Monthly Archives: January 2010

You watch a recipe being made on tv, and it looks fabulous…and easy.  “I could do that!”  You try, you burn, or under cook  (both at the same time? I’ve done it.).  You watch a smug faced driver pass you in a nice car.  “What do they have that I don’t?”  What ever it is, “I could do that”.   It can’t be that hard. Guess what, It IS that hard.

Not too many years ago, I hated retail so badly that I quit and got a job as an apprentice in a cabinet shop.  Thanks to a lot of luck and a little skill, I found myself in charge of that place in less than a year.  I was scared to death.  I had no clue what I was doing, but I was now in charge of a new helper.  I had to go into peoples homes and parade around with tape measure in hand, pretending to know what was what.  I made so many mistakes.  I think I nearly lost my mind during the first 18 months.    Perfectionist and clueless do not go well together, let me tell you.

Work, boredom, pain, drudgery.  That is what it’s all about.  The smooth talker on The Food Network worked his ass off before ultimately creating that delight for the senses:   He cut onions for hours on end while the boss made all the money.  He sweat his ass off in a hot kitchen. If he was anything like me, he thought it would be so easy when the journey first began.  His chin was held high on the first day of culinary school.  “Self!  This shall be a piece of cake!  Ha ha!”  Then he burned things just like you do. Then what?  More pain, more drudgery.  Failure, over and over again.  Then brief moments of success come.  Skills develop (thanks drudgery).  As a self taught carpenter, I can attest the fact that there is no better way to learn than having to spend hours doing something over again.    Doing it wrong becomes doing it well.

The pictures below are from the second kitchen I ever built.   It was finished around 13 months into my new profession.   While it is not at all my style, I am really proud of it.  I can now look back on it, with the frustration long gone, and see what happens when you push past your desire to give up because “it’s hard”.

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