My Week, Volume 10
I guess we all need to stop sabotaging ourselves and start doing the easy stuff.
Hello comrades! It’s going to be so cool when we’re on volume 2393. Will any of you still be here? Will I be super famous and awesome? Will I be poisoned by fame and money and forget all of you? Will I be forgotten like a childhood toy left to rot in the backyard, watching you laugh, untouched and sun-bleached, breaking apart while you move on? I don’t know. Maybe. We can only wait and see.
Starting next week, I will be managing a different location. Tomorrow’s my last day at my current location and it’s bittersweet. Or, well, today, because this is coming out tomorrow. I’m just making it more confusing. Anyways, I’ve been telling my regulars that I won’t be there anymore and they genuinely seem so sad. Probably because I make the best coffee ever.
Honestly though, I’m also sad. I’ve made friends with a lot of my regulars, we’re on a first-name basis, and they ask me where I went when I take a day off. I’ve been in the food and beverage industry forever and I’ve never made connections with my customers like this. So, it is sad to be leaving.
But, they also wish me luck and know I’ll make it anywhere I go. I am sad, but I’m also excited. I have a bad habit of feeling stuck when jobs don’t change, and when that happens, I quit. We were reaching dangerously close to that point, so the change is good.
Plus, the new location is in the same building as the NBA headquarters, which is awesome. I can’t wait to bribe Adam Silver with free coffee for front-row tickets at New York Knicks Games. Maybe front-row seats for the Brooklyn Nets will be easier.
Either way, I’m leaving, but I’m excited for what’s ahead. And if anything, the old spot will still be there. I can always visit.
But every ending makes room for something new. A chapter closes, a door shuts, a cup runs dry. But only so it can be filled again. Maybe that’s the trade-off for moving forward: you have to let go of something, even if it mattered.
Let’s move on.
Watching
As you all know, I’ve been working in the food and beverage industry for as long as I’ve been legally able to work. But some of you might not know that my mom is also a chef. So, in a way, the food and beverage industry has been part of me since birth. Something about working in a cafe, coffee shop, or kitchen just feels like home.
It doesn’t matter what the setting is. If I’m making or serving something people can enjoy, I feel fulfilled. So, being a barista is actually pretty awesome. I don’t know if I’d ever make it being a chef. I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted to become a chef. But I don’t know if that’s because I truly don’t want to, or if it’s just some weird, deep-down resistance to becoming like my parents.
All of this to say, I love food and drinks, I love restaurants and cafes, and I love working at these places. And because of that, I’ve been obsessed with a certain YouTube series. It’s called Mise En Place by Eater. In this series, Eater follows executive chefs through a day in their lives, showing what it takes to run their restaurants.
I love it because it shows just how dedicated these people are. Sometimes, I look at fine dining with their tiny portions and laugh, but this series has helped me appreciate the true craft and love that’s put into these places. And at the same time, it’s reinvigorated my love for the food and beverage industry.
The video I’m sharing is about Stefano Secchi and his restaurant, Rezdôra. I’m choosing this video specifically because of the passion Secchi exudes. His passion for pasta and the food he’s making is contagious and, somehow, not pretentious. You can honestly feel how much he just loves pasta and food and how much he wants to let other people enjoy that.
Every episode of this series is good. Not just this one. Will I ever be the executive chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant? Probably not. Maybe. But will I be making things for the rest of my life? Yeah.
How a Master Chef Built a Michelin-Starred Italian Restaurant in New York City — Mise En Place - Eater
Reading
This week I finished Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It’s a dystopian novel set in the near-future where Ireland descends into totalitarianism, gripped by an oppressive regime. The novel follows the Stack family, primarily Eilish Stack, the mother. As the political and social environment around Eilish deteriorates, Larry, her husband, is taken by the authorities. He is one of the first people to be swept up in the oppressive regime’s crackdown.
Throughout this novel we watch as Eilish tries to hold onto her family and any semblance of her old reality as her country plunges further and further into madness. She ultimately fails.
This book has a funky writing style. It’s written in long, run-on sentences with no paragraph breaks, or breaks for dialogue. It can be a little confusing at first but once you get it down it’s amazing. Each page is just a giant block of text further adding to the atmosphere of anxiety and claustrophobia.
This book is utterly gut wrenching. The writing style coupled with Eilish’s whole life falling apart made this book a heart-wrenchingly devastating read. I loved it.
There are spoilers past this point. The biggest thing for me was that Eilish made every excuse not to leave and that destroyed everything she loved. It was annoying, but hindsight is 20/20. She had mouths to feed, all of her kids were in school, and she had to go to work.
It’s so easy to float along in a river, not realizing you’re heading straight for the rapids. Her choices weren’t about ignoring the danger. They were about survival. And when you're stuck in the middle of it, the way out isn’t always clear.
In today’s political climate, I sometimes wonder if I’m making excuses not to leave too. I hope I’m not too late.
History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those who did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have not the means to go there, you cannot leave when your children cannot get a passport, cannot go when your feet are rooted in the earth and to leave means tearing off your feet.
Listening
This week, for the listening section, I’d like to share something a little different than usual. It’s a YouTube video, but I swear, I mostly listen to it. It’s a cover of Jigsaw Falling Into Place by Radiohead, performed by Adam Barrett.
I love covers. I don’t know anything about this guy. I don’t know what he does, what he loves, or what he hates. But I do know music. And he knows it. That’s enough for me. Music has this beautiful way of connecting people, even those who don’t have anything else in common.
As children, we may know little about the world, but we always know good music. We sing not for an audience, but because there’s a song inside us that needs to be heard.
I wonder how many people I interact with each day who have some hidden musical talent. If I met this guy and he never told me, I’d never know. I hope he tells everyone because everyone needs to know. He’s incredible.
He’s also performing one of the best Radiohead covers I’ve ever heard, in his baby’s room. That kid is going to be so cool.
Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead (cover) - Adam Barrett
Final Thoughts
If you read my essay from this week, you know I’m currently battling seasonal allergies. It’s rough, but if I remember to take my allergy meds, I’m usually fine. For some reason, though, I keep forgetting to take them.
I don’t know why. I know that if I take my meds, I’ll feel fine. And if I don’t, I’ll feel like I’m dying. Today, I forgot to take them, and it was miserable. I was short of breath, everything hurt, and I could barely think. Plus, I kept sniffling, which is just the worst.
The solution is so simple, yet I fail to follow through. I tend to blame other things for my discomfort. Like lack of sleep, not drinking enough water, or tree dust jizz. But the solutions are always within my control and not that difficult. I could just go to sleep earlier, drink more water, or, you know, take my allergy meds.
I think I’m just my own worst enemy. Maybe the trick is to stop overthinking things and just do what I know works. It’s funny how the simplest solutions are often the hardest to stick to.
I guess we all need to stop sabotaging ourselves and start doing the easy stuff.
Like taking our allergy meds.
Until next week or so,
Thank you,
For everything,
Joshua
Some of my other posts :)
you have inspiredme to make recaps of my week too now
there’s always something i can relate to in your posts & i love love love every recommendation you have (really just you sharing those sorts of things but either way..)