Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
I have a weakness for cookbooks, especially cookbooks with beautiful photography and interesting narrative. Some of the best food bloggers are amazing food photographers, and a lot of them are publishing gorgeously addictive cookbooks. Many of them are decent writers, too, giving glimpses of the best parts of their food lives, funny little stories about their adventures in the kitchen or the backstory to a beloved recipe or food.
I recently checked out such a cookbook, by a young woman named Molly Yeh. Her cookbook is dishearteningly beautiful and well-written, some parts of the narrative accompanying the recipes so hilarious I laughed until I cried. Molly Yeh might be approaching thirty. It’s hard not to be jealous of so much talent at such a young age, but I remind myself she worked hard to create the food blog and cookbook in the first place. The talent she has didn’t manifest the recipes, photos and stories magically. She made choices that gave her the opportunity to make something beautiful and offer it to the world. Also, she’s very talented. So, what? I say these things to myself as I would to a student, trying to convince them of the ways they can learn from such an inspiring artist. Because I feel like one of my students when I look at her book: deeply jealous. I want to stomp my feet and flip off my sweet tender hopes. I am on the verge of giving up. This woman is in her twenties! I’m very far away from my twenties. Thank God, truly, but still, my twenties are getting dusty with forgetting. I wasted a lot of time in my twenties. I was so shallow and lost. I was too stupid and too scared to try to create anything beautiful in my twenties. I went to crappy dance clubs and became a secretary instead. At least I was brave enough to quickly realize I was a terrible secretary and a mediocre dancer at best, and I became a teacher, which I wasn’t so good at in the beginning either but my students and I loved each other and we all learned in spite of me and that was almost enough. These kinds of things could bring on a midlife crisis but as I mentioned earlier, I was shallow and lost in my twenties (and a good portion of my thirties) so I’m all crisised out. I’m also pretty happy with my life overall. I could do with fewer piles of laundry and more time to read, but that has always been the case. After I drag myself out of the corner where I’m pouting I apply more of my teacher coaching to myself. What can I learn from this cookbook author? How can I use her creation for inspiration? She doesn’t follow a lot of rules, I notice. She follows her passions. Her writing is honest and well-crafted. She’s created her life, and from the outside it’s a beautiful one. It’s also probably pretty challenging. She took the initial boredom and loneliness of moving from New York City to a sugar beet farm in North Dakota and turned it into art. Over and over I get this message from artists I admire: if you want to create something you have to fight for it. There are no excuses for not creating it. You have to put in the time. You have to carve out the time, at 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. and any minute in between you can grab. Like I tell my students, there is only do or do not, as Master Yoda says. There isn’t kind of. It’s a blatant and incorrect rip off of dear Yoda, but it often works on my kids and, sometimes, even me. I read the cookbook at night, study the photos and the recipes. I don’t want to create a food blog or a cookbook. I just want to write. I want to put something good I’ve created into the world. I’d love to publish books and make a living writing someday, but I am also a realist. That’s probably not going to happen. I have to acknowledge part of the reason that’s not going to happen is because I squandered a lot of my youth being a bit of an idiot instead of doing the work. I wasted time being afraid. I wasted time being lazy. I wasted time being sad and hating myself. It’s resulted in a lot of empathy and some good writing material. I also learned a lot from that time, about what I need to do and how I need to be to maintain some level of contentment and peace. Writing is something that brings me peace. It also infuriates me, but if I work through it I get to the peace part eventually. The truth is, a lot of people, including this young woman, are way more talented than me. Some of them are also doing jack squat with their talents, just like I did. I’m trying not to do that anymore. I’m not always the best at sticking with things, as evinced by the nearly completed shawl stuffed in my bedside table, the half-finished short story collection, and the 3/4 finished master’s degree hanging around at Regis University. I know I’ll return to my writing again and again, because I have all my life. I’m old enough now to realize I’m going to die someday, sooner rather than later, and I don’t want to have lived in this world not trying, at least, to contribute something I created. Besides a crooked shawl and two beautiful children, that is. But none of those things are finished yet. And neither am I.
4 Comments
3/12/2018 04:06:17 pm
I can relate to your sentiments about your 20s. We are never too old to accomplish something, and I have (had?) similar thoughts about writing too. When I read other bloggers, there is a lot of talent around. I admire their writing and sometimes their youth, but am content with who I am and what I've accomplished. Patricia Polacco became an author at 41 (I'm past that now, but you may not be!) and I'm sure she is in good company. Never give up, just keep making lists like I do.
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Natasha
3/12/2018 04:43:30 pm
I love the way you describe your thoughts about reading Molly Yeh's cookbook. I think we all carry them. Have you read Frank McCourt's writing? (Angela's Ashes, Teacher Man) I think he didn't write his first book until after he retired. There are so many lines of this post that I just love. My new line to summarize my life might be "I could do with fewer piles of laundry and more time to read", but there are so many lines of beauty. I hope you do keep writing!!!
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3/12/2018 06:09:25 pm
I wasted my 20's too! But I had a good time, and I learned a lot. I didn't publish anything, but there's still time for that. I think any writing you do (we do!) will push toward that goal. I don't have any half-finished knitting projects lying around, but I have some quilts in progress that are haunting me. And some writing projects. I think of taking a year off teaching to finish a few things sometimes.
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Sonja Schulz
3/13/2018 04:40:44 am
You know how sometimes you read something and it hits you square in the jaw? Yeah, THIS. We must live a parallel life. I'm going to save this post and read over it again---several more times. Everything you wrote in it speaks to me---and it's time for me to get a move on.
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