Happiness is: Moving to NYC

Friends, it has been awhile since I sat down and wrote to you, but there was so much going on, I had not a moment to just sit and be quiet and....think....and...feel and figure out what came next.  Your good friend Sarah made some big decisions and made a lot of new things happen in the time since I last wrote.  These things included a move to New York City, where I now live.

Let me tell you something:  happiness takes moxie.  Happiness takes courage and intention.  Happiness takes guts and risks and sacrifice.  Happiness puts other things on the back burner sometimes, but that is a good thing.  Some things must be put on the back burner in order to clear out the space and chatter in your head to allow it to focus on what you really want to have as your life story.  I want happiness, and I have it.  I have had it for about 3 years now, since I first started writing to you when I lived in another country and needed the writing in order to just stay...American (you expats will understand what I mean by that)...and to be able to process all of the things that come up when you live somewhere that is not your usual place, not your usual people, not your usual routine.  They say life starts when you leave your comfort zone, and I have made a point to do that very thing.  And so, here I am.

My family is trying to figure out why I need to move again, why I am called here, to NYC, why I follow that super strong gut instinct of mine that has served me so well for so long.  I have no choice...if I do not listen to my gut instinct and do what I must do, the thoughts circle in my head over and over, and little signs get put in front of me over and over, telling me to listen, telling me to slow down, get quiet, and listen.  I did that.  I did that in Brazil and California, Dayton, Ohio and North Carolina and Virginia and Atlanta and a million places in between.  Over and over I kept coming to the conclusion that I have to be in New York now, and so, I am.

While here, I will work half time in my usual job, and I will work 3-4 days a week at a Michelin star restaurant.  I am what is called a "stage" (pronounced "stahhhhjjj".  It is a French word for a student type worker in the kitchen ("stage"-like, get it?).  For once in my life again, I am the lowest on the ladder, learning, listening, being NOT in charge, and soaking up all of the lessons about food selection, preparation, and the art I call being in a professional kitchen.  I cannot help it.  Every time I eat somewhere, all I want is to sneak back to the kitchen and sass with the staff, to put on and apron and zest lemons and prep the garde manger station and sing songs with the wrong lyrics as we tease each other, and to feel that energy, that zing of the family and pressure and commitment to excellence over and over and over that is a kitchen life.  It is such hard physical work.  It is so very, very hard, and I get so very, very tired, finally, that I can go into my own zone and let my mind get quiet as I focus on repeating the same preparation over and over and over each time it is ordered.  I love it.  I crave it.  I want it.  I obsess about it every day.  Every single day I am not there I think about being there.  Every single time I travel for work I pick up a cookbook and read it as a novel, wanting to be in the kitchen instead of leading projects in healthcare.  Every day, every night, every week, every month, every year.  This feeling had to come from somewhere, and so I starte asking family questions.

My great grandmother used to cater for doctors and lawyers, and when I learned that in September from my grandparents, I was dumbfounded.  Great Grandma Viola taught me a lot about cooking, and some of my favorite childhood memories are spending time with them in summer with my sister, cooking.  Learning that Great Grandma melded medicine and cooking the way I often do made me perk up and listen more closely to the whispers in my own head.  I needed to move to New York, and so, I did.

When you have this voice calling you, even when it makes no real logical sense to put your successful business and moneymaking job on hold to do something so financially unrewarding, so full of unappreciation and ungratefulness by so many people who just see things as a meal, you know in your gut that you do it because you love it, because you cannot do anything else, because this is what you are meant to do.  This is me.   I am meant to do this.  I feel it so strongly I cannot find words to explain it, even though I am writing stream of consciousness to you today, with no real theme or framework or real message.  I just need to start writing again, to capture the feelings and experiences when I have them, in order to remember this moment of leaping off the cliff, because make no mistake:  the leap was made, and here I am.

Today, Friends, I feel pure happiness.  I feel pulled to that kitchen, pulled to that little new family of people who take such good care of me and love me just as I am in my sassiest yet hardest working self.  I do not want to be a chef, but I must be part of that world, for some reason I do not yet understand.  And so, Friends, here I go.  Wish me luck.

With lots of love from New York, where I immediately felt at "home" and am meant to be--
Your Good Friend Sarah