing this is out of a sense of both obligation and responsibility to the fans who’ve gone out of the way to support me over the past few weeks. I hope that, if you’re going through this kind of shit, this will make it just a bit easier.
It will pass
At some point everyone starts to question if they’re doing the right thing, if they’re on the right path or if they’ve just been pissing away the few good years they have on this earth. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thrown off my apron and swore I’d never go back to Kitchen or how close I’ve come to deleting this site. The thing is, we all go through this shit.
For fucks sake, I have zero interest in cooking right now but if I got the call I’d still go run the line. Right now I’m losing my mind and questioning my value as a human being, knowing that this is the sum total of my best efforts. It’s frustrating as fuck yet I’ve been here before and it’s going to pass, it always does.
So what do you do?
There’s a few things that I’ve learned the hard way over the years. Mainly it comes to slowing down and stepping back. Am I in the condition to run a Kitchen right now? Fuck no, not by a long shot. That doesn’t mean that I’m out of the game. Same with this site, I might not be able to put down 5000 words a day but I can pull something like this out of my ass once a week.
The other thing is finding a way to tap back into the source, the reason you started doing it in the first place, before you let you’re ego get involved. For me it’s the way I used to cook spaghetti for my two best friends when we were in high school. No ego, just high as fuck using what little I had in terms of knowledge and experience to make it as awesome as possible. Remember why you fell in love with this and start from that.
It takes time
This whole thing hit hours prior to me finally hitting 10,000 fans, a major milestone for me as both a Writer and a Chef. My ego is telling me I don’t have time to sit with a broken heart and my ego is an idiot. Loss is loss and it hits like a motherfucker. It takes time to heal from this shit and once you fry yourself, you don’t have another choice. This is when you need to be nice to yourself and I need to start taking my own advice.
It’s late, I’m fried, I’ve been going to interviews while also working construction and once things get a little more settled, I’ll be back to publishing blah blah blah…