Reigniting the Spark
PIN IT!Since returning from Thailand, I’ve been feeling like a fish out of water. I walk around like I’m a stranger in my house and hardly recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror. When I sit down to write, none of the words that pop up on the computer screen feel like mine. I’m exhausted and unmotivated. The passion I had on the trip has vanished. I’ve been thrown back into my normal life, back into the depths of the ocean and it’s like I’ve completely forgotten how to swim.
I’m at this weird place in my life where I’m not sure what I actually do for a living or what I want to do for a living. I love to cook, but I’m not a chef. And to many people in this culinary world, not having a white jacket limits you from running a kitchen and having a successful restaurant. I’ve fallen in love with photography, but I don’t feel like a photographer. I write for a living, but it’s not the writing I set out to do when I studied fiction and poetry. If you add up the sum of my parts, you don’t get a clean and even number. It’s hard to really figure out who I am and who I want to be when I’m juggling three very different, very complicated personalities.
It wasn’t always like that though. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a serious writer. That’s it. I wanted to live in small walk up in Brooklyn (before it was “cool” to do that) with long tapestries on the wall. I’d have an eccentric, sexually confused roommate with jet black hair who said things like “You can’t begin to appreciate the works of Kafka until you’ve read him in two languages,” as a cigarette dangled from her fingertips. I envisioned my days would be spent writing novels and poetry on a laptop with bumper stickers on the back of it as I sipped black coffee, overlooking the Manhattan skyline. My books would have deeply troubled, substance abusing protagonist, one who struggles to find her way in the cold, dark world. I never thought, in a million years, my late twenties would be spent writing about homemade Twinkies and the power of chia seeds.
I don’t know what happened, but in the 4 years I’ve been professionally writing, I’ve completely lost my spark. But you already know that, I wrote a giant post about how I’m no longer a food writer. But, the ironic thing is, that’s the only writing I actually do anymore. I spent last night re-reading some of my earlier (ages 19 – 23) poetry, stories and papers and could hardly believe those powerful words came from me, the same person who just spent an hour writing out a recipe for homemade marshmallow fluff. I don’t know what upsets me more, that I stopped writing with so much passion or the scary fact that I don’t think I have any more of that raw passion left. I’ve become so complacent and comfortable in my food writing that I forgot how to write about anything else.
And that’s not just bad for the girl in me who wants to be a writer of meaning, but it’s bad for the girl who dreams of moving to Paris for culinary school and owning a successful restaurant, too. In a way, when I lost my spark with writing, I lost my spark with cooking and baking as well. When I stopped pushing myself with my food writing, I also stopped pushing myself in the kitchen. I fell down a road of “what’s easier is better.” I stuck with the same ingredients, the same boring adjectives and adverbs. I quit writing down the crazy ideas that came to me and stuck with the ones I knew were quick and easy to make. I stopped trying to be creative and stuck with being “just okay.” I become a person who just goes through the motions of life and doesn’t actually live.
What woke me up from my own self induced coma was my time in Asia. That’s why I wrote that post about change as soon as I got back. For the first time in months, I actually recognized the person staring back at me in the mirror. I actually felt like the person I used to be. I actually felt that spark that had since dulled to almost nothing. For the first time in months, I actually felt alive. And as quickly as it came back, it went away as soon I fell back into the dark hole I dug for myself before I left.
I need to find a way to find my passion again. Even though I’d love to, I can’t afford to go on these epic trips every month just so I can feel alive again. Even if I could, that’s not an attainable lifestyle. I can’t run away and chase my wanderlust every time I feel like I’m sinking into a hole of depression and confusion here. I have to find a way to reignite my passion for food, for writing and for photography in my own backyard. I can’t just live for my trips, I have to live for me. If I really want to be a chef, I have to push myself in the kitchen again. I have to tackle recipes that scare the shit out of me and buy ingredients I’ve never used before. If I want to be a successful writer, I have to really write. I have to dig out all of those scary, raw emotions I’ve pushed down and bright them to light. I have to tell the stories I’ve been hiding from the world. I have to find those deep, dark feelings I had when I was younger and put them to good use.
Photo by Kate Sioban Havercroft.
And if I’m going to be a successful person, one whose happy in her own skin, her own marriage and her own mind, I have to be honest and responsible. I have to be vigilant in my quest to stay alive and make my dreams come true. Because what’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something incredibly remarkable?
Claire
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In other news - you're amazing! You'll figure it all out with time and wine ;)