YES YES YES CHEF!

I'M ALIVE!

I feel like Frankenstein's monster just being struck by the bolt of lightening.  I'm returning from a movie that blew open the block I've been under this last year.

The movie was CHEF - go see it, just go!  http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2014/05/chef_movie_review_jon_favreau.html

"Why haven't you posted anything on your blog lately?"

"What ever happened to that blog you had?"

"What the hell are you doing with your life?"

"Where are your passions taking you these days?"

"Are you ever going to open that restaurant you were talking about?"

These are some of the questions I've been hearing for the last year from loved ones, new friends and people who obviously had much more faith in me than I had this year.  I've been answering questions such as these with self deprecation and jest. Within both lie truth, don'tcha know...

                   "Lately I'm feeling like I'm at the place where dreams go to die?"

OOFAH!  That was even hard to type.  Again in my life, my outsides were not reflecting my insides.  So many years ago when I was living la vida loca and pretty much when my career as a waiter in NYC was at its height (about the exact time that full page pic in TIME OUT NY came out), my soul was blackened by my demons of addiction.  I was on the work-drink-repeat cycle and it was killing me slowly.  Now, my life is amazing:

Almost three years of sobriety under my belt.

My relationships with family and friends are restored.

I have amazing new friends, which my liberation from that dark life has alloted me.

An amazingly comfy job in the industry I've made my mark in: great hours, great pay and low stress.

Yet, these were the words that ACTUALLY came out of my mouth! 

Limbo, that's where I was.

But tonight, I walked out of the theater renewed by the struggles that the passion for food and family make you battle if you are so afflicted as I and I'm sure many who will read this are.  The industry I've chosen is one of the most stressful on earth.  Paradoxically, it's in that stress that creatures like me flourish: the heat of the kitchen, a full board of dupes, computers crashing and handwriting tickets, the grimace of an old biddy wailing, "Bring me a Diet Coke no ice and some bread and we are not ready yet!"

At the end of the day it's all worth it. 

Just like this is. 

My writing. 

My voice. 

Don't call it a comeback -- I've been here for years!

Follow This Blog !!!