Moving On and Starting Over

I told you in my last post that I was leaving Montreal. I’ll explain what happened and what I’ll be doing next. I have said earlier that I was planning on a career change away from cooking. Over the last couple months the situation has become more pressing as my hours at work were drastically cut back and I was having a lot of trouble finding a new job, or even a second part-time job that would help to fill the gap. Part of the problem is that some of the qualities needed to be a good line cook are my weaknesses: keeping everything neat and tidy while working fast, doing things fast without thinking, and some mild weakness in organization. While some of these things were improving - at my age and years in the business it is not fast enough in my mind, especially in light of how far there is yet to go before I could hope to make a decent rate of pay. Over this time period I was making almost no money, certainly not anywhere near enough to merely meet my basic living expenses, and found myself with a large amount of debt and also unable to pay my rent and utilities. So, the remaining solution is to move back home with my parents, where I am now. I will be living here for a while until I have cleared out most of my debt and can again afford to live independently. I hope to be passed this stage soon, but it could be several months. Oh, and if anyone was wondering about the $100 I spent for that restaurant meal I reviewed in my last post, it was part of a loan from my parents and they gave approval to use the money for this.

Now I want to make one thing clear. I am not moaning or complaining about my situation, nor am I fishing for sympathy. I have seen several blogs that I will not name, wherein many posts seem to make dramatic, or even melodramatic, statements about how horrible their life is and they’ve lost hope, feel they can’t go on, etc., etc., ... Now I’m not denigrating genuine depression and authentic cries for help, but I honestly find it hard to believe the natural outlet for such feelings and emotions is a blog read by the public. I’ve often noticed the most despondent sounding posts seem to get so many more comments. Because comments and hits are the best measures of how popular your material is, I can’t help but suspect that these sob stories are an attempt to play on people’s sympathies so as to increase their numbers. So maybe this post should instead be about how I’m sinking into a spiral of despair and am buried under a mountain of debt and am forced to suffer the indignity of moving back in with my parents at the age of 29. None of this is an accurate depiction of my outlook or how I view the situation but then, it would be nice to attract more readers...

So why am I posting about this? Well, for starters, this blog is primarily for myself, as a way to express myself and write about the ideas I’m pondering. While I am in no way depressed or embarrassed about my circumstances, I do sometimes think of this as a failure so writing about the experience helps me to sort out my feelings and recast this as a positive learning experience and a chance to regroup to prepare for a step forward.

My blog will continue as before and I will be continuing to post from my new location. My parents have upgraded to a wireless network so I will be able to have independent internet access from my laptop and maintain my privacy. They understand things are different from when I moved out years ago and my needs for privacy have increased. Still, this makes me even happier that I came out last year, otherwise trying to hide this increasingly large part of my life would have been an unbelievably heavy burden to bear. It’s hard enough to be in the closet and coming out is such a liberating experience, it would be really distressing to have to go back inside. My parents know about my blog and many of the blogs I follow and that I may be interested in things that they may not have a desire to see.

As for work, I will still probably get another kitchen job for a while just to make my payments while I look for something better. I think it will be easier now that I am living in Ontario, as the language barrier is no longer an issue. I am fluent in French, but the problem is “fluent” is really not enough for many in Quebec. Even by my name, I am immediately identified as an anglophone and, while I don’t think I lost jobs based on not being francophone, my lack of ease with the language likely hindered my progress. And if I am going to enter a career where I use my mind and communication skills more, I will certainly have to be able to do that job in English - something not possible in Quebec. If it seems like I’m being vague about my career path, it’s probably because I don’t yet have a fixed idea of what I am going to do. Human Resources is a possibility and it would be nice to do something within the food or food service industry. If I stay in that industry employers will likely realize that my work experience does provide skills I can use in other jobs. I may go back to cooking sometime in the future, especially if I get the funds to go into business for myself.

I haven’t been blogging for a while but that is pretty much because I was trying to detail with all the details of my move, packing everything up for the movers, cleaning the apartment, and having more limited internet access for the first few days back home before the wireless got set up. With everything on my mind, writing blog entries was very low on my list. Now things are settled down and I want to write again. I may or may not give you updates on my progress, as that will depend on whether I think there is something interesting to discuss about my life and/or career path. I will of course continue to write about food, recipes and whatever else seems interesting to me, just as before.