It’s been a quick six months. I have neglected this blog as people tend to do in new relationships and careers. Oh how easily I am distracted. This (blog, writing, journaling) is something I want to get back into. Documenting my trips last year is going to be a memento I have forever, proving I took a chance once in my life and did something that scared and excited me.
If I don’t start writing about these trips the details will fade from memory. And while they may not be spectacular adventures of courage and the unknown, they are all part of this warped, back peddle through my twenties.
Early twenties: Full time job and living in New England.
Late twenties: Part time job and living with the parents.
Oops.
But everything happens for a reason. I lived the early years of my twenties as most people in their early forties. I went to work, came home, watched tv, went to sleep and did it all again the next day, five days a week dreaming every day about the weekends and some other non existent life. I hated being a weekend warrior. Stability--or consistency is maybe a better way to frame it, is not something I crave. If I hadn’t had those years I wouldn’t be here now. I can’t think that it was a waste of time because I may have not come to the same conclusions if it were any different. I had good jobs, a good life, a plump savings account and the only reason I was able to be so irresponsible the last two years was because of that hard work. So que sera.
July last summer I met a few friends for drinks. One of whom was speaking of their job that involves a lot of travel. Immediately envious and selfishly I thought – me. ME! I want to do this. I want to go to there. He gave me some information and a few weeks later I was in NJ training and a week after that I was in his employers office with a resume in hand, square shoulders at my back and a façade of confidence asking for a job.
It took another month and a half of waiting, calling and pestering for them to extend a branch, but it worked. What seemed like a very long, pointless, depressing month and a half. It was September, four months after I had graduated with a Masters degree which in my deflated heart was not planning to do anything with at the time (or this time) and I was unemployed and doing nothing but distracting myself. Boys and booze. It’s an easy combination to feign happiness for a while, but eventually I admitted to myself that it was a distraction and I needed to change things so I applied for menial jobs that were in the direction of the career I was swooning over.
I spent most my employed days catering for two companies. One NYC based and one LI based. It was a way to gain experience in the food industry and high end hospitality. Busting your ass for rich people and earning pennies for it is humbling. Once that picked up, the universe gave me a nod and the long awaited phone call.
The day I got the call I had a weeks worth of catering events I had to cancel on and a ticket to Jay-Z I had to pass on, but what’s that quote? “Luck is when opportunity meets preparation” If only I had been so calm and collected and prepared for it. Instead I was a whiney ball of nerves to my very new boyfriend—the other side of my distractions I had to admit were more than I had planned for. So that was that. One second I was standing in line for a falafel thinking about the concert a few hours away and what sauces I wanted on my rice (red and white, heavy on the white) and then the next I was scrambling my clothes together to get home to prepare to go to England. The trip slated for two days lasted four. And so was my introduction to the nature of this business. There wasn’t much exploring and even less pictures, but to me, I was standing in the light that used to be at the end of the tunnel. Holy moly this could actually work.
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