Food for Thought

I applied for a couple of positions at the branch of Whole Foods that's about to open at Noe and 24th, thinking that working there would be a convenient way (I live just down the hill from the new location) to buy myself some more time to network and find the kind of career I actually want. Plus, one of the positions was for a cheesemonger, and how cool would that be? I even wrote up a cute cover letter about how I've been a huge fan of their company ever since I first pushed one of their kid-sized carts up the tiny aisles of their original store in Austin.

Well, it turns out that B.A. in English does not qualify you to stock shelves at a grocery store. I got the second of two rejection emails last Friday, and, even though I sort of suspected it was coming, reading that second was quite a blow--a sucker-punch, really--to my ego. I was initially puzzled as to why this particular rejection cut me so deeply (after all, I've weathered a lot of rejections in the past thirteen months), but I've concluded that I had just started to realize how much I care about food and had been hoping a job at Whole Foods would be a tiny step forward in pursuing that interest.

Now, I don't want to be a chef or a farmer and I don't want to open a restaurant, which is part of the reason I've had such a hard time figuring out that this interest in food could potentially be a career path. (Full disclosure: I would like to own a restaurant, but only if it was a coffee shop/ bakery attached to a super-cool bookstore with a garden in back-- sort of Book People and Explore Books meet the East Side Cafe and Tartine. There would also have to be a bookstore cat. And maybe also an art gallery.) But, as I sat on my bed nursing my bruised ego, it finally occurred to me that I could work on what I guess you could call the Michael Pollan end of the food world. It's actually a little embarrassing that this possibility didn't occur to me sooner. Not only do I cook at least four nights a week, but my family owns a bison ranch that's all about sustainability, my mom has been super-into food for as long as I can remember (which is how I came to be so familiar with Whole Foods in the first place), and I even wrote my college application essay about cooking and how it brings people together. Moreover, I've always loved farmers markets, urban farms, and community gardens, and am constantly on the lookout for articles like these about food and farming.

I mean, duh. Of course I should be looking for jobs that have to with food.

So, if I ever get regular access to the internet again, I will definitely be looking into food jobs, as well as the graduate programs at The University of Gastronomic Sciences, the Slow Food movement's university. Frankly, taking classes on the social history of food, slow food on film, culinary techniques, and gastro-writing as a candidate for a Master's in Food Culture and Communication sounds like a lot more fun than stocking shelves anyway. So, Whole Foods, it was definitely your loss and my gain. Ha!

Experiencing technical difficulties

I apologize for the lack up updates this week. We currently have no internet in the apartment, though we just discovered that we do have mice to keep us company while we try to keep ourselves entertained without computers. Lovely.

Update: Perhaps I should mention that when I say "we," I'm talking about my roommate and myself--not just myself in the royal we.

Should I stay or should I go?

Certain people take great pleasure in teasing me about my wimpy music tastes. While I (grudgingly) admit that there’s a bit of truth to their claims that I only like sad, wispy indie bands, I would also like to point out that one of my favorite albums of all time is London Calling. That’s the one with Paul Simonon smashing his bass on the album cover, and it’s neither sad nor wimpy by any stretch of the imagination.

The reason I mention The Clash (other than to give myself a bit of street cred) is that one of their songs--annoyingly, not off of London Calling, which would have made for a tidier blog post--has been stuck in my head a lot lately. As you have probably gathered by the title of this posting, that song is “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” and I’ve been thinking about as I try to decide how much longer to stay in San Francisco.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” and it occurred to me one morning last week that I’ve essentially been driving myself insane out here. It’s exhausting to be on the lookout for jobs all the time; it’s exhausting trying to figure out how to spend my days when I don’t have freelance work; it’s exhausting never to be able to plan anything more than two weeks in advance; and it’s beyond exhausting when none of it gets me anywhere. I sort of hoped that once I graduated college I’d morph into some sort of bohemian who could just go with the flow and embrace uncertainty, and while I’ve gone from being a type A+ to a type A- or maybe even a type B+, it turns out that I’m still me, and that means I need a routine and a sense of direction, two things I definitely lack out here.

(UPDATE: After writing that, it occurred to me that I actually had no idea whether or not I’m a type A. I just took a personality test online, and apparently I am smack in the middle of type A and type B. This means I am well-balanced and easy to be around. Sweet. Now hire me so I can share my healthy attitude and general charm with your office!)

I can’t pinpoint precisely when I decided it might be time to stop trying to make it out here, but I woke up one morning about a week ago feeling too drained to plunk myself down in a cafe and get excited about jobs that always turn out to be dead ends. I don’t know that things will be better in Austin, but I’m ready for a bit of sanity and stability and I don’t think I’m going to find them in San Francisco. Moreover, Texas isn’t broke; I know people over the age of 30 and therefore have at least a shot of doing some networking; and Austin isn’t a mecca for highly ambitious recent college grads in quite the same way San Francisco is. Plus my family’s there, and I miss them.

So now what? At what point do I give up? Doesn’t it seem like there should be some kind of guidebook for making this choice? If I go there could be trouble, but if I stay it will be double (or even triple, as I could continue driving myself insane for months). The only thing I can imagine making me feel better about making this impossible choice would be if I could smash my Fender against a stage in front of an adoring crowd after I'd reached a decision.

Since that seems unlikely, I guess I'll just go watch another episode of Freaks and Geeks, which finally came via Netflix yesterday. I can't even describe how much I already love this show. I’ve only gotten through the first two episodes, but I’m already dreading the day when I get to the end of the season. It’s that good.

The universe might be out to get me, but I'm still determined to track down my dream job.

Sorry for the lack of recent blog posts--there will be a lot this week, I promise--but I just had to share my latest job-search snafu. This morning, I added the blog's URL to my resume and blithely began sending it out as an attachment. After sending the first couple out, it occurred to me that I should double-check that the link was working, and I am so glad I did. The link did not work, and it took me longer than I'd care to admit to notice that the auto-correct had kicked in and changed "blogspot" to "bloodspot." In other words, I'd been directing potential employers to http://www.hireelizabeth.bloodspot.com, which makes me sound like some sort of serial killer for hire. Great. 

Anyway, I sent out follow-up emails explaining that I'd found a typo and was attaching an updated resume, so I'm hopeful that it will be fine, but I can't help but feel there's some sort of cosmic conspiracy to keep me unemployed.

On a happier note, I finally found the secret garden on Harrison Street today! I had pretty much given up on ever locating it when I walked past an unlocked gate--definitely a rarity in this neighborhood. Certain I was trespassing and about to be attacked by deeply territorial dogs or possibly even people (I mean, it is the Mission), I poked my head inside and found myself in a grassy alleyway with murals on the walls. The street noise melted away and it was like I'd stumbled into someone else's daydream. The alleyway opened up and suddenly I was surrounded by plum trees (with people in them, picking the fruit and also causing it to rain down on everyone on the ground), vegetable beds, more murals, and a whole bunch of seriously cool neo-hippies. I was too dazed to do much other than give the woman in charge my email (I said I'd come help them pull weeds next Saturday), but the whole thing was so spectacular it almost made up for the bloodspot fiasco. Almost.