Geezerhood. I wear it well.
Mar. 12th, 2011 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terribleturnipRight. So I decided, for me, I was going to do a real blog. More than this -- which is part hanging with friend and part therapy.
But let's face it, sometimes you want to hang out in your comfy jammies with people you know and do shorthand jokes...and sometimes you want to get out there in public, hit the club, see if you have any...mojo left.
After all -- as a personal chef, I watched dozens and dozens of would-be personal chefs fail. "My friends love my cooking and tell me I should be a chef." Yeah. You know, sometimes they're right. But sometimes...you're just better than they are. In the grand scheme of things...you're a B student. Nothing wrong with that -- but there's a chasm between being good enough for your friends...and really being good -- good as measured against professionals.
I should know - because I was one of those people. Everyone I knew said I was an awesome cook. But seriously -- not a MOMENT of professional instruction. And there are still vast, gaping chasms of stuff I don't know about cooking that a first year culinary student would know how to do well -- souffle? Clueless. Can't stand eggy dishes. Never made one. Would totally have to look up how to make one. My clients never wanted souffles. So, on the one hand - my cooking's won contests, I had a crazy-high client retention rate, I've cooked dishes that impressed instructors at top culinary institutions. I made tzatsiki for the first time last week -- just as an accompaniment to a falafel tasting we were holding. And when several chefs say "Well, not impressed with the falafel, but we totally have to contract for this Tzatsiki"...it's time to expletive relax about my cooking abilities, isn't it? Ten years at it as a main profession. Personal Chef of the Expletive Year. An ACF instructor telling me I have a fine palate. A CIA instructor raving about a dish I made. Okay, okay, fine. I still lay a culinary egg from time to time -- and I'm not always on the top of my game. But I'm pretty good.
Time to challenge myself elsewhere. So, here I am, on LJ -- and my friends tell me "O, you so funny." Yeah, yeah, but you're my friends. We're all comfortable here. In our intellectual jammies. And there are fewer of us here than there were.
I need a challenge. Jammies are great. But can I cut it outside of our living room? Time to suck in my stomach and pull the pantyhose on.
But, as with any new venture...there are challenges. Seriously...widgets? Ah, god, I HATE learning new things. Well - I'm all about learning new interesting useless facts. Like hagfish eating rotting carcasses through their skin and gills. (And yes, I did use that factoid over the past several days. And I WAS like a god. In a cargo cult kind of way.) But learning new skills? Painful. Excruciatingly painful. I'm looking at blog set-up pages, and my brain is just about seizing up. What is mebeo? Or Memboa, or something like that. I know tags, but how to really work them? Clouds? Jesus on a joystick I don't have DAYS to spend finding the right photo for...augh, god...everything!
And that's how I know I'm a geezer. Because secretly I'm thinking "I need a 12 year old to set this up for me". I have become my mother. Who had a ringtone on her cell phone that was "Hello? Hello? Hello?" making it sound like she was smuggling a gnome in her purse. And she didn't know how to change it because a student of hers who worked at the Nameless Phone company store had set it up for her.
I don't want to be that Geezer. But yet...I'm trying to pull the curtain of "Hey, I don't have time to explore all of this crap, I have a more than full time job and more than part time obligations and..." but seriously...I just feel too freaking old to figure it out.
Let's face it. By the time I figure it all out and get it set up and get it going...the world will have moved on to something shinier and more impressive. And I'm using the wrong platform. And ignoring pretty much every single damn rule about doing it right and...
This is why my people have cocktail hour. It's freaking Saturday night and I should be kicking back with a tray of martinis and some witty conversation. Or some handsome young thing. Instead I'm obsessing about Tags and Embedding and...
Eh, what's that? I can't hear you...
But let's face it, sometimes you want to hang out in your comfy jammies with people you know and do shorthand jokes...and sometimes you want to get out there in public, hit the club, see if you have any...mojo left.
After all -- as a personal chef, I watched dozens and dozens of would-be personal chefs fail. "My friends love my cooking and tell me I should be a chef." Yeah. You know, sometimes they're right. But sometimes...you're just better than they are. In the grand scheme of things...you're a B student. Nothing wrong with that -- but there's a chasm between being good enough for your friends...and really being good -- good as measured against professionals.
I should know - because I was one of those people. Everyone I knew said I was an awesome cook. But seriously -- not a MOMENT of professional instruction. And there are still vast, gaping chasms of stuff I don't know about cooking that a first year culinary student would know how to do well -- souffle? Clueless. Can't stand eggy dishes. Never made one. Would totally have to look up how to make one. My clients never wanted souffles. So, on the one hand - my cooking's won contests, I had a crazy-high client retention rate, I've cooked dishes that impressed instructors at top culinary institutions. I made tzatsiki for the first time last week -- just as an accompaniment to a falafel tasting we were holding. And when several chefs say "Well, not impressed with the falafel, but we totally have to contract for this Tzatsiki"...it's time to expletive relax about my cooking abilities, isn't it? Ten years at it as a main profession. Personal Chef of the Expletive Year. An ACF instructor telling me I have a fine palate. A CIA instructor raving about a dish I made. Okay, okay, fine. I still lay a culinary egg from time to time -- and I'm not always on the top of my game. But I'm pretty good.
Time to challenge myself elsewhere. So, here I am, on LJ -- and my friends tell me "O, you so funny." Yeah, yeah, but you're my friends. We're all comfortable here. In our intellectual jammies. And there are fewer of us here than there were.
I need a challenge. Jammies are great. But can I cut it outside of our living room? Time to suck in my stomach and pull the pantyhose on.
But, as with any new venture...there are challenges. Seriously...widgets? Ah, god, I HATE learning new things. Well - I'm all about learning new interesting useless facts. Like hagfish eating rotting carcasses through their skin and gills. (And yes, I did use that factoid over the past several days. And I WAS like a god. In a cargo cult kind of way.) But learning new skills? Painful. Excruciatingly painful. I'm looking at blog set-up pages, and my brain is just about seizing up. What is mebeo? Or Memboa, or something like that. I know tags, but how to really work them? Clouds? Jesus on a joystick I don't have DAYS to spend finding the right photo for...augh, god...everything!
And that's how I know I'm a geezer. Because secretly I'm thinking "I need a 12 year old to set this up for me". I have become my mother. Who had a ringtone on her cell phone that was "Hello? Hello? Hello?" making it sound like she was smuggling a gnome in her purse. And she didn't know how to change it because a student of hers who worked at the Nameless Phone company store had set it up for her.
I don't want to be that Geezer. But yet...I'm trying to pull the curtain of "Hey, I don't have time to explore all of this crap, I have a more than full time job and more than part time obligations and..." but seriously...I just feel too freaking old to figure it out.
Let's face it. By the time I figure it all out and get it set up and get it going...the world will have moved on to something shinier and more impressive. And I'm using the wrong platform. And ignoring pretty much every single damn rule about doing it right and...
This is why my people have cocktail hour. It's freaking Saturday night and I should be kicking back with a tray of martinis and some witty conversation. Or some handsome young thing. Instead I'm obsessing about Tags and Embedding and...
Eh, what's that? I can't hear you...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 08:15 am (UTC)I actually *like* the freedom of not having to post to you guys. I have a blog in another place where people actually knew I
existedhad a life BEFOREIt's freeing not having to pitch stories to your audience and (in my case not yours) feeling you've not hit it quite on the head.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 01:16 pm (UTC)"Time to suck in my stomach and pull the pantyhose on."
garters and stockings are better (from my perspective at least)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 04:43 pm (UTC)Pantyhose is my "getting sh*t done" workaday wear.
Seriously, if I couldn't concentrate one day at work because my jacket rustled, my earrings clinked and I could feel the pattern of my hose on the soles of my feet...how much work do you suppose I could get done with garters and stockings?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 11:49 pm (UTC)but even pantyhose have an allure ... has to do with a stocking covered female thigh and the way it rubs against one's face
no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 03:52 pm (UTC)If you do a blog I'll read it. I only stick around on LJ because of you and a couple of other notables (I'm looking at you, thatliardiego) because otherwise I don't laugh that much.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 04:05 pm (UTC);D
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:48 am (UTC)It makes no sense, but well, the meter works for me... ;)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:13 am (UTC)