A Dedicated Two Hours

As I mentioned in my post last week, one of the main factors in my move away from writing was the mere fact that I didn't have any time. When I moved back from Chile and enrolled in culinary school (a running theme, I know. Don't worry, I'll move past it soon), I was working 50 hours a week, going to school for 25, visiting my now wife and trying to catch some sleep somewhere in the middle. I wrote on my days off, read before bed. For awhile it seemed like there was time, but as my job began demanding more of me, school became what I had to do everyday at 8 a.m. and I started thinking more about marriage, something had to go.

In putting writing to the wayside, though, I was able to completely focus on one thing--cooking. By the time I was awake and putting my station together at work, my mind was razor sharp. I knew what was expected of me and I knew I wanted to get better. Every time I had to cut chickens, make potato puree or clean lobsters, I got a little better--just as a writer would when given the time to write everyday. So while I do have a natural knack for cooking, it wasn't simply cooking that allowed me learn and progress at a rapid rate, but rather the time allowed for that development. Time has long been a strong motif in my life.

The reason I bring this up is because in reading over ruhlman.com, a culinary-centric blog, last night, I found a post that wasn't at all about food, but about a writer who had died and the impression he had left on Michael Ruhlman himself. Most notable / applicable for me of the advice given by the deceased writer was that in order to progress, one need to spend a dedicated two hours everyday, the same two hours everyday, to the craft of writing. A mere two hours, but a dedicated and focused two hours nonetheless.

To sit here now, at 11:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, writing about cooking and how I'm up in the air on both, I realize that it's nice to have time. If I dig deeper and look back at the reasons I finally decided to quit my full-time job almost a year ago, I can say that I ran out of time to simply cook or get better at cooking. I was constantly juggling peoples' schedules, making orders, managing, hiring, firing, bitching and cleaning up messes that I lost the time to simply cook--the whole reason I had wanted to become a chef in the first place. Even amidst 14-hour days there were rarely even 30 dedicated minutes for me to focus on any one thing. So as with writing, I started putting cooking to the wayside.

On the first page of his novel Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller writes "The hero then is not time, but timelessness." This is a line that has stuck with me since I first read it, in part because I've always longed to be that talented and prolific, but also because I believe it's true. As I read it, the line means that time, as I have here and now to sit and blog, isn't what we need, but for our time to be ours, to do with it as we please and to have as much of it as we want.

Writers feed us in ways that chefs cannot. I'm aiming to do both.