This is what I’ve begun calling the overall feeling I have had forever. Bland malaise. Bland because it’s not defined or even very sharp, it’s like a light blanket. Malaise is an undefined BLEH, again, not defined, just BLEH. A blanket of BLEH that covers my life! Perfect!
This is why my blog posts are few and far between. There is literally nothing exciting happening over here. I cook. I do laundry. I do TEV stuff Mon/Tue. I do prep Wed/Thu. I get drunk on Fridays. (Which I am trying to reel in. It ends up wasting Saturdays and there’s NO POINT in it.)
I do have a new recipe that I’m working on, a shallot tart thing, that will be up soon. It’s easy and pretty, tasty warm or room temp. Perfect for parties and catering, too. Not that I get any catering gigs. But yanno. ::shrug::
Nick has been working a lot. They are short a person in production, so he has to carry the load of two. As usual. Overwork was the issue at Minuteman and it is the issue here. This is the plague of working in America. Management is poor and employee retention is not going to happen when you work your people to burnout. This is not a difficult concept, yet I see it across the board. When did it become the norm to beat employees like rented mules and then wonder why you can’t keep people? This idea that fewer employees is saving money is just not real. IT IS NOT REAL. Fewer employees means that you’ll have turnover, which costs far more than simply hiring enough people to carry the workload without having to work 60 hr weeks. It is not rocket surgery.
We had a conversation about hobbies and art the other night and I had an epiphany. A small one, anyway. The reason I feel so unfulfilled, even with cooking, is that it’s ephemeral. What I do is consumed, so there is nothing left to represent my work when it’s done. Sure, I’ve got recipes and photos, but the actual work is gone. I think this is why I feel that I don’t really accomplish anything. I know I do intellectually, but it doesn’t feel that way. With other forms of expression such as drawing, painting, building, etc., you have an actual thing that exists in the world. It’s just different than what I do.
Hence the bland malaise.
I’ll trundle on, I always do. I’ll do the things I’m supposed to. I’ll cook and write recipes. I’ll hope that we can get a vacay this year, but it’s not looking good, thanks to Nick’s job that is managed poorly. We fucked around and waited too long to get Dragoncon tix, and now they are full priced $175. The only way we’ll do THAT is if we can split them with friends. It’s just so fucking annoying. I can tell you, however, that I WILL NOT be paying fucking $350 for us to carouse Dragoncon for a day. NOPE.
I hope that I can find a way to feel a bit better than I do now. Perhaps another party will help… Whatever, onward we must go. Qaplah’!