At the start

I put goals and aspirations off pretty often. This blog post is probably several months in the making. Or just several months of thumb twiddling and a lot of “I’ll do it eventually.” I typically am at the starting line of most things with either unwavering determination or paralyzing fear. This blog post is hard, and I think I know why.

I think it’s a culmination of my years-long pursuit toward becoming an established journalist, on a paper or credible magazine, in a shiny office writing about public policy and politics and the hard and fast facts.

I’ve written on newspapers since my little high school newspaper to a newspaper serving a sprawling Mexico-U.S. border town. I learned about city codes and transportation and public education.

I wanted that fancy NYT press badge. It didn’t happen. The industry, with low pay, long hours and stuffy self-importance soured me on that dream. Sometimes it feels like failure. Sometimes it feels like I limped out in time.

I jumped ship for a more humble career. I wanted to become a cook in the food industry. It’s more so a lateral move with some downgrades in social status but I love it down here. The pay is more or less the same and it’s grimy with fry oil and food scrapings but it’s my love and my life and I want to share it with those I care about and who wonder if I committed career suicide.

I’ve always wanted to be a chef with the silly hat and with the expertise and vision of what food can be. But safe career choices pushed me to journalism, but it’s not what I want anymore. I want to plummet into this new world, it feels like the sky has cracked open a little. I want to know it all: the industry quirks and cooking techniques and trends and historical significances. It feels like I’ve really touched down from floating around between this and that (torturing myself with PR job applications and looking into startups I don’t care about). It’s something to sink my teeth into. It feels honest to me, and it’s something I can imagine I can do and at least tolerate for the future.

My blog is called “Heart Cooks Brain” because honestly I’m not sure I can think of a better name (pending a less annoying one). It’s a placeholder though: what I want in life vs. how to get there vs. what’s the “right” way to get there. It feels like all the terrible times and hard decisions and pure circumstance have done their little dance as it goes in life and led me to whatever this is.

I’ve had friends and mentors tell me to start a food blog and it’s time I actually commit to something. I want this blog to be musings about food, culture, film and music, industry trends and other things I don’t know about but want to find out. So here it is. A start.