Setting Expectations

Alas, I am finally sitting down to start my blog. It took me a bit of time to get started because I had all these ideas floating around in my head. It was a jumbled mess up there and I just couldn’t get started.  They were all great ideas, of course. Out of the gates, I was going to be profound. I was going to be engaging. I was going to write elegantly. It was going to be beautiful, witty, insightful, interesting and a whole slew of other adjectives I could think of that result in a buzz and excitement.

So, I stalled. . . and stalled. .  .and stalled.

How could I not? As ideas came and went, it became pretty clear nothing would live up to my heady expectations. Unless I just started writing something down, I probably never would.  So, here it is it – word vomit.  The aftermath of over-indulging on then throwing away lofty expectations. The result of just saying ‘f#%k expectations’ and going for it. To lend a small piece of irony to this narrative, much of what got me thinking about writing a blog is based on getting over other expectations in my life.

Not to long ago, I admitted to myself things weren’t working. I had a seemingly great career in middle management.  Expectations had me aspiring to future upper middle management.  From there, who knows what, but I am sure there was an expectation for another and another ladder rung to jump onto.  It all seemed like a perfectly reasonable pursuit when I hopped onto the ladder, but recently, it just wasn’t working.

So, I quit. . .I said ‘bye-bye’ to the old expectations.

Now, I am in the middle of re-calibrating all kinds of expectations.  And today, I tossed out the expectation of being profound, engaging, elegant, beautiful, witty, insightful, or interesting and decided to just say ‘f#%k it’. Well, at least, I managed to be profane if not profound.

Ultimately, I didin’t really want to write for any of those expectations. I just wanted to write again. I wanted to chronicle this new adventure I am on. I hopped off the ladder. I quit my job. I am about to go to culinary school then graduate school. I am figuring things out around my little urban homestead (garden, chickens, bees and a dog).  I am obsessed with the current food movement (farmers, local, gastronomy, sustainable, advocacy). And, I have a story to tell about all of it.

I have no idea where any of this is going, but I figure ‘f#%k it’. Expectations be damned, here we go!