I’ve spent a good deal of my first month on the new job bringing things back to a status quo, or to a sufferable minimum. I have made no ill remarks about my predecessor, but I haven’t had to. The changes have been evident to everyone who comes through the kitchen and everyone remarks positively on them. I am also executing events successfully using menus I haven’t worked with, but have to create because that’s what was sold. Basically things were both at a standstill and a downward slide when I came in, with no structure, organization, order or disciplines. I have spent almost a month fixing that. Right down to making a daily “to-do” list for the dishwashers regarding their job requirements. I was asked to do this by the Assistant General Manager, so it could be used as a training tool to help them improve. Of the 8 point list I made, the #1 item was: When they wash a dish or a glass or silverware or pot or pan, make sure all the food comes off before they put it away. If it still has food stuck to it, it is not clean, no matter how many times it went through the dishwasher (seriously had someone try to tell me they washed a pan 3X and it just wouldn’t come clean, so they just figured it would never come clean, and put it on the shelf to be reused). So I have fixed a lot of what was broken.

But if I want to make my own mark, I am going to have to go back and break a lot of things over again. Habits, for one thing. But more importantly, perceptions. There needs to be a strong break in the organizational set-up of the kitchen, but there also has to be a stylistic change. I am working with menus created by two of the most recent chefs. I’m fully competent to execute all of them, but I want to introduce my own menus, concepts, style and creative energies. This is not something I have been able to do because of the required transition period, making everyone comfortable and not shaking things up too much. But the honeymoon is approaching an end and everyone is still in love, so now is the time to break the comfortable stance everyone is in and rebuild.

I feel good about knocking things down and building things up again, partly because I’m working to embrace the concepts of being “never not broken”. Being in flux, being at times undefined and unpredictable, has a lot of value right now. And I know in my heart that the only thing that would keep me on a rigid path is fear of slipping off, fear of making a mistake, fear of exposing my lack of skills or knowledge… Fear, basically. It is not change I should be afraid of, it is stagnation and consistancy. It is not the unexpected, but the predictable I fear. In the unexpected there is great opportunity and growth and excitement. Predictable is the opposite of all that. What I feel will benefit me the most now is the freedom of impermanence, the sense of breaking it all down and choosing what gets reconstructed.

There are other parts of my life I feel like this is a good tactic to have. I cannot and will not wreck my whole life and routine just to try and reassemble it. Some permanence and consistancy is nice and beneficial right now. There is a certain demoralization that comes over me after the reaching of certain high-energy achievements. It’s almost like a fugue where I wander aimlessly, lacking a sense of purpose or direction. I’m not allowing that to happen anymore (to the extent I can control such things). Or, more correctly, I am allowing it to happen, but to realize that when I’m at that point that is the most creative, powerful, unlimited and effective I can be. It isn’t when I don’t know what comes next that should distress or scare me, it is when I do know. When I do know, I’ve reached my limits. When things are broken and the routines upset and the rails jumped… that is when I can become unlimited. When I’m unlimited, nothing is unimaginable or impossible. I shouldn’t worry about not feeling like I have a purpose or point or milepost to reach. I should be glad that I have the opportunity to choose what comes next without guidelines, expectations or definintions.

So, in my work and career, I am not content to just rebuild the walls and fortify the ramparts and get my workplace back to normal. I have to rattle the bars, tear down the walls, breach the barricades that lock me into conventionality, predictability, and safety. And from that rubble rebuild the form and structure as I see it, without limits, with an eye that nothing that lives and grows is permanent. This is true for other parts of my life, too. 7 months ago

We are going on vacation in mid-September. We are taking a cruise and spending a couple of days in port in Mexico. The cruise and the off-ship activities are secured and paid for, as is the hotel for the weekend in New Orleans, the port we will be sailing from.

Between now and then, a period of about a month, I intend to lose 12 pounds of body-weight. I’ve been stubbornly stuck at the same number for months, and it has really grown tiresome. This is a small, measurable goal that I know I can achieve because I have achieved it before in this time-frame.

Combinations, as always, of selective eating practice and exercises. I’d say I’m about 40% raw vegan these days. For the next month I’m uping that to about 75%, with a lot of juicing. The other 25% will be combinations of whey protein shakes, some fish and chicken, some rice and beans. I’m going to try and cut out refined flour and other starches completely, and as much refined sugar as I can. I only drink it with my coffee and there are political reasons I need to keep doing that. Also upping my water intake to a minimum 3 quarts a day, including very first thing in the morning when I get up. I read an article that said that when you sleep you basically deprive your body of water for as much as 8 hours and wake up slightly dehydrated. I always drink a glass before bed so the need to pee will push me out of bed in the pre-dawn morning when the alarm clock fails to convince. I can see some value in adding more water to rehydrate and flush the system first thing, too.

It is a week-long cruise, and we only get a limited time in ports for two days. I want to slim down and gain some energy to make the most of them. We haven’t had an honest-to-god-get-away-vacation-just-the-two-of-us in two years. This after we promised each other we’d make more time for holidays and getting away.

Except for my staff and a couple of other people at work, no one on my job knows I’m going to be gone. I very well may be gone before then anyway, either with another job or just free-lancing. It depends on how much more I can reasonably take. Needle’s pretty deep in the red on that matter. I’m not “entitled” to a vacation yet so it will cost me a week’s pay, I’m sure. It might get me fired, I don’t give a shit. The very idea that I would defer a trip with my wife for a much needed vacaion for the benefit of these asses is enough to make me gag. We are going and nothing is stopping us.

We have never been to Mexico, and yes, I know it is the sanitized and touristy and Epcot-style Mexico. And the cruise will be four days of basically stuck on a ship with limited things to do. But it will be the two of us, uninterrupted and undivided and that is the real point of the whole thing. 9 months ago

It’s easy to get ground under where I work. One way I am dealing was to scrawl on the stainless steel wall in the kithcen with black Sharpie “60 Days” about two weeks ago, and then to count down every day, keeping track on the wall. I always planned to get out of there, this is just a defined timeline. I’m at 43 days and counting, as it happens. When people ask, I say it is the maximum number of days I’m going to put up with this shit. The idea is that come what may, this place won’t hold me indefinitely.

Several things have happened to drive down morale, too. It seems everyone feels the malaise and pressure. I cannot do very much about the other departments and the sack of chaos they operate from, but I can exercise some control over my staff and their morale for the next 6 weeks (or less, if fortunes turn). When I came into this place is was disorder and disaster. No one took responsibility, no one had a clue, there was no team. The kitchen was a disgusting, grimy mess. I’ve thrown more than one fit over the cleanliness of the workspace. We have gone through gallons of pot-wash and degreaser to clean every surface to an almost pristine condidtion. I have take the lead and scraped years and layers of gummy oil and grease off surfaces and equipment, and the team has had to do the same. My team doesn’t get to cloister and specialize. Everyone does everything and everyone helps each other. They come together, they leave together; no finishing my list and going home while my teammate is still working. And when they run out of things to do: clean-clean.

It’s been a lot of hard work, and I’m not their favorite papi sometimes. But I’ve got a six person team that can pretty much knock out anything that gets thrown in front of them. Someone is going to be lucky to inherit them.

Which is what it comes down to: I could throw in the towel and just not give a fuck and ride out the next few weeks with a bad attitude and let things slide back to where they were. But I am not going out like that. I want the next person who comes in behind me to look around and know that it was never a question of me being up to the task. That is the best way to protect the structure I’ve built where I am. (Arguably, keeping a running countdown written on the wall may not be the best encouragement to the team. It may seem petty and childish, even. I’ve thought about this a lot. But I have to draw a line and define myself seperately from this place I work)

Woefully, there is one member of the team who hasn’t come along with the rest of them. He still carries this sense of entitlement and some idea that he’s an invaluable member of the team. One thing I’ve learned the hard way: No one is indespensible. This guy is as emotionally turbulent and as petulent as a 14-year old girl. When he gets his feelings hurt, he sulks. When something happens, he wants to talk it to death and gossip to others about it. His attitude is potentially infectious to the others, at the very least it brings them down. I’m tring right now to carefully cull him out because it is in everyone’s best interests, including his. When I leave it will be on him to step up and take over and take care of the staff. I don’t think he is up to it, based on careful analysis and seeing him in action. But he may prove resilent and hang on through the next few weeks. At least he will take over an operation he can be, and should be, proud of.

Who knows, it may yet work out. Things may change for the better. I don’t believe it, and I’m not going to act as if I do. I’ve taken a real beating here in an effort to not get swallowed by the negativity and the low level of expectation that breeds in this place.

No matter what happens, I choose my responses. I choose not to be part of the problem. I don’t even have to be part of a solution, I just have to stand by my own work ethics and values. 10 months ago

I am currently buckling down for a battle. I’ve been as accomodating and agreeable as anyone could expect. The only reason anyone expects more is for the purposes of using me and taking advantage of me.

This is the line they do not want to cross. I don’t know how to escalate by degrees. 0-60 in 5.4 seconds is how I handle stuff like this. I’ve made my little growls of warning, bared my teeth. Someone’s going to screw around and find their head in my jaws and who knows what will happen from there.

Real simple: go play your games somewhere else. Quitting letting everything slide off your desk and pile down upon me. Don not make me your fallback or your go-to-guy. Stop push-push-pushing.

I’ve been pushed far enough. This far… and no farther. 11 months ago

Can the Universe read minds?

Floating on the back burner of my intentions has been the desire to “become an executive chef this year”. I’ve come up through the ranks, put in my time as worker bee and manager. Intellectually, temperment-wise, and experience-wise I feel I am ready for this position. I entered this career late, and I’m actually getting to the point where the grinding on-the-line work is not so much fun. Nor is it productive, nor does it pay well. In less than 10 years I’ve worked for several top companies in my city, rising to the sous chef and management ranks in all of them. I have felt for a while I was ready to embrace the larger responsibilities of exec chef, only somewhat concerned about the impact it would have on my family life. I had hard careers before and got divorced enough and lost friends and family contacts before I started cooking professionally. Like Jimmy in Pulp Fiction: “I don’t wanna get divorced!” But S. and I talked about it, thought about it, and decided that we are a strong couple and we could do this. So I began to think about it more and more.

The job I have now was only meant to be a temporary step towards that goal. It was going to help me recover my finances, fill out my resume, allow me to make the jump finally from supporting cast to leading man. The politics and psychology of the company just don’t mesh with my personal values. The way they treat their staff, showing undeserved favoritism to some and unwarrented repression to others, the way they think about food, the way they operate their business and treat clients… all make me feel like there is just no future or role for me here.

Until a couple of weeks ago when the “corporate chef” who brought me into this mess pulled me aside and said he wants me to take on the role of executive chef for this particular account. He pressed me again yesterday for an answer, telling me that I had to take on the leadership role in this account (the company’s cash cow) while he broke off from his managing role to start building up the company’s long neglected catering business. While trying to sell me on the idea, he used many of the same concepts and phrases I used in my own mind while figuring out this intention.

Can the Universe read minds? Can it deliver on unstated intentions?

I accepted his offer under certain conditions. I now have to wait and see if he can even fulfill those conditions, salary being the numero uno issue. I told him what I would do the job for and I won’t come off that figure one red cent. He reminded me that it won’t be about the money but that the ability to add “executive chef” to my resume and all the experience I get will be the real reward. I nodded and said “uh huh”, and said it’s about the money, too (cuz I needz to get paid, mutha!). Nothing is set in stone, and it might be weeks before it comes to pass. And I figure if I’m going to be there anyway, why turn down more money and a chance to start fulfilling an intention I had not yet said outloud? 15 months ago

Doing something involves making a choice. So does not doing something. If something is happening and you don’t like it or you think it is wrong and you do nothing, you made a choice to do nothing. And slugging it out everyday, always on the defensive, always being reactive… that involves making a choice, too. It means you’ve decided not to get ahead of the curve and take control of things. If not the circumstances, then at least your response to them.

One of my staff looked at her phone (the 21st century pocket-watch) and remarked how slow the day was going. Time seemed to be dragging. I agreed. “I’ve been here three months, and it feels like a year.” I’ve been going to war everyday with an environment of apathy and mediocrity that I would never have believed possible in this industry. Surely such companies who could not get more creative and aggressive got winnowed out over the last five years? Not this one, and the problems are bone-deep. I said before that I could not see staying there more than a year, and it already feels like a year, so what does that mean?

A couple of opportunities are opening up around the bend. I don’t know if they will develop into anything substantial, but if they do it would be a chance to move on and move up, without seeming to give in and give up. I hate to been seen as a quitter. I know a lot of people in this company are sitting back with baited breath, waiting for us to quit or fail.

I realize I have been playing it safe, not making a choice. I hunker down here and wait for opportunities to present themselves, like crickets passing a wolf-spider’s lair. In the mean time I vocally denounce the company and all its problems. I do the best job I can, but I leave no room for doubt that this is the most messed up place I have ever worked, bar none. Of course, I can only say that for so long, without looking like a complancent idiot for still being there.

So I have to make a choice. I have to intend and choose to be an individual apart from the work around me. I have to decide that I am going to do the best I can with what I have, and not cop out or give half measures. I have to make a choice that I will not wait for new opportunities to develop, but go on the hunt for them and make them happen. I choose to pursue, not wait. 16 months ago