What to write, what to write, what to write?

Hello world. I am stuck. I don’t know what to write in this space anymore.

So, I am taking a writing workshop at GrubStreet in Boston. In that class, I got plenty to say, but it’s a topic is ‘Writing to Heal’. Despite the many revealing, raw and possibly humiliating things I already wrote about on this blog, there are some things I am just not ready to put here.

Then again, that’s not really it. I would certainly put it out there, somewhere, but it is here and I am feeling a bit stuck. Around this time last year, this blog sorta went sideways, or haywire, or confused, or into a tailspin.

Not that I intended my blog to be a food blog. I proclaimed from the start “I wanted to chronicle this new adventure I am on.” And then, I proceeded to mostly write about food and food-related stuff like gardening, eating, food photography, creative food writing and even some of the work I did for classes in food studies and food science. I sprinkled in posts about life stuff like going to a life coaching camp in NYC (spoiler, it was a bust) or what I learned about life from learning to surf in Lesson I, Lesson II, Lesson III, and Lesson IV. But, yeah, it was a food blog. A strange food blog, but a food blog none-the-less.

Tossing in some stock photos here because a blog should have photos and I don’t freaking know what kind of photo THIS blog should have.

Then, in January 2017, I posted one last food blog, a hollow but fun post called “October’s Green Tomato Late Season Harvest.” In January, the topic was already 2 months past its prime. I copped to its lateness with a quip about finding something frozen for the last few months in my freezer. That was bullshit. January was a dark time for me. I was buried in depression. I likely set a ‘feel good’ goal for myself to write once a month. So, I dug up old food photos languishing in my ‘Pictures’ folder and wrote about green tomatoes.

It fit the bill of a food blog. It was cute. The writing was bland, yet fun. The topic was filler and void of anything substantive.

Re-reading it, it made me cringe.

Fluff.

After that post, I apparently succumbed to shedding all pretense that I was doing okay. I quit making myself write plastic, mechanical blog posts every month. I went on hiatus for more than 5 months.

When I emerged on June 18th, I already received my new motorcycle license. I also bought a plane ticket to Sacramento. I had a lead on a motorcycle in Roseville, CA. My bags were packed and so was most of my life. I booked motorcycle training in San Jose. I started planning my motorcycle ride.

I felt profound and sad and all twisted up. I was about to leave my life, possibly permanently. So, I sat with my thumbs and told the world about it with a very un-food blog post about leaving my dog. I dropped the fluff and just wrote what was on my mind at the moment.

Re-reading it, I feel. . .I feel. . . I feel a lot.

Tears.

Clearly from my last couple of posts, I don’t have shit figured out. I am still a hot mess and an half, but as I realized in my ‘Writing to Heal’ class, I no longer feel like I am drowning in my self-loathing, anxiety and panic. Re-read this one if you don’t believe me.

So, here I am. I’ve pondered if this is the right home for my self-reflecting (self-deprecating?) posts. I kind of feel weird writing fluff and recipes after all the raw stuff I put out there. My Instagram feed is a confused mess of food, motorcycles, cheese, dogs, goats and other flotsam and jetsam. I think that is acceptable there; I dunno the rules Instagram acceptability though. I am in my 40s, I don’t think I am supposed to know.

Or, maybe the problem is whether NoReturnTicket is the right home for my cooking classes and food quips. Should I split my personality and maintain a new site for fluff, like say, CookingwithKimi.com (I own that shit, you know)? Do I want to bother with fluff?

I’ll be honest for one hot second here, then I will leave it at that today – I would prefer someone just paid me for all of this and I could feel great about being profound or fluffy all the same.

In search of a rich benefactor, I bid you, Happy Cooking (<– does that epithet even make sense anymore?).