That Time Your Career Died

April 6th, 2020 my career as a chef met the unstoppable force of Covid 19 and proved no match for its tendrils of devastation. One day before, I was planning Spring menu changes, trying to reinvent asparagus yet again or at least make it seem exciting, then I was plunged into an uncertain abyss of the unknown, unyielding world of unemployment. My idealist, hopeful, cognitively distant mind told me over and over that it was temporary, a few uncertain weeks at best. But my brain, my addled brain, possibly from standing in front of raging ovens for thirty years, whispered to me that maybe this was it, the end, life was going to be different now because no one wants an old chef. No one.

As the pandemic raged and the world shifted and changed, wobbled, tilted, burned,and hovered between madness and stupidity, I forgot about finding a job, I delved into my own curiosities. I peered into music, art, film, and sought answers, or least escape. I walked, and boy did I walk. I walked in the light spring rain that smells like musty earth. I walked in the burning stare of the summer sun. I walked in the soft mushy snow of a white weary winter. I walked when I was tired, angry, happy, uneasy, sad, I just kept walking. I didn’t know where I was headed but I knew I had to walk to get there. Walking became the oxygen I needed to live, to survive, it kept me going.