Follow the Signs

Ep 8: An invitation to try out for a cooking job at a Catskills inn takes Dori by surprise.  What is she to make of this new opportunity, which could prove promising on many levels? Might she also, maybe, possibly, meet the man of her (literal) dreams? Dori follows the signs, which lead her in an unexpected direction.

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When is an event a sign? And how do you know whether or not to follow it? Per that great oracle, dictionary.com, here is the definition for a sign:

1. Something that suggests the presence or existence of a fact, condition, or quality.
2. An act or gesture used to convey an idea, a desire, information, or a command: synonym: gesture.

An event, by contrast is

Something that takes place, especially a significant occurrence. synonym: occurrence

The first tells you what to do about a thing, the second is a thing itself.

Signs are typically very explicit and directional: Stop, go. Walk, don’t walk. Others might have literal meaning that deepens with self-defined subtext, like:  “keep moving forward.” Either way, signs want to be followed.

Sometimes, events present themselves like signs. 

To use my last episode as an example: I didn’t think the interview I had scheduled, of me talking to another podcast host about the challenges of getting white people to talk about race, was up to snuff. My gut told me not to run it.  Then two events happened: a call with a neighborhood friend about a provocative experience she had had that might deserve to be shared more widely, a situation that centers on race – a detail I didn’t mention last week - followed by a sunshower that broke my laptop. I took these two events – the flooded laptop and the call with my friend – as a sign to follow my instincts which, let’s be clear, were grounded in my experience. I knew, even if I wasn’t yet able to articulate why, that this canceled podcast wasn’t up to snuff because there was, in fact, no there there, no action, just me centering myself and blabbing about what I wanted to do, with nothing to show for it. It wasn’t going to advance my goals and, editorially-speaking, it’s lousy storytelling. So I’m glad that I heeded the signs, which proved quicker than my own judgement. That worked out.

But I’m realizing, too, how easy it is to turn an event, one that seems momentous, inspiring or even awful, into a sign of something bigger than just what it is. 

Welcome to Life Changing with Dori Fern, a podcast about the messy middle between when you hit pause and what comes next.

The day before I left Barcelona, the last stop on my epic, nearly monthlong European adventure, I got an Instagram DM from a chef friend who wondered if I was interested in coming upstate to do a kitchen trial at the Catskills Inn where he is culinary director. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. Last summer, after I left my job and saw that he and his family had moved upstate to start this one, I reached out and told him I might be available should he need any cooks, for events or otherwise, but he didn’t reach out.

So the timing of his message took me by surprise, coming as it did a year later and days after I published Episode 4, Life-Changing Latkes, pt 2, where I came to comfortable terms with the fact that cooking professionally was probably not in the cards for me. Maybe, I thought, this was a sign that said otherwise.

I didn’t know too much about the job when I agreed to go upstate for a few days to do a trial, besides that my friend was looking for someone to work the morning shift f/t, that they would provide staff housing on their property, and also pay me (minimum wage) for the trial. 

I was eager to get back to work, both because my travels ran down my so-called gap year funds and also because I craved structure and professional direction. The prospect of living in the Catskills, too, held a lot of sway. Being locked into locked-down NYC during the pandemic had left me wanting nature and the trips I had taken to oceans and mountains over those two years made me crave more of it. I’ve lived in NYC all but four years of my life. I’ll always love the diversity of people and excitement and possibility and perpetual motion, but its quickie culture is also wearing on me. And speaking of quickies, I have this nagging feeling, born from experience and data points, that I’m not going to find a compatible love partner here. That the only long-term relationship I’ve had is my 17+ year relationship, and 15 year marriage, with my ex – who I met during those aforementioned four college years outside NY–provides some proof points for this and also nyc.gov reports that there are 400k more women than men living in this city. NYC celebrates the energy and allure and possibility of youth more starkly than it does the more settled – if not stagnant – beauty of a longer life. And so I maintain that it is more likely I will meet someone in a place with fewer people who see each other beyond the superficial more than is required of us in a city of millions where the options seem endless. 

I’ve even seen this man – or some pretty fully-formed representation of him – in my dreams. and I’m here to say he looks far more rugged and outdoorsy than your typical city guy. I rarely remember my dreams, no less clearly see people in them who I don’t know in real life, but a few months ago I dreamt of a man of roughly 50 years old, average height, tousled, short medium-brown hair with the kind of wave that grows wild. Slightly burnished, medium maybe olive maybe ruddy skin of some European descent. A carpenter, perhaps, wearing a cotton checked, button-down work shirt, with sleeves rolled up above his elbow and clinging to his bicep, muscled from work. He stood alone, but focused on someone it seemed, in the woods. He isn’t a guy I would or wouldn’t call my “type,” but attractive for sure.

So anyhow, the week after returning from Europe, I ventured up to the Catskills to see if, just maybe, I wanted to be a professional cook.

I arrived just after 9am on a Wednesday, hours earlier than I was expected, ready to work. I was given the kind of  mundane, exacting prep tasks junior kitchen cooks get: thinly slice 50 heads of green garlic, make a vat of curry paste following the recipe to the letter, and so forth.

At one point in my slicing, I thought: I like this. It’s meditative. Not work. And then I caught myself: sure, it was work but, hey, work can be enjoyable.

My friend, the head chef, is on daddy duty home with his toddler son and won’t be in, so instead it’s just me, the sous chef – an easygoing strawberry-blond haired dude from Pennsylvania by way of Brooklyn, in his 30s – and the other cook, who is the kind of character one expects to find in kitchens and who is quick to tell me his story in his inimitably thick, Jew-from-Queens accent. Former Wall St bro who joined the army post-9/11. Drug addict in recovery. Now, one brief marriage, no kids, and a Rikers rock bottom later, he’s sober and channeling his obsessive peculiarities into work, odd diet tricks and exercise. Looks to be about my age, maybe a bit older, though I later learn that he is two years younger than I am. 

They both live in the staff housing, along with about 4 other youngish men and women who work on the Inn’s hospitality staff.

For this trial, I’m being housed in one of the Inn’s six rustic-chic rooms. It’s quiet here midweek, due at least in part to the fact that dinner service at most of the Catskills’ tonier spots only runs Thursday-Sunday, which I hear is due to a labor shortage. I’m wiped out and the only place open for dinner less than 30 minutes away are the Chinese takeout and a Mexican spot in town, so I picked the latter, calling in my order for pickup. But when I arrive, the place is kind of hopping and there’s a handsome young guy at the bar, and I’m now feeling kind of social, so I decide to sit for a beer. The young guys is talking to the bartender, who looks straight out of central casting, if one was casting for a Latin guy of a certain age with slicked back hair and a mustache, and also strikingly plucked and lacquered tame eyebrows, all dyed an unnaturally dark shade of black. He struck me like a man with secrets. Turns out, he’s the joint’s owner. Anyhow, the young dude, his loc’d hair tied up under a baseball cap, is talking about the restaurant he cooks at, which is my entre to ask: Where do you cook?

He looks over and smiles and we start to chat about his job and why I’m there. He’s Jamaican, raised in Brooklyn, near where I’ve lived for the past two decades. He’s 32, and not any more or less mature than one would expect, but by this point, I’m just enjoying our talk. I choked down about half of my dinner, which is awful, and order one more beer. The conversation flowed for hours. It felt nice to make this connection, to find common ground with a man in a way that wasn’t overtly sexual but wasn’t overtly not, either. To be noticed and attractive, however it was intended by either of us, was good and too long a time coming.

So day 1 done, and I’m feeling hopeful that this gig might work out. Day 2, I worked the dinner shift, which was harder. Hours spent peeling what wound up to be about ⅓ cup of fava beans - so if you ever eat favas at a restaurant, please know that whatever you’re paying isn’t enough. At the end of the shift, I got to sit in the bar and was served a cocktail and a large portion of the inventive and tasty, casual-luxe seasonal menu that wouldn’t be out of place here in Brooklyn. My chef friend invites me outside to tell him what I think about the trial. By this point, I’m really not sure, and I tell him so. The pay will be a factor since I’m not prepared to let go of my Brooklyn apt in this tight market, and while what he’s offering is pretty primo in the world of restaurant gigs, I knew I would probably have to either find someone to sublet my Brooklyn apt or do a bit of freelance writing or both in addition to the full-time morning shift to make it work, even if I just opted to take the job until fall. 

The next morning, I helped with breakfast set up and staff meal prep for a few hours, then before I leave, I got a tour of the house I’d be living in. The pros: a full gym setup in the basement, solid utilities including laundry, and a firepit plus stunning views from the deck outside. The cons: one sliver of a closet in the otherwise-medium sized bedroom and a small, dark shared bathroom in need of fixing.

Then when I get into my car to head home, I turned on the radio and hear that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v Wade. And as I drove, it came clear: This cooking gig would probably have been a perfectly nice experience for a different time of my life. Now though, my priorities are to hustle and make money so I can keep telling stories. And, um, pay my bills. And once I find work that can financially sustain me, explore and develop my longer-term career options. 

The good thing about following signs is you don’t have to wonder about missed opportunities and paths not taken. You read what they’re telling you, go where they take you, and then adjust or stay the course depending on what you see when you get there. 

Next week I have some informational meetings set up – including one for IPEC, the coaching program my coach Carmen Hughes did and–after the microphones were turned off, suggested I look into it for myself. The money part is definitely weighing on me, but when I feel the stress creeping up, I try to remember to take a deep breath, relax and refocus. Sometimes, more often than I used to be able to say for myself, I do choose peace. 

And that man of my dreams? He’ll just have to wait.

Thank you for listening to Life Changing with Dori Fern. Until next week.