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| The Wind Sings of a JourneyAdventure calls, and I must answer.
I've made a lot of sacrifices to pursue a career in culinary. For nearly three years I've had to give up on a social life to be a full time student and work full time simultaneously, and after graduation, the overnight shift at the hotel has been a constant drain on my vitality. It became an increasingly cumbersome burden until I felt that I was pouring all of my energy into it.
That's why I decided to quit.
Beyond that, I'm ready to leave the industry for a while. Even after pushing into it with the whole of my strength for three years, I feel like I can give it up at a moment's notice without feeling that I am losing progress. This is because I evaluate myself and my growth by who I am and not what I have done. In order to become the man I want to be, I need to get free of the shackles holding me to the night shift.
There's so much out there for me to explore. Who knows where I'll find fulfilling work. I have total faith that if I search with enthusiasm, something that's right for me will come along.
Above all else, I want to experience a lot of things in life. I have come to place a lot of value on my imagination, realizing that it powers my sense of humor, my writing, and my skill in improv, all of which are very important to me. In order to expand my mind, I just want to see more of the world. After that, I can focus on finding long-term projects to occupy myself with. I think I should definitely look into being a writer as a career once more, because the story project I'm working on as a hobby is beginning to gather its own momentum. One thing I lacked as a cook was the ability to do work that went towards a greater goal, and weaving this massive story is something I not only feel that I need to do, but something that can fulfill the desire to continually add to a project that I feel has the potential to take a life of its own.
(I also need to launch a P.R. campaign of sorts to make sure that people read it, because only a few people care about it right now. Because the story is in my head, I need to write it anyway, but it would be awesome if I knew I was reaching more people. I'll plug it here really quickly, too.)
Anyway, I'm not going anywhere physically; in fact, I just renewed my lease for another year. But in my mind, I've just stepped out into the void, and a long road awaits with no visible ends in sight. I know I'll find something worthwhile if I keep walking forward.
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| Up To My Old Tricks AgainI haven't blogged since August, but in October I started taking improv classes at a local theater. Anyone who has combed the archives of this very blog knows that improv is one of my oldest and most precious dreams, and my obsession with it in high school was really only a shadow of the passion I feel towards it now.
I actually looked up the classes on the internet after remembering how much I had wanted to do it so long ago, and I surprised myself with my own enthusiasm once I had gotten registered. Maybe you can tell from my last entry here, but I'm not the kind of person that believes in pursuing childhood dreams; rather, I prefer to concentrate almost solely on self-improvement and will take whatever path I feel gives me that. However, I have to admit that it has been thrilling so far to embrace this passion as well as very enriching to my development.
The first few classes were fantastic; I learned a lot very quickly and was proud of myself for pushing into my fears. It does take guts to get up on stage with nothing planned out ahead of time and launch into a comedy performance using only what comes to the top of your head first. It also stresses the importance of being in the moment, listening and reacting to your partner and then giving them something to work with in return. In a lot of ways, I think improv can be a useful metaphor for life. When you break it down, it's much better to release your control over what's happening in the scene and just go along with it, rather than attempting to drive it into something specific. In recent years I've realized there is value in letting go of expectations in life and allowing others to act and think as they will. By learning not to manipulate my environment and by living for the moment, you can be present in reality. This is the only way to make improv look like magic, and it's the only way to breathe excitement and fun into the mundane parts of life.
There is a student variety show every 10 weeks or so at the theater. Myself and a few of the other students from the improv class made two appearances in the show; first for a short-form game called Foreign Film, in which translators provide dialogue for two players onstage mimicking a foreign language; and then for a long-form set of scenes with an open structure (our suggestion from the audience being "don't make that face or it will get stuck that way!")
It wasn't a perfect show by any means, but we got laughs. It was actually my first time doing both that game and doing long-form in general, so it was extra improvised for me. But you know what? I did it. The house was packed, definitely over 200 people in the audience, and I did it. Of course we got feedback from our teacher in the next class, but positive or negative observations aside, the only thing that was important to me was that I was able to get onstage with nearly nothing and make comedy.
Since then we've been doing long-form in class which is, for the most part, mind-blowing. Some of the students in class could stand to show some restraint, which just emphasizes the importance of having a "group mind" and sharing the glory of the scene, but overall it has been awe-inspiring watching people walk into the void of an empty stage armed only with strong character choices, then unravel a story.
I've day-dreamed enough about improv over the last few months to make me realize that even once classes are over, this is an art I want to dedicate myself to. Again I'm surprised by my own enthusiasm for it, but I can't think of a stronger signal for something that I need to make a bigger part of my life.
Additionally, I'm becoming deeply embroiled in the goingson at the theater after auditioning for the part of Fred in their production of A Christmas Carol. We're actually in dress rehearsal right now, and we open next weekend. I could write another complete post about how trying on an actor's shoes for a while has been, or still another about how acting and improv both have colored my perception on character work and what that has done for my fiction writing.
In case I don't post again for a while, I have to briefly reflect that it's been a very good year. I'm 21 now and things are starting to go my way. Working at the Ritz-Carlton is still one part fascinating and one part harrowing, even though the culinary craft may not play a major role in my life for much longer if my love for performance arts "upstages" it. Either way, both have enriched me as a person. I place no expectations on the next year or the distant future, but I can only hope I live a long life.
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| Setting GoalsAfter learning a little more about life than I knew in my past few posts (which are now pretty dated, unfortunately, due to my inability to keep blogging a habitual practice), I've taken a hard look at myself and who I want to be in the future. I've finally set some goals that I'm really happy with.
But what's interesting is, none of them have to do with achieving anything in life. Rather, they all have to do with the sort of person I want to be as I age and mature. Here are a few I've jotted down as examples:
- Become a man of gravity
- Become a man who leads and inspires by virtue and uplifting
- Become a man who is friendly to everyone he meets and is genuinely interested in all people on the very basis that they are human. Reserve the right to dislike someone, but never judge them or label them. Give respect where respect is due.
- Become completely honest with myself and my own perception of who I am. Admit to my weaknesses and be humble about my strengths. Lose the fear of being honest to the world.
- Become solidified in my own personal set of inner values; hold myself to them at all costs and do not allow them to be violated by others.
- Detach myself from identifying with my personality, my ego, my accomplishments, and my beliefs. Become fluid and therefore impossible to restrain, impossible to violate. Become capable of changing into anything.
- Expect and deserve nothing from the world but take what I want when I can, while at the same time being perfectly fine if it is not gotten.
...As a side note, I'm sure we can all agree that simply by having this list doesn't mean that I'm going to automatically cultivate these traits, just like how the fact that I wrote it down doesn't mean this is who I am or even who I will become. These things will come to me in the course of my life if I live it in the pursuit of becoming this type of person, but I won't achieve it if I don't move toward it gradually. That's how self-development works, I suppose. I'm just trying to have a realistic vision of how these goals will be met (without such a vision, it's pointless to have goals).
When I was a kid, I was told to have a goal. What do you want to be when you grow up? What the hell? How should I know? Even then I realized that I didn't know a whole lot about the world. My dad went to work and I didn't even know what he did. He was a consultant. What does that mean? Didn't matter; I was a kid. But there was such pressure to have a goal for what you want to achieve in life. As we neared the end of high school, that pressure came back around in the form of picking a college.
The vast majority of high school kids do not understand even how their "ideal career" will play out in their adult life quite simply because they haven't experienced it. Sure, you've got those career quizzes online that will test you on your personality then match you to a job, and tell you about why you'll like it so much. Bull hockey. When I decided I wanted to be a baker I had no idea how harrowing it was going to be. I thought I'd be spending my day figuring out recipes and creating new desserts (I'm much more a scientist than an artist when it comes to food). What I actually got was an intense, high-pressure, fast-paced environment focused more on repetition and precision than innovation of either scientific or artistic nature. I couldn't tell you how many times I thought about quitting culinary school and getting into a college to learn how to be a writer--how much easier that would have been, I thought. As though I know anything about writing for a career, right? I'm sure meeting deadlines on novels when you have lost interest in your own characters halfway through the book is equally as challenging if not more so.
What I'm getting at here is, nobody knows where their life is leading them. It's impossible to know. Even if the world weren't constantly changing, every hour of every day, you still wouldn't have the time to learn everything you would need to know to predict how you'll live your life up till the day you die. There are infinite variables, and as I suggested in the previous paragraph, if you hit one of those major points in your life like choosing a career and decide to change your mind, what happens to those goals of opening a restaurant? That's not going to happen if I suddenly become a columnist. So do I beat myself up about having failed in reaching a goal? Or do I rationalize to myself that I need to stay in the food industry expressly for the purpose of fulfilling that goal?
This is mostly hypothetical, of course. Eventually, I connected with baking in a way that I can truly appreciate, beyond the previous backwards-rationalizations that involved me lying to myself about why I like the career that I chose. Furthermore, in my life, I now believe that I should detach myself from results associated from the outside world entirely and focus entirely on myself. That, I can predict, control, and change. A year from now, my self-development goals may change entirely. That's fine. In fact, that helps fulfill the goal of becoming totally fluid.
Of course, I don't want to be thought of as an authority on how to set goals or discourage anyone else from setting achievement-based goals in their own lives. I like to challenge the way people think, and I think that we should all allow ourselves to be challenged as far as what we really do believe versus what we claim to believe, because that divide does exist. But taking my word for it without it really resonating in your own life is the same as adopting a false belief--you would only "believe" it because I said it was right, when in fact, what I'm really saying here is to challenge the paradigm.
EDIT:
I have removed the goal "become a man of gravity" from the list of things that are important to my self-development. The reason for this is because I don't want to base any aspects of my personal progress on the way others perceive and react to me.
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| Marathon ManThe challenges presented by this quarter are unique and present a couple different types of problems for me, which amalgamate as one opposing entity, like some patchwork golem. The means by which I grapple with this entity are something I still need to determine.
My classes for this quarter (and the last one) are only available in afternoon slot, from noon to 4. My work shift begins at 10:45 pm and lasts until 7 am, though I need to leave my apartment at 10 to get there on time because of how far away it is and because of the off-site employee parking which makes waiting for the staff shuttle necessary. The problem here is that I work on every weekday, so I only have two short gaps in which I can get any sort of sleep: from 8 to 11 when I get out of work, or from 4 to 9 when I get home from school.
Neither of these periods offer any substantial sort of rest. I found that by attempting to break up a 6- or 7-hour sleep schedule into two parts each day, one in the morning and one in the evening, does not even come close to working out well. I did some research and determined that by sleeping for three hours at once your body goes into what is called sleep inertia, which means you enter a state of deep sleep after a few hours and when you wake up your body doesn't want to do anything but crawl back in bed. As you can imagine, when I'm at school, this can seriously fuck my shit up, as I've heard it said. I tried doing this for a few days and only really started to become conscious during the last hour of the class.
The new solution is power napping for 30 minutes after work and then sleeping a little under 5 hours after classes before getting ready for work. It's too little sleep, really. I used to get by on 5 hours of sleep when I worked at the steakhouse but the hotel work is much more intense as I'm finding, and getting enough sleep is a serious issue now. Each week is like an endurance test; I have to ride out four days on severely insufficient amounts of sleep before I hit a weekend where I can actually convalesce.
Following this, the other big problem is finding a reservoir of energy that can power me through each work day. Currently my schedule is such that I work five consecutive days followed by two days off. Now, especially in the culinary field, one will quickly learn that the best work is done under a sense of urgency. This means that tasks are completed with due speed, maximizing not only economy of movement, but physical speed as well. I've worked on a kitchen line for over a year so I know that a strong sense of urgency means an instant adrenaline rush. When it comes to production though it's not the same. You have an 8-hour timer to get all your work done for the day as opposed to getting a ticket and needing to finish within seven minutes. In both cases it's you against the clock but it's a lot harder to feel that sense of urgency when you check what time it is and see that you have five hours to finish your prep list.
Like I said before, though, the hotel work is very intense, and sometimes it's deceiving how long each task can take. The distribution phase of my job, where I sort out everything I've made for the day to give it to different departments and kitchens in the hotel, can actually take up almost an hour, even though all I have to do is organize the products that are already finished and bring them to the appropriate areas. In order to finish everything on time I need to be speedy and efficient through every step of the process. I can artificially induce an adrenaline rush in myself but I can only keep it up for about two hours before I wear down. I usually need to use this burst of energy at the first part of my shift, especially during the times I'm pulling products from the freezer, because my hands go numb in there within the first five minutes, and the longer I spend in there, the more I feel like my blood will freeze in my veins and I will die.
Anyway, I'm going to have to adapt, which is fortunately something I'm pretty good at. Because of my 3-month break to concentrate on school I have to recondition my body to accept the intense punishment I'm going to put it through at work as well my constant sleep deprivation. It'll be rough but it's good for me, I guess. I like to think of myself as a soldier, and from what I hear of soldiers, they don't give up easy.
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| My New HomeI've started at the Ritz-Carlton now, that fact alone leading me to several story-worthy points. I'm not really sure if I'm allowed to talk about their unique system for remembering guest preferences and subsequently catering exclusively to them, but I can tell you that during my orientation they put that system to use for us, the employees. If you know me at all, you know I likes me some milk. There were a few pitchers of milk out for use with the pots of coffee, but of course I went and poured myself a small glass to drink to go along with the danish I had picked up from the breakfast spread. The orientation training leader saw me doing this, and on the second day of orientation, right after I sat down with a muffin he came over to me with a tall glass of ice-cold milk. These people know how to please. It is their business, and business is good.
The other thing I wanted to mention was the fact that typically within a restaurant operation there are things that go on in the kitchen that I personally don't think you, gentle civilian, should be concerned with. In fact, in concerning yourself with back-of-the-house affairs may serve to break down the quality of your dining experience. Well, I don't think this is the case at the Ritz-Carlton. Of course there are "politically correct" ways of doing things, which is what you do when the health inspector is around, and then there's the normal way, which works just fine in terms of sanitation and is surpassingly efficient in terms of time management. (One needs to understand that doing everything the ServSafe way, which is the foodservice sanitation certification that people in my business must be trained in, means washing your hands for 30 seconds at a time after touching anything, and I mean anything. The standards are typically relaxed inside of a kitchen. But I digress.) The fact of the matter is, in a kitchen where quality receives as much emphasis as it does in a luxury hotel/resort, there just aren't any devastating secrets I could reveal that would make you second-guess what you were about to put in your mouth, and, shortly thereafter, attempt to digest. Uh, not that you should be worried about that sort of thing outside of dining at a luxury hotel. Listen. Things happen, dark things. You've got on well enough so far without brooding over the consequences of these things, so paranoia really need not enter this equation.
Working as an overnight baker has its unique challenges, mostly what the hell I'm supposed to do with myself when I'm bored at 4 am on my days off. I found that adjusting to a new sleep pattern took me three days, so that was easy. I've also noticed that my perception of the changing of days between one night to the next morning has blurred together, since that's my work shift, and now I go to sleep in the afternoon. I guess this point doesn't really carry any significance, but it's definitely odd always being up when the sun rises and going to sleep once it reaches its zenith.
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