During uncertain times, a moment of self-reflection can provide the certainty you crave. I invite you to come with me on mine.
In my third year of university, my professor started the first week of class with a video. It was blurry, and there were two men on horses, one was a cowboy, the other was Billy Crystal. Without an intro, icebreaker, or generic set-up slide, it started playing. Totally afraid that I was going to be the only one who didn’t understand the point of the clip, I started writing down keywords to Google later. “Western.” “Famous Cowboy Scene?” “Billy Crystal on a Horse.” The first two minutes and thirty seconds went right over my head and even now, after finding and rewatching it on YouTube (thanks to those keywords), I don’t completely get what he’s saying. And I mean that literally due to the fact that he is and talks like a cowboy—so I’ll need subtitles if I want to find out. Right at the 2:31 mark, he says:
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[Holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.
So good, right? I haven’t heard anyone explain it better than that yet.
Two years after that class, that quote was still on my mind, sort of like a North Star, and I decided my one thing was going to be words, specifically words crafted to sell. In 2020, when we’ve all become so aware of the presence of consumerism and how it affects our well-being, it feels strange to say. But at the time, in the world of headlines and commercials narrated by Morgan Freeman, all these firsts for diversity, feminism, and the environment were being launched into the public sphere, and I was entranced. So I set out.
I’ll be honest, the learning curve was steep. I had no idea what I was doing and had a very small—make that nonexistent—circle of knowledgeable people I could lean on. At first, I shied away from critique—and subsequently, from improving. I really had no idea how to take it. (I’d like to think that most people don’t?) But slowly, like figuring out how to swim by virtue of figuring out how not to drown, the process became natural, even fun. It was almost as if I could feel every rewrite becoming a notch on my belt, every scrapped page and crossed out line, a lesson on the go. I always wanted more—more opportunities to prove that I was getting good, more reasons to keep at it, more validation that reaching my goal was possible. And it worked.
Fast forward to pandemic times.
I’m sitting in front of my computer, fully immersed in that work-from-home life, surrounded by empty tea cups, wearing sweatpants from my university days and a t-shirt featuring my favourite musical, staring at a blank page. This is not an episode of writer’s block but something much worse. The blank page doesn’t look like a canvas but more like a form I need to fill out. I find myself wondering, is this it? Is this what all the drafts, late nights, and pushing through all the self-doubt has come to? I actually have a permanent acne scar under my nose from resting my face on my left hand whenever it seemed like I’d never find the words. Anyways. As I continue to stare at the screen, I become keenly aware of my eyes nervously darting to the right every few seconds to see if an email filled with revisions has come in, like a bad habit. So I close the laptop, Slack online status be damned, and go for a walk. I feel cheated.
Where’s the clarity that cowboy promised me? Wasn’t I supposed to enjoy a great sense of freedom at this point? Seriously, what happened. Did I miss something? Or—and this would be tragic—did I not choose the right “one thing” for me?
The sun sets, I settle in and do what any person going through a small but heavy personal crisis would do. I open Netflix. First up on my list of recommendations, a movie called Chef. Written, directed, and starring Jon Favreau, it’s about a guy who has a devastating review written about him and goes on an epic food truck adventure where he rediscovers his passion again by cooking for himself. He experiments with different flavours, cooks recipes he’s always wanted to cook, and sees firsthand how his food makes people happy.
There’s a scene at the beginning of the food truck adventure where Jon Favreau’s character has a one-on-one with his son. He asks, in reference to cooking, “Is this boring to you?” His son replies, “No, I like it.” And he comes back with, “Yeah, well, I love it. ... I might not do everything great in my life. ... But I’m good at this. ... I get to touch people’s lives with what I do. And it keeps me going and I love it.” Whoa. I remember that feeling. I remember when it kept me going from one project to the next. I remember when it came from the satisfaction of creating something from nothing. I remember when it was about seeing that smile on their face because what I gave them was exactly what they wanted to say and now they have the words for it. But now—and I hate to admit this—what keeps me going is the competition. I want to know where I stand against other people. I want the 5 star reviews to come in. I’ll even let unsubstantiated feelings of inadequacy keep me up at night under the guise of “motivation.” Not great.
After the credits roll, a behind-the-scenes clip comes up. It features chef Roy Choi explaining the art of cooking a grilled cheese sandwich. He says, “Nothing else exists except this. This is the only thing that exists in this world right now. If you fuck this up, everything sucks in the world.” Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I’ve never felt that way about melting a sandwich but I know I used to feel that way about writing. And I want that back in my life.
I have my one thing. All I need to do is find my food truck adventure.
