Hi! So I took a week off, and I plan to take another away
from the world of blogging, but I decided I could take a little time out of my
day to update you all on my life.
Things at work are going well. The country club is a busy
place and we feed people in the hundreds on a daily basis. I remain a humble
fry cook but slowly and surely I move over to the sauté station one entrée at a
time and pick up a little more each day. The idea is to be cross-trained on
every station within a couple months so I am more useful to the bosses. So far
I have been told that I’m doing well, and they hope I stick around.
This type of work isn’t for everybody. “In the weeds” is the
term kitchen people use for the times of day when the tickets don’t stop
printing, the sweat starts to bead, and tempers can flare. Pots and pans are flying all over and everything is literally as hot as the fire that has been heating it. I used to not be
able to maintain my cool during these rushes, but now I remain calm and I focus
my energy on assembling a product worthy of top dollar, because that is what
the customers are paying out there. I will admit that I have been flustered,
and I have faltered a couple times, but so has everybody else: I am not alone.
It happens, and just like they taught me in boot camp: when I make a mistake, I
fix it and I move on.
The drive to work is fairly long: forty minutes one-way. I
don’t know how long I’ll be able to do that. I’m not already thinking of
looking for a different job, I’m thinking of moving a little more west of where
I am now at some point because the job and the benefits are worth staying for
years. Who knows what the future holds.
One very typical aspect of a kitchen job is that you will
find heavy drinking and drug use. This does not appear to be the case here. Unfortunately,
this is harder on me than if it were
prevalent because I find myself wishing I were the type that could just go have
one beer with the staff after a hard day of work. I get the implication, and I’ve
not actually been tempted or offered, but it will happen, and I need to be
ready for that, which I am.
This past weekend was the 43rd annual Gopher
State Roundup. If you don’t know, this is an opportunity for thousands of
people in recovery to gather in one place, eat food, go to meetings, and
otherwise socialize. This is my second year in a row, and third overall that I’ve
attended. I went to three meetings when I went on Saturday and in one, the
topic was powerlessness. When a former addict sees that word—and I should only
speak for myself here—immediately the word control comes to mind. I’m powerless
over anything and everybody that surrounds me: I can only control my actions. I
don’t like that. Where it gets more specific for me is perfectionism, in that
not only do I want to do things perfectly, I expect others to the same. I am a work in progress, but...
At work, I have always been in control of the flow. I don’t
mean at Lafayette, I mean at Xcel, and the previous few kitchens in which I
have worked. I controlled the timing and the final outcome, and generally, I
was working alone. This is backwards for me at the country club, and I find
myself trying to control things with my mind and thus far, it has had no
effect. Similarly, I have wanted to
be asked out for a beer after work, but that has also not happened. Isn’t that
strange? I have had that conversation in my mind a hundred times, to a question
that has never even been asked. I need to live a little more in the moment, and
maybe try to ask for a little for help with that from my sponsor, and I think I will get through
this.
Sometimes I think I am the only one that has strange thoughts
or conversations in my head, but I know I am not alone.
I’ll be back in another week.
