Spoiled

It’s been a long time. I am deeply ridden with guilt every time that I think of how many people in my life were so supportive when I started this blog journey and how (in)frequently I actually have (make) time to write here. So deeply ridden that I don’t even know how to pull myself out of the seemingly bottomless pit I’m stuck in. Not to make excuses, but just as soon as I started to feel like I was getting a grip the ground fell out from beneath my feet. I did everything I could just to get out of bed most days.

The last several months have been grueling. I went through a break-up. I’m honestly still going through said break-up. Around the same time I was transferred (promoted?) to another restaurant within the company to be the kitchen manager and baker. At its best? It was the perfect distraction. At its worst? It was a disaster. I have never drowned in work like I did in the month of June—and there was a time that I had four jobs at once, so that’s saying something. I was working the most delusional schedule I’ve ever heard of, clocking in anywhere from 2-4am and clocking out anywhere from 5-9pm. In the first 14 days that we were open I worked a grand total of 185 hours. Never have I ever known exhaustion like I did then. But I couldn’t stop. I had to keep working—even if I wanted to stop, I couldn’t. We were so busy in those first weeks that I couldn’t keep up with my own production, let alone find time to take a fucking breath.

The week leading up to opening I tried to make myself as unavailable to others as I could so that I could dedicate all my time to baking to no avail. After the grand opening, my bosses, my GM, and I sat at a table to debrief. We had run out of all the bread. All the prep. I tried my best to keep my head on straight, because I was angry, tired, and feeling defeated. I know my bosses could see it, because how couldn’t they? One of them looked me dead in my face and said that he knew this was going to be a lot, they all knew it, and they knew I was alone and they watched me flounder. I cried at the table in front of all of them.

I was failing—no, actually, they were failing me. I was drowning and my world was on fire and my head was spinning and I couldn’t breathe and I was by myself. All day, every day, all I did was bake. I’ve been in Greenville for three years and had eight jobs and I finally got the gig I wanted—I was The Baker—and I’m really in an excellent place, career-wise. Unfortunately, it’s been four months and I’m here to tell you that I hate it—I hate my job. I got what I wanted and they spoiled it.

Quite the shame, if you ask me. People can say what they want about me—I know I’m rough around the edges, very curt, outspoken, sometimes even a bit of an ass—but I am a great worker. My work ethic is probably one of my best qualities, which kind of sucks if I think about it too hard. Surely there’s better parts to me than just what I do at work, right? Lately it doesn’t feel that way. I come in and I hustle, day in and day out, because if I don’t how am I supposed to learn anything? That’s actually the only reason I’m still in the industry in the first place, if I think about it. That is what I love about food. It’s crazy to think that Greenville is the place I’ve grown so much, culinarily speaking (if that is even a word), and everyone I’ve worked for has let me down. I worked at a butcher shop, I was a baker (three times), and I was a cook (twice). And although all of those jobs were different, based on setting and on skillset, the #1 thing they had in common was that they were run by people who I was supposed to trust, and who were supposed to trust in me, and they failed me. Really, it’s a fucking shame. I’ve never learned so much and gained so little in my life—dare I say I even lost.

And what was I even competing for? It feels like all the passion has been drained out of me. I’ve never been much of a dreamer—I never had any kind of great expectations for what my twenties would be like—but this? All this grief and hate and hurt and burnout was not on my docket. I lost and I am lost and I’m sitting in a coffee shop writing this piece wondering what the hell I am supposed to do now, because this cannot be it.

What I need is inspiration. But how do you find inspiration in a city that has sucked the life out of you, full of people who have done the same? I wanted to love Greenville so badly. All I heard about this place before moving here was how fantastic the food scene was, and now that I’ve been here for three years I’m really not sure what anybody was talking about. There are certainly a lot of restaurants here, and there is certainly some kind of industry community here, but if you ask me? It’s all wrong. Everyone is in it all for themselves—they’re selfish and they’re vain. And the worst bit is that half of them don’t even know what the fuck they’re doing. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Clearly, this city’s restaurant scene is thriving. The food community that I want is full of people who collaborate, and lift each other up. The amount of time my bosses have gone out to eat at another restaurant and had nothing but garbage to say about it the whole time they are eating it—some of those bosses don’t even cook the damn food at their own restaurants. It’s always a matter of who does what better, who knows more, who has a better following. You’d think in a city full of an industry that’s built on collaboration and camaraderie, teaching and learning that people would have more of a clue, that people would care less about themselves and more about lifting each other up and learning from one another. Isn’t that the whole point?

When I started this blog, I was full of big ideas and inspiration and I wanted to be a part of the industry and maybe even something bigger. It’s been just short of a year and I am running on empty. I have no energy to write, nor do I have any desire to write, because the whole reason I started this blog was so that I could find ways to be creative with food that didn’t involve what I do for work. I wanted to feel like it didn’t matter if I was a baker or a line cook or worked in a restaurant at all. Because at the time, I didn’t. I didn’t even have a job. But I was still cooking and baking and trying to learn, all on my own. And once I got a job, I worked hard, I learned more, and now I am wondering if I’ll ever feel optimistic about it all again. I’d like to. Contrary to what some people might think, I don’t love being a pessimist. I want to believe in things. When you get beaten down enough, it’s hard to get back up.

I’m plum out of inspiration here, which is disappointing. Actually, a lot about this place—these jobs, these people—has been disappointing. So I’m trying to figure out how to believe again. I can’t live like this anymore. I know so many people in this city whose talents are wasted on the people they work for, myself included. Absolutely wasted. Because people are too selfish and stubborn and ignorant to open their eyes and see the talent that is rotting right in front of them. Greenville has a long way to go, if you ask me. I’ve met a lot of people in the industry that I hope I never see again, I’ve also met a lot of people who are still inspired, not just by food but by Greenville. I hope that those people have it in them to build something better here—but I don’t. I could place blame on anyone I wanted to, on any of the jobs I’ve had here, but it wouldn’t change anything. I don’t believe in anyone’s vision because I don’t trust anyone. Nobody I’ve worked for has had anybody’s best interest in mind but their own. The fault is all around me and there’s nothing I can do about it now. I used to love learning about food, and I loved cooking and baking. I want that back. I want the last three years back. I can’t, unfortunately, get those back, but I can get the love back. I have to believe I can get the love back. And to get it back, maybe I have to go. There are people out there like me who miss feeling inspired when they come to work, some of them are here, with me, and a lot of them are out there, somewhere else.

So that’s what I’ve been doing these last several months. Working towards something else somewhere else with someone else—trying to fall in love with the work again. I’m good at what I do, I deserve to feel like that matters. It has to matter, at least to someone. Right?

Thank you, to anyone who still reads this, to everyone who believed in me once and believes in me still. It’s easy for me to get lost in fog of negativity. Sometimes, I just need a little reminder that the light is still there.