This will not be a typical post for this blog. No recipe, no menu, but it is one that my chief PR man, my husband, has been wanting me to do. “Tell the people about yourself,” he says, “They need to identify with something besides the page online.” I don’t know if this is what he meant, but it’s what I have, and I think it’s important to say. So, I will quote from one of my favorite musicals, Fun Home.
“It’s hard to know where to start.
It’s all so fast,
I’m trying not to spin.
I guess I’m older,
And it’s harder when you’re older to begin.”
Starting a business is daunting. Starting a cooking business when you were a teacher for 20+ years is unnerving, especially when you also live with anxiety and depression. There, I said it. For those of you that have read older posts about my love for Chopped, that’s my “Chopped moment.” (note: everyone on Chopped usually has a moment where they share why they do what they do, an obstacle they have overcome, or what their inspiration is. I in NO WAY mean to belittle what they go through to do what they do. I cannot, for I have my own problems, as we all do). More about that later.
Because my love for teaching exceeded the education world’s love for learning and relationship building, I gave up teaching. Short answer…being in classrooms that emphasized form and testing outcomes over learning and relationships made me more frustrated, anxious, and depressed about my ability to do things as well as I knew I could.
Fast forward to “What do I do now?” Well, there aren’t that many jobs for teachers who are also introverted and prone to panic attacks. So, obviously textbook sales and training large groups of teachers on curriculum packages were out. Those seemed to be the only positions I was finding. Therefore, I started listening to my family. My biggest supporters are my husband and kids. When my kids went away to graduate school, they told me it was my time. My time to do what I wanted because we didn’t need to pay for college any more. But all I knew was teaching…and making a home. That sounds very 1950s of me, but it’s true. I also really wanted to go on “Next Food Network Star,” but somehow know that is out of the question without more training and knowledge. However, I felt I had enough feedback from my little family of 3 and my friends to make a leap to a small business. I love to cook. I love to make people happy and give them comfort; I love to make things and teach people new things. It seemed natural to me.
Leaping is hard when you don’t know what you are leaping into. For someone like me that has an intense fear of the unknown and needs to plan and needs to know what will be there at the end, it is insanity. The questions are endless…does this taste ok? should I cook this? where do I advertise? will anyone like anything? that’s a new customer, will they be back? did I offend them when I didn’t come to the door and sent my husband? was the price too high? too low? is this the right selection? what if they don’t like it? what if it falls apart when they take it home? That’s a sample of how my brain goes. Rapid fire. All the time. Every time. Every order. Every menu. I like to think it’s my super power that keeps me on my toes, keeps me looking to make things right, keeps me trying that much harder.
But, like the Incredible Hulk, it’s a love/hate relationship. I need the super power to an extent, but I need to keep it from taking over. I do need to own it, and not hide that the green guy is inside, no matter what anyone says about having a problem like this. Somehow, when you say you struggle with anxiety or depression, it still has an attachment to it of “crazy” or “attention seeker” or “not a real thing.” But it is. And unless we talk about it, it will still have those labels attached to it. And maybe it’s also my time to conquer the green guy instead of the other way around.
When I titled this post Business of 2, that has two meanings to me. One is that I am in this with my biggest supporter, my husband. The other is the 2 parts of me. The part that wants to branch out and be something more, but the part that says…nope that won’t work. So, I will keep plugging, one menu at a time, one order at a time, one day at a time. Like my husband keeps telling me, “It’s ok, it will be slow. It takes a while.” And that will be ok.
