not feeling resolute

New years, a time when many people discuss resolutions. It's the beginning of a brand new year, so what better time to make a decision to change your life for the better?

The problem is that it so seldom happens. We start with a grand idea, perhaps we decide to quite smoking, not one I'm personally going with just yet, or perhaps we decide we need to lose X number of pounds. All too often, our grand ideas of change amount to little as we find ourselves back on the roller coaster or back to the humdrum, however we see our daily life.

One of my favorite newish to me blogs is Line Cook, and I found him through a button that suddenly disappeared from my Google reader page, the discover button. I could click on discover and Google would give me a list of blogs that were somehow related to the feeds already in reader.

There are a few cooking related blogs in my reader, and from my first read at Line Cook I liked his writing, enjoyed reading about his view of this business we are both in. He works at a higher end place than I, but it's still the same business, and it's nice to know that our comrades deal with similar issues.

He's posted something of a new year's resolution post, but unlike so many straightforward resolutions, unlike those big life changing decisions that we never can get a handle on, his ideas are completely doable. It seems to me less a huge change in direction and more a slight change in outlook.

As he states, there is a fair amount of self doubt in the field of cooking that can lead us astray, cause us to forget what we're doing, cause us to lose confidence in our ability, and that lack of confidence can be as slight as to cause us to stumble or so great that it paralyzes us.

His resolution rings true for me not just in the kitchen but in my daily life. For all the change I've forced and faced the last year, there has been a constant thorn in my side, something I've carried with me for years, and his attitude is one I need to adopt. I need to:

stop listening to the static and bullshit and let ourselves feel confident . . . let's take risks . . . ignore the voices in your head. Let yourself feel confident . . . Let yourself move forward in 2009--no excuses and no holding (yourself) back.

I'll add for myself, stop making excuses for why X didn't work or why I let Y depress me and stop me in my tracks. I won't pretend that I'm going to go out and be different tomorrow. I'm not saying that I'll actually do better every single day. I just want to keep this attitude in mind, to start acting in such a way that makes confidence and moving foward such a habit that I'm eventually doing so because I am confident and because I do move forward. I've got a lot to learn and a lot of steps to take just to begin this journey, but I have to start.

first o' year bs

I worked nonstop from the moment I arrived at work last night, clocking in one minute after four in the afternoon. We weren't yet busy, but as the night progressed the square filled up with people and so did the place I work.

We had reservations lined up all night and were seating till eleven thirty, though we ended up taking our last table before that. I did a little prep at the beginning of the night but soon ended up back in the dish pit. I wasn't at all concerned with this, as per usual, though I am going to work my way out of there soon.

I have a tiny bit of an almost burn on my left thumb from holding dirty sautee pans to scrub them out. One of our hot line cooks is really good at scorching them making my job especially fun. Most nights I have a few minutes to let them soak, but last night they didn't even sit in the soak sink long enough to cool off. If anything the steady rotation of still hot pans seemed to keep the soak water hot.

There's a bruise on my leg from running into the walk in door or having it opened into me. I'm not really sure which. I think I was fortunate in not wounding myself any more than that.

In time for the last countdown of the year I walked outside and smoked a cigarette, not the least interested in anything happening on the square, wanting to get back inside to my dishes and hopefully getting the hell out of there early. As it turned out I had another hour and a half of srubbing and spraying and shoving things into and out of the dish machine.

There were a couple of beers, some Bakers bourbon that ended up in my nose from laughing just as I took a shot combined with the fact that I really don't like whiskey for the most part. There was some actual champagne, better than what most of the actual revelers got to drink.

A beer later I walked a few doors down to the pub and had another beer was accosted by a girl, a pretty girl, but a girl nonetheless. Some of her hair caught in one of my earrings, and she was grossed out when I twisted my ear lobe to prove that I was fine. Her hair had actually stuck in my earring and had been pulled out, so my concern was her hair. I couldn't convince her that my ears were in fact fine.

I ran into a friend there and ended up back at the hotel room he'd gotten for the night, a nice late night walk through town. I woke this morning having had too little sleep and came home. I sat here a very few minutes before getting a text from Momma to go pick up the boys, and it was there that I realized I'd not even changed out of my work clothes. Even my filthy boots were still on, and those are generally the first thing I get rid of work related.

Now I'm home, have the last of a cup of coffee and am clean. The house is still a mess from Christmas stuff. Someone needs to cook supper, or we need to decide somewhere cheap to eat, and it needs to happen soon. Since noon yesterday I've eaten very little.

I'm fucking hungry, and Momma and I are both off today. I'm done with this pointless post. Hell of a way to start the year, by boring both my readers, but it's how I roll.

I hope this one is better than the last, because the last one, while it didn't suck the whole way through, just seemed more suck than not. Let's see where this new one will take us. Hope yours is happy.