A few weeks ago, it fell to me to help to support a race. The store where I work was sponsoring the race by giving it a home and setting up a tent packed with fruit and water and energy bars, and I, along with 2 others, erected the tent and manned it through a Sunday morning. It was a running race, and only 8 miles, and also to benefit a good organization, so it drew all sorts of ages and abilities. I say only 8 miles because that’s how other people said it, but to me 8 miles seems like an impossible distance to run.
After we’d set up the tent and seen everyone off, I eventually made my way over to the finish line to catch a glimpse of people coming in. The first, as I imagine is usually the case, were people used to winning races, a small wiry younger man in his twenties who seemed to finish barely after some had began, a woman running the whole thing in athletic socks, and they all looked as if they ran as easily as walked–no sweat, no heavy breathing, eyes covered by sunglasses bought especially for running. I snapped a few shots for our store social media, as I’d been charged to be sure I captured something of the race for posterity.
But then, more people appeared around the corner, slowly, one by one. The mom I’d seen hand over her tiny infant to her own mother for safekeeping. The dad, working harder, cheered on by his 4-year old son with a “YEAH DAD! COME ON DAD! YOUR THE BEST! YOU’RE ALMOST DONE!!!” A woman maybe near 70, with astounding focus that blotted out the world around her. And then, after that, two women who, when the announcer asked on the PA who would be the next to finish, they reached out and took one another’s hands to finish together.
I am not an athlete or a sports fan, and I often take the line that it’s silly to push oneself to pain. But I stood there on the corner and cried as I watched the runners came in. I just felt so happy and proud of all these people I didn’t know. I think I could watch people cross their own finish lines forever.
Twenty years ago, when I was in theater school at NYU, I had a big talk with a senior in the program where I was a freshman. This is a story that has come to define me and challenge me in many ways, so please forgive me if I’ve told it before here, or even if the details have changed, which is entirely possible. Sometimes I think it was an agent or a teacher and not a student, but right now it’s her face that’s in my head.
She was someone who would make it, blond, glowing, up for anything. And this is what she told me:
If you want to succeed as an actor, you have to always know that you are the greatest person in the room. Always.
I decided to leave school about a week later, and not to be an actor at all.
But it always puzzles me that I fell into a similar world anyway. That in the end I decided to be a writer, to live by the Amazon reviews and the likes and the sales numbers, and the persistent question of whether I was compelling/beautiful/talented/take your pick–for the Food Network or to be Instagram famous or any other measure of success I might be striving for. That also the decision to buy one of my books would usually be the decision not to buy someone else’s, and that I had to want that in order to further my own success.
Sometimes I think we, as people, tell the same stories over and over, big stories that manifest through varied situations. At least, I do.
Last summer, I decided I needed a change. Not to not be a writer, but to do something else also, and to put my focus on (and please forgive me as I not so skillfully play this metaphor though here) supporting the success of others as they cross the finish line.
And it’s been a year so far. A really good year, too. I work full time in the marketing department at a local independent grocery store here, and after so many years of working alone in the kitchen, I love going to an office and collaborating with people every day. All through this year I’ve been my other self too, going through draft after draft of my 3rd book, out next February. So I’m still that person too.
Being out of the house all day has given me a very different take on cooking, as you might imagine. All these years people have been emailing me, commenting here, or asking at events–I want to cook more! I want to can tomatoes and make my own granola and cheese. But how do you do it? How do you make time? And I always made clear that I do this for a living, that I’m home to watch the bread rise or to check on the yogurt as it cultures. But I would also say, then, that it’s about priorities, that we have more time than we think, and all of those things I’ve said here.
I’m sorry if I’d said those things to you. Because I think the equation isn’t quite as simple as I imagined it to be.
These days, I do not make yogurt, or cheese, or bread. I make smoothies. I feel especially proud of myself when I make a grain salad that can serve as work lunch. I make dinner when I can–fish in a frying pan and kale in the steamer. Or it’s pasta and sauce from a jar and salad. That’s it. Today I’m home for the longest stretch I can remember in ages, and it’s cool and feels almost like fall, and I’m making chili and cornbread and I cannot WAIT.
This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Part in the ritual of things and part out of it, part summer and part fall. The water’s warm enough to swim in if you can brave the air on the way in. It’s always the time I want to cook again, and I guess here I am, today, right on schedule.
Hope you all are doing well. I’m hoping to be back again, here, more, now that the fall’s coming in. xo
Classes and workshops
My latest book!
Learn more about my latest book, Eating from the Ground Up. It's perfect for all you vegetable lovers out there.
Lovely to have you back!
And yay for your courage to walk the journey as you feel led, honoring the unexpected twists and turns on the path.
Pretty awesome story! Thank you for sharing and thank you for saying it’s not that simple! I’m always hard on myself about what I can’t make from scratch or on my own because I work and have two littles. I love making all those items, but sometimes , a lot of times, it’s truly not feasible and I need to just enjoy the food at home and be proud it’s not take out – hahahah!!
Hi Alana! Good to hear from you. I thought of this quote when I read your post:
Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay.
— Maya Angelou
Thanks for sharing, and thanks for all you are and all you do. We can all only do what we can do in a day, in a pace of love and mindfulness, and what a brave thing to share your journey with that. Sculpting souls is a lot more involved than we think and food and work and love and people and places and things all come into that. I love hearing about your journey and look forward to your new book.
I’m headed to Santa Fe for a quick trip to check on things at the office there, and even though we’ve never met in person, I think of you when I go to Counter Culture…all good stuff.
Blessings on your new project and adventures.
peace,
Thank you, Terri! Thank you for the quote, and especially for the warm thought of a sit down at Counter Culture. This is the moment I always miss Santa Fe most, I think because I can almost smell the roasting chile all the way from here. Take a deep inhale for me, if you would. xo
Hello! Ok, sit back and take it in, through your pores, like the way dusty red earth soaks up the mountain rain…
Roasting chili in every parking lot, and Oscar’s has their site set up along Cerrillos. Green chili everywhere, ristras swaying in the wind, dangling from every possible overhang. Sopapillas with honey, and everyone asking you, “red, green or Christmas?”
The deep, earthy scent of roasting chili, desert sage, lavender and a rainy breeze hanging heavy coming off the mountain. You can see the lightening flashing in from the Jemez and sweeping across the ski basin…Take it in, and wash it down with a cup of Black Lightening and one of those blueberry muffins that’s bigger tires on a 59 Cadillac.
Soak it up, until you are full, unto your very soul, with desert and mountains and love that flows from it all…
Sending a big cyber hug from Santa Fe 🙂
“This is a story that has come to define me and challenge me in many ways, so please forgive me if I’ve told it before here, or even if the details have changed, which is entirely possible.” I knew I was in for an especially good read when I soaked that sentence up. Turn, turn, turn. The chili smells DELICIOUS. xo
I love reading your posts! I need your honesty and disarming humility. I’m someone who is also needing to set aside the homemades for this busy season of family life, and I’m having a hard time sorting what stays and what gets dropped. Please keep blogging!!
I’m glad you;re making what time you can. I always love your posts. xo
Thank you, Hannah! So good to hear from you. xo
So good to hear from you!!
As so often you post hit the spot today. I’m at a starting line in my life right now, taking on a new career, it’s hard, challenging, exciting, frightening. Like at the beginning of a race I believe I just might be able to pull it off… to be honest the image of all those people crossing the finish line brings tears to my eyes.
I have put the other me in the back seat for a while, I’m not sure how I feel about that at this point in time. Time will tell.
Please never stop writing it does means a lot to many of us to read your posts Alana!
Thank you! Sending good wishes of strong beginnings across the ocean…
Thank you for this post, Alana. I’m finding myself beginning my life again. I lost Mom in March, and after 12 years of caring for both elderly parents, I’m figuring out how to take care of me. For the first time ever I’m going to let life happen as I look for work, contemplate starting a blog of my own, (Mom and I talked about this just days before she died), and moving from the house where both parents lived out their lives. It’s scary, I won’t lie, at 54 years-old, to figure out life again; but I keep telling myself I’ve already been through the hard stuff.
I hope you do come “…back again, here, more, now that the fall’s coming in”. I’ve missed you and your wisdom.
xo
JoAnn
Oh JoAnn, I’m so sorry to hear of your mother’s passing. I’ve often thought of you two cooking and loving food together, and I can’t imagine the loss you feel. So good to hear from you, and sending you good thoughts as you start on these new paths..
The biggest freedom a writer, or any creative person, can give herself is a great day job.
Once one’s ability to earn a living depends on selling one’s creativity, one is the opposite of free. One has to consider product making more than art creating.
Solid paycheck is freedom. Needing to be so-called “successful” or “Instagram famous” is the opposite of free.
Giant applause for choosing truly creative, truly rewarding, and free.
Alana, I was really happy to see you returned. I missed your posts.
I think the most I can say is that you don’t have to be sorry about feeling that scratch cooking “is all about priorities” before you joined the rest of us in the full time job world because it is definitely true. If we love to cook we will find the time for some of the things you are missing.
It’s true it would be impossible to have fresh baked bread at dinner without a bread machine with a delay timer or a long cooked dish without a crockpot and there are definitely those nights where there’s either no time or no energy left for more than a strange combination of what is available in your refrigerator but with a little advance planning most of the time I’ve been able to come up with some decent meals.
As just a small example I make pizza crust ahead and freeze or refrigerate it for our regular Friday night pizza nights, I make large batches of soups and chili on Sundays or assemble the ingredients for the crockpot on a weeknight the night before. When I go through the phase of missing homemade bread there’s always the “Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day” concept. I also very much appreciate my Instant Pot.
I can tomatoes, pickles, peaches and other items which can give me a late night if the produce is ripe too late or too fast but for me it is not a bad thing, it tends to take some stress away and many times helps me find a less emotional ground for solving work problems so it’s really not as crazy as it sounds.
I really noticed recently what I do is unusual though when a group of coworkers were terribly excited about a new coffee shop that opened near my workplace and I learned their excitement came from the fact they serve “homemade cookies” when “nobody knows how to do that anymore”.
Anyway, I am glad you’re back and was excited to read you have another book coming.
Yes! I fit the cooking things in like you do- small bits here and there. A batch of yogurt on the weekends, weekend prep for the weekday lunches, occasional homemade sourdough bread. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to fit it all in with cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping, so I’m learning to spread some of the other stuff out a bit during the week. I find I’m pretty unusual compared to the others around me as well. It’s nice that I can at least connect with like minded people on the internet!
There is a season for everything… and thanks for this post… I’d been wondering where you’d got to! 😉
Alana, welcome back! So glad your third book will be out soon. I’m very much looking forward to it. I love your writing and your recipes. I have your books and your blog linked on my blog. Thanks for sharing this new season of your life with us. It’s nice to hear how you are simplifying things- makes me feel a bit more sane trying to balance a job, a family, and a blog.
I just discovered your blog today, although I’ve touched your work before in other ways. It was a bit of a wander – looking for something to do with some frozen roasted tomatoes. And then I just began to read backwards, which I suppose I will continue to do over the next few days and weeks, to catch up, or see what I’ve missed. But I wanted to pause here to say that I read this and cried a little, in a good accepting way. This entry was exactly what I needed to read at this moment on this day. My career branching off, and having to let go of some things or make peace with the moments of some things, instead of the deep dives and the returning to parts of ourselves and finding new parts and the excitement of those new parts. I don’t know, just a thank you. for this writing discovered on this day, by accident. Thank you.
Thank you for this. xo
I love this…. I also transitioned from being more at home to more at work and my cooking priorities have also changed. It is ok and adds a fresh look at my life and priorities. I still love cooking – I am just more picky about how I spend my more limited time to make food. I have been reading your blog for years – I dip in occasionally to check in and I am always glad I did.
Thank you, Carla! So nice to hear from you.