Why do you get out of bed in the morning?

What am I excited about?

Why am I excited about it?

How will it help people? Who does it serve?

How does it uniquely tie into my story, passions, talents and/or experience?

Why do I care and why should the world care?

What's one thing you're proud of?

Several years ago, while still a student and a lowly intern, I was putting together Alton Brown's peanut seared chicken strips for what must have been the fifth time.  As with all of his recipes, the dish was already damned tasty, but this time I had the idea to add just a splash of soy sauce to the marinade.  Later that night, as I bit into the morsels of chicken, the difference was surprising, and elevated the flavor so much that I couldn't help but quickly devour the rest and whip up another batch of the marinade for tomorrow.

Being able to cook for myself to stay healthy, as well as sharing my recipes and food with friends, is maybe one of my most valuable skills.  Throughout my adult life, no matter how stressful, complicated, or tough things get, I always have control over what I'm eating.  This has meant easily shifting my diet to deal with medical and health issues, as well as adjusting recipes to accommodate the myriad of food restrictions the people in my life navigate every day.

Cooking has been a way to say thanks, to say I love you, to bond with people close to me, to contribute at festivals and charity events, to help friends through depression, and to celebrate triumphs between the day to day.

My mother set the standard for flavorful, healthy, fresh made food in the home as far back as I can remember.  So when I left for college it took only a few weeks to get fedup with the cafeteria, frozen food, and delivery food that me and my classmates were consuming.  I grabbed a few cookbooks, took advantage of Google, and did what i could with an old, abused electric stove in my 4 bedroom apartment.  And while one of my roommates was discovering that putting a leftover pizza box directly in the oven resulted in smoke, I started with the basics.  Pasta, rice, ground beef, and chicken breasts.  Okay maybe the occasional Bertolli pre-made pasta dish, because come on, $6.99 for two meals that actually taste good, take 10 minutes, and aren't half as bad for you as the rest of the frozen food aisle?  I was broke and needed time to study.

Fast forward a few years later and I'm slinging fried chicken quesadillas, asian inspired burritos with grilled steak pieces drizzled with a soy and sesame oil dressing tossed into fried rice, making my first risotto and being astounded how different the rice tastes while drinking the wine it was cooked in, and experimenting with making my own Alfredo sauce.  Around this time I stumbled upon the websites Endless Simmer and Chasing Delicious.  This, along with watching Alton Brown reruns, helped me move from following recipes like a robot, to experimenting more like a proper cook.

What do people thank you for?

For doing the right thing.

In a job interview when I was 19 I was asked to share a strength and a weakness.  Without hesitation, even though should have taken the question more seriously, I said my honesty.  It is both an asset, and has gotten me into trouble at times when dealing with people who you might say were more politically than factually oriented.  I've had my fair share of moments when I've frustrated people I care about with my bluntness, much less been frustrated myself when my unfiltered speech has gotten me into trouble or been misinterpreted because the music of language escapes me.  The careful placement of each word that most people effortlessly put into conversation is an art that eludes me in the moment of passionate exchange.

With computers I can spread my fingers across a keyboard and commit my ideas into code, and here I am only at odds with the mistakes in the ideas themselves.  The computer never misinterprets what I have told it to do, though at this stage in artificial intelligence it is incapable of discerning my intent, it will do exactly as told and never second guess me, even to its own detriment.  Like Sisyphus, damned to repeat a fruitless task until I can better shape my ideas into a successful series of actions that reach the desired outcome.

With people, there is often an assumption that like so many who have come before me, I must have an ulterior motive, I must be planning or hiding something, I must have an unspoken intention beyond the words and actions I have just put forward.  Certainly I am not the only one who is made to contend with the common mistakes of others that have wronged the person I am currently dealing with long before I was a part of their reality.  But I feel I deal with it more, and perhaps not just because of my lack of skill in communication, but also my lack of intention in it.

While working on monologues in an acting class I took recently, our teacher asked us "how do you win right now?"  Forcing us to fully take on the perspective of our characters, and figure out their motivations and goals in that moment.  This is something I have never done in my own life, I have never stepped back to consider my own goal, my own motivation in a moment.  How many meetings, how many conversations, how many arguments, have I stumbled through without consideration for what I'm trying to get out of them.  One the one hand this has left me with many opportunities to find a new path or novel possibility among the circumstances.  But just the same, there are endless moments that I could have made more of, much less the moments that would have come after the culmination of them.  Romances, job opportunities, friendships, experiences, so many paths less traveled by left completely untouched by my own shoes because I wasn't even considering that I might be at a fork in the road.