Metanarrative
We tell stories to create ourselves. In the process of telling and retelling our life’s story, we construct a person who is defined by the decisions they made and the ways they’ve changed. The facts of our past blur into new shapes every time we look back on them. Noise becomes signal; what was previously a hobby or a chance meeting now is seen as pivotal. We ascribe desires onto our younger selves to explain our actions. Our past is never gone but transformed, living with us in the form of shifting stories that frame our perception of the present. Everything always leads up to now.
One year ago, I started this newsletter to document my transition from tech to cooking. I wrote my story, a summing up of my previous career that reads to me now like an elegy. Already I think of my long time in the tech sector differently. A year ago I required such velocity to launch into frightening uncertainty that the story I had to tell was powerfully negative, or I wouldn’t have been able to move. Now I’m open to seeing some of the gentler, more positive aspects of my decision. Newness, change. Engaging with something I love. Direct work that uses my body.
In my first post, I asked all kinds of questions. Is this the right decision? What will people think? Will I regret it? Will I be happy? As I’m going through it, I’m constantly trying to write the story that will later describe this part of my life. I don’t really come up with answers though. I’m happy now, but school isn’t real life. I’m happy now, but I haven’t worked long enough to truly say. It’s interesting how you can ask yourself those questions over and over without reaching conclusions, but at some point you notice that you’re just living.
I probably think too much. When I’m at work, my mind is mostly occupied with doing a good job. Shaping brioche rolls is a task that sends me into an easy flow state. I’m focused on the feeling of the dough beneath my hands and the pressure I’m exerting with each finger, but my eyes can wander away. My thoughts follow them, landing on the customer in line or the pictures on the wall, but in a half-engaged way. I don’t interrogate my happiness during this period.
Time passes no matter what stories we tell. A year of newsletters is as long as one undocumented. Something preferable about this medium to a book is that I’m not building up to any kind of conclusion here. Someday the work of writing it might become too cumbersome and I’ll let this go, but outside of it my story will continue. I’ll still be asking these questions that don’t have answers and never really figuring it all out, but doing the work anyway. That’s how life is lived, swimming through muddy waters, even if later we look back and see a river.