Capital C – Crisis, folks! This week’s adventures will find me still in the midst of my mid-life crisis. However, I feel like there are some areas that I have gained clarity on. Perhaps not diamond honed type clarity, but still some visibility into where I see myself heading. I know that you’re curious, and at the edge of your seats, waiting for what I am going to tell you next.
“Whatever will she say?”
I know, my faithful followers, that you will deal well with disappointment as I have.
Recently my love and I have moved to a 40 story building in the middle of downtown Seattle. From this place, we have started mulling over our options and have decided that this place is our final resting place in Seattle until we find ourselves in another country.
“What does this mean, are you moving??”
Alas, not any time soon, but what it means that I am fixated on the idea of moving ahead with a non-corporate career and making sure that we are independent enough within a few years to make hard life choices. Mostly, moving out of country. Up till then though, we will be focusing on my favorite topic, food!
Yes, shocking, I know, and totally unexpected. In recent weeks we’ve had some experiences. In my head I think of them as EXPERIENCES. I will list them for you:
- We went to Costa Rica.
- A friend and husband of friend are moving to Spain (so jealous).
- We’ve had many people ask us why we aren’t doing anything with food for a living.
Lets focus on Costa Rica for a moment. It’s not that Costa Rica was life changing, it definitely wasn’t. It was a beautiful country that I want to go back to and see more of. Costa Rica also proved to me that our fat cats would look like the lazy American’s of the feline population there, Los gatos es muy gordito…
What it was, though, was a gateway. I’ve been to Europe, I’ve been to India, I’ve been all over the US, but there are so many other countries that I haven’t been but I am obsessed with the food from different countries. Enter my friends moving to Spain. Super inspired by them! Giving up careers to take advantage of life and travel.
Which leads me to the next point in my list, our friends and their encouragement. Every.Single.Time. we host a food party people ask us why we aren’t doing something with food. It’s gotten kinda ridiculous how many people have said it at this point. Which leaves us here, figuring this out, and thinking of where our final landing place will be. But why have one single landing place? Do we become personal chefs, a traveling cooks? No, I still think the bed and breakfast idea is one that I want to do and that I could see us being successful with, but now it’s finding WHERE to do that.
In the meantime, we’re going to start teaching a cooking class at our new apartment building. Keep hosting food parties for friends, and focus on saving some serious cash for this life ahead.
There are few absolutes in life, if anything there’s an absolute that life is going to be chaotic and to expect change. If anything, make your own change. Be uncomfortable. It’s when you’re uncomfortable that you’re growing and figuring out where you need to go next.
I can’t for the life of me think that these lives we were given were intended to be safe and sound in a secure structure with amenities like air conditioning and gas range stoves. All of these parameters we put around our life are modern day security blankets keeping us from life knocking at our doors. Do I like modern amenities??? Yes! Of course, I am human and love to be indulged. But I think I’ve come to a point where I need to see more of the world and be less reliant on the security that the life I am leading brings. The only security, and even then it’s nebulous, that I want, is that the partner I’ve chosen for this life will go on these adventures with me. I’ve learned that even then, as stable as those variables can be, like partners, life happens and it can be gone in an instant. I love that he’s along for the ride, though.
So here is my declaration – my mission – that I will pursue with a vengeance this life I want. That I will focus on moving to another country and somehow incorporate food into that life.
Here’s to the sharing of food. Here’s to the plans for the next, whatever that next will be. Here’s to you guys being there and supporting us while we figure it out.
Next post – we’re going to be hosting a cooking class in this glass and steel structure. Huzzah! We’ll be teaching our fellow residents and neighbors how to make Peruvian Ceviche with ingredients from the Pike Place Market. We’ll let you know how it goes…