life

Growing Confidently

June 17, 2016 — Leave a comment

Looking throughout this journey I have taken to become a chef…  I see the improvements I have made in regards to cooking..  I can honestly say, things changed when I decided to NOT be a chef and first become a great cook….

Once my vision went from the future to the immediate….  my skills did start to improve…  I jokingly say, from time to time, that my culinary school is currently my day job (JOB A)…  But, I discovered yesterday that I was wrong…  I will forever be in culinary school.  The biggest difference is, I am getting paid to do it versus paying some school to learn.

Going back to JOB B is turning out to be a much greater learning experience for me…  JOB A taught me how to cook…  How to manage my tickets while managing my line.  Made me a better cook mentally.  I won’t lie and I don’t mix words when I say this…  My first tour with JOB B was an utter failure…  I wasn’t ready for that level of cooking and it showed…  So much so that I got bumped down to pantry and I wasn’t very good at that…

Fast forward 6 months later…  During that time, I basically focused on the multi tasking aspect of it all.. Working lunch at JOB A helped greatly.  Returning to JOB B and being there these past three weeks…  The improvements have shown in spades….  Everything just feels much easier than it did in my first go round… 

To work the grill with the way their kitchen is set up (at Job B, every station cooks their proteins and does their own set ups/saute), work over 100 person nights, never feeling flustered or in the weeds, and bust out my tickets in under 20 (I did have a 26 minute ticket once) minutes with the types of meats I have to grill/saute/oven finish, and have customers come up to me and give me the compliments they have given me….  That has further boosted my confidence that I made the right choices up to this point.

So, now I am in training to learn the mid station.  Which is Saute…  I look forward to bringing the same level of good cooking, while becoming better, that I’ve been able to bring to the grill these past few weeks…  I also look to increase the quality of my cooking.  The chefs at JOB B have already given me some great advice to improve the quality while not hurting the taste…  So, I look forward to the challenge and the time I get to put into this….

I know I am guided by God in this endeavor and I should be more thankful than I have been.  Well, thank you Lord…  As you stand in Heaven, I thank you Father for opening the doors you have opened for me and moved me in the directions you have.  You have blessed the work of my hands and kept me thus far…  You have also kept me from being an annoyance on my family…  In Jesus’ name…

From Beginning To End

April 7, 2014 — Leave a comment

I’m laying here in bed right now taking in a period of thought.  Not exactly sure why I’m up right now, so I’m just thinking.

Not exactly sure what I want to focus on in my thoughts; they’re all so jumbled right now so it’s hard to discern where one thought ends and another begins.  But isn’t that the essence of life sometimes?  I guess I say that to say that thoughts aren’t like days sometimes.

We can look at a clock and tell where one day ends and another begins.  We know at 11:59pm, one day has officially come to a close.  We know at 12:01am, another day has officially begun.  Yet, it’s all relative when you really think about it.  Because we often say our day starts when we wake up, get out of bed, have our morning coffee or breakfast, or when we even walk out the door.

Again, it’s all relative.  The ending of our days can end at various times and moments also.  But jumbled thoughts are different.  Because jumbled thoughts can represent a neverendong movie of our day, week, month, year, or life.  It’s all points back to being relative, I suppose.

And it’s all just a review.  A moment, a flash, as if in the blink of an eye.  A brief review played out in our minds to come to some sort of conclusion about our lives.  And, once the review is over, we realize that the thoughts weren’t jumbled at all.  Just pieces to the puzzle of our lives that we took a moment to put together for the sake of cohesiveness and sanity.

A beginning and an end.  I’m typing this and the Bible verse, “the end of a thing is better than its beginning” comes to mind.  And I ask myself, “how will my end be?”. If my beginning was pronounced as a miracle and my mother was full of pride and joy, will my end be one of the same? 

I suppose it would depend on how I walk away from the mirror that is my mind..

A Brief Introduction Of Evolution

April 1, 2014 — Leave a comment

Greetings, and welcome.  You can call me Chozen, if you want to be a friend.    I couldn’t tell you exactly why I am doing another blog, I truly had no desire to a couple days ago.  But, as I was at working thinking about it, maybe a blog with short posts wouldn’t be so bad to do.  I mean, all I do at work is think.  I think about my day, what’s going on with me, and my views.

 

I guess you could say, because of my constant thinking, I am in constant evolution.  Constantly evolving my life, my mind, and my spirit.  So I settled on just doing a daily diary of sorts.  Something to share my thoughts and feelings to the world.  So, why not get back into blogging.  Maybe, just maybe, I could learn something and you could learn with me.  So, I consider this a journey.  A journey to evolve and grow within and without myself and give you a chance to do the same with me.  So, with that said, the hardest part of any journey is the first step.

 

I’m taking that first step, will you take it with me?