Yes, Chef!
A ball of dough.
Round and beige and floured and warm. On a metal countertop, maybe, in a commercial kitchen. Its smell—modest, familiar—fills my daydreams.
The dough recurs to me like a vision, a prophecy, an omen? I revisit it as often as a photo in a wallet. Always in my pocket. A comfort. A symbol. Of… what?
With imagined hands, I stretch the dough out into a long tongue, slap it to the counter, roll it out, flexed fingers spreading it crust-thin. I want to lie on top of it, pile myself like so many burrito fillings, and roll up like a Wellington. Live in its embrace. Die there.
I have a weird relationship with food. I’m aware. I idealize food. I dream of food. Food porn, to me, is just porn. Blame every cooking video on the internet, tempting us with slow-mo forkfuls and sexual cheese-pulls. Chef’s Table is a show I watch ALONE, hand between my legs…
Kidding. (Am I?)
Yesterday, I told my partner: “In another life, I would have been a chef.”
Part of me wishes I’d chosen Chef in this life. Maybe because food is one of few things that just feels true. Essential. Technology, politics, writing, everything else: it all wants to be essential. But is it? I’m not saying cooking can’t be complicated. Working in a restaurant is for God’s bravest warriors. Is that how the saying goes? I’ve never had a god. My point: I’ve read and seen too much of Anthony Bourdain to believe a chef’s life is simple, salted bliss.
It’s just, what a way to live. On the palate. What a way to learn about the world and express your findings: in doughs and vinegars and spices and sweets. What a way to test your balance.
Everything, on the tongue.
I got a new therapist.
The first thing she says to me: “You’re all over the place.”
Looking at her. My kaleidoscope face. I am all over the place. I am too many ideas and prerogatives happening all at once. I am a mosaic of unfinished job applications, bank statements, heavy conversations with my mom; I am families of TV and movie characters who refuse to stop talking over each other until I finish writing their scripts. I have so much to do that I am so much to do. I have no body. I’m not here. I’m everywhere else.
“Well, sure I’m all over the place, but—”
She cuts me off. She doesn’t care about my excuses. Actually, she says: “I don’t give a shit about your excuses.” She’s a cool therapist. She swears. She used to be in a Harley Davidson gang. Yes, really. She’s hard on me. She says, softening, “I’m sorry I’m so hard on you.” I laugh a flat ha, like a dude.
I say, “That’s okay, I’m used to people being hard on me.”
She looks at me with true sympathy and says, “You shouldn’t be.”
2024 started in tears.
At exactly midnight (hilariously punctually) I started crying. Mourning… what? A bad year? A few bad years? Tears, congealing. Blinding. I can’t see the good memories. It’s all wet, bad news.
2023: The Year of the Longest Writers Strike in History. Just as we were really recovering from the pandemic, y’know? Just as we were all about to sell our shows, y’know? But, who cares anyway. Right? It’s just entertainment. It’s just my life. It’s just what I’ve always wanted to do. (Do I still want to?) (Who cares?) (It’s just entertainment.) (It’s just my life.)
2023: The Year of the Dried-Out Bank Account. The stress, the health problems, the year my family imploded. Big purple supernova. The pot boileth over. I am all starchy froth.
Midnight and I’m praying for a reverse-Cinderella. The clock has struck, Fairy Godmama! Where you at, girl? Come turn my pumpkin into a chariot and wheel me to sparkling victory!
It’s all very poor-me.
The voice that lives in my head says: So what? Other people have it so much worse.
“Anxiety comes from thinking about you,” my cool motorcycle-gang therapist tells me. “The more you live in service of others, the less anxious you’ll be.”
So… should I give up on writing and join Greenpeace?
No.
She doesn’t mean to give up on my dreams, to fold my typing hands into devotional prayer. She means to reframe my dreams. Why do I want to be good at what I do? At writing, storytelling, directing? Do I do it to win some impossible game? To set myself on the highest platform of a lonely podium? No.
I want to be good at what I do because becoming good is a grounding practice, a journey to feel in myself as fully as possible, so that I can become what I’m supposed to be: a pillar. Confident and consistent and strong and able to be leaned on by others. A somebody who—in any room she graces—is fundamental, as reassuring as gravity.
A pillar, of course, can’t be all over the place. It can be in only one.
You’re all over the place…
…because I’m afraid to be in just one place. Because I should be somewhere else? On a higher step on the staircase, maybe. On an entirely different staircase, maybe. (A chef!) And so I extend my limbs in every direction, palms out like stars, I am a budding bunch of phalanges trying to touch everything, always, just in case.
I am everywhere and so I am in no particular place and so I am anxious and so, for the past Septobervembercember, I’ve been vibrating like that, in one place, thinking everywhere and going nowhere, muscles shaking as I’m overextended into every hypothetical. Finally, collapsing. Forced by fatigue to pause. To be in one place.
A pillar, fallen. Who only needs a push upright.
Happy January!
What to expect this year from the Great Job Substack.
It’s a new year, babies. We are freshly born, again.
Wassup, hello, we’re back.
Current status: If we’re still on the pillar metaphor, I’m very Leaning Tower of Pisa. Not quite upright, but we’re getting there. It’s month #1, gimme some time.
After last year, I was pretty sure I was never going to write or make anything ever again but I’ve gotten back on the horse, making shorts, writing my movie script, and that’s. fucking. IT. At least, for right now. God, that’s it. Limits. That’s something I’m learning. I can’t be everything, everywhere, all at once, and so I will be here in my little Nat space working on one or two things at a time—only those things.
Well, and an occasional Substack post. Hey, nice to see you again. I really appreciate that you’re still here. I’m committing to 2 posts a month that’ll come out every other Wednesday. Hump days, baybee! 3 posts if I’m really feeling frisky, but that’s extra credit. All posts will be free, with a little ending section that’s just for paid subscribers. On the hypothetical docket: A monthly Zoom for my paid-folk who want to shoot the shit about technology, politics, writing, etc. (all the non-essentials).
I’ve stopped trying to force this Substack to have a theme, other than what’s always been its through-line: drivel and doodles and films written by someone who’s just trying to figure out what it means to Do a Great Job™. Who’s just testing a million dishes with whatever ingredients life has handed her that day/month/week.
A ball of dough.
Maybe it’s that it could be anything, the dough.
Maybe I am a chef in this life. Just not of food.
Finally, as Promised: 23 Lessons from 2023
These lessons, admittedly, I started learning far before 2023. But they’re top of mind as I enter 2024, a year in which my personal development finally, finally supercedes my career. Phew. Took me long enough.
Free subscribers, you’ll get some of em. Paid, you’ll see em all. Muahaha! I told you, the tail end of my posts will now be pay-walled, but because I am MOTHER THERESA GENEROUS, most will be free to read.
Without further adieu:
(20)23 Lessons
They’re not revolutionary. But they’re honest. And who knows maybe you’ll like them idk I should stop underselling them okay without further-further adieu…
Take breaks. Or else breaks will take you—out of your life, out of your rhythm, for months at a time.
You’re not just a brain. You’re also a body. Love your body as much as you love your brain or else your body will get mad and fuck with your brain like a jealous sibling.
Yes, you’re lactose intolerant, but nothing upsets your gut more than stress. Chill out, don’t be allergic to yourself.
Talk less. (Ironically: By talking less, you’ll say more.)
Meditation works (dammit).
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