rambles

Everyone and anyone who's worked with me has known my love for writing: meticulous notes, Dostoyevskian level emails, email length texts and verbose impassioned collaborative outreach. My diatribes are legendary, hyperbole notwithstanding, and I fully admit, must be often exasperating for the receiving end. My friends and colleagues amusement remains playful and loving because they all know it comes from a sincere place of compassion and energy for creative discovery and partnership.

This will be a place to unveil some of those ramblings.

Bildingsroman - Part 4.638

Everyone thought I was going to be a teacher.

I majored in English Lit. My PhD parents said, what will you do with that? I wanted to explore. I didn't care what I would do with it. I loved learning for learning's sake and still do. I was pretty good at academia and the whole learning enterprise; I would've stayed in school forever if they would let me. 

In retrospect, I can see that there are one million careers that my BA is a strong foundation for, responses that would've quelled the anxiety festering in my parents' question. But then, like now, I wanted to do what I cared about and for some reason, trusted that the rest would follow. I suppose that's the result of instilling your kid with the confidence of self-reliance, ingenuity and creativity.

I majored in English Lit in undergrad because I wanted to know everything about everything and literature covered all the bases: history, economics, geography, art, culture, philosophy. I love stories and language in all forms. Typographic font nerd. Vocabulary obsessive. Poetic license. Hyperbole. Language is powerful.

My specific focus was on literary theory and creative writing: the study of how specific works of literature, words, art and poetry came to be and function: sonically, visually and semantically. In other words, (pun intended), Design Theory for literary works, how literature and poetry live, breathe, and effect their audiences. 

BUT my first job, at the age of 15, and many of my subsequent jobs, were in restaurants. I quickly found that my magnetism to good food and drink functioned in a similar way to Literature. Food and drink have stories-- origin-stories, travelogues and epic romances. Experiential stories. Smell and taste are 2 of the strongest spontaneous triggers of emotion and connection.

At the end of my long academic journey, final year of grad school, I'd reached my goal: I was teaching an undergrad class at San Francisco State University. Here it was, my first shot. I embraced it with vigor. I invested all my time and resources into creating a unique, exciting and norm-bending curriculum. And at the end of my first year of teaching, after sorting through the towers of painstakingly red-pen-marked-up-and-edited essays; and acquiescing to the student's lack of interest or enthusiasm with appropriately disappointing grades; and confronting the reality that I would always need to be academically publishing to advance in this field; I realized (dramatic pause), that I absolutely hated it. 

As the internal focus of my life's path wobbled and toppled, I found myself searching, adrift. On the periphery, there had always been restaurants. And slowly at first, but with a quick build up, it came racing into focus. This was an industry that had connected me to the most substantial moments in life. All momentous occasions are accompanied by food and drink. As Danny Meyer eloquently put it, "Within moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the first four gifts of life:  eye contact, a smile, a hug and some food.  We receive many other gifts in a lifetime, but few can ever surpass those first four.  That first time may be the purest 'hospitality transaction' we'll ever have, and it's not much of a surprise that we'll crave those gifts for the rest of our lives." Breaking bread, toasting to life. All my skills were activated--story telling, analysis, cultural theory, philosophy, leadership and teaching— all found great use in one of the most incredible food cities in the country, arguably the world. And my compass found its true north.

Remember 2 minutes ago when I mentioned that phrase about smell and taste and emotional triggers? Emotional triggers = sales. Everything has a story. By sharing my enthusiasm— not only for food and drink—but for how language, emoting, storytelling and empathizing with your audience can sell products, I progressed in the restaurant industry quickly. My love for food and beverage expanded to the experiences and stories that surround them, and I moved into marketing and events.