Cooking.

So I think that writing is a lot like cooking.

I'm starting to cook for myself nowadays, and it's a great, refreshing feeling. I don't think I've started anything new in a while. I've been doing more of things that I find important, but I haven't really done anything outside of my niche. The only experiences I've had with cooking were sparse dalliances with toasters, microwaves, and rice cookers. I've used the stove maybe a couple times in my life, but nothing so extensive as cooking a whole meal for myself; maybe just a grilled cheese sandwich to munch on, or some spam.

So I'm now becoming more involved with the kitchen. No longer do I keep my back turned to the stove and oven when I make my mad-dash to the refrigerator for food. In fact, I no longer approach the fridge briskly; knowing that cooking my meal will be more than throwing a tray into a microwave, I take my time. I wash and dice the vegetables, set the wok and frying pan on the stove to heat up, season my meat in spices and marinades, and recount the steps I'll have to take to conjure up the recipe in my mind. To make one's food is a labor of love, and for that one must take it slow.If anything, at least cooking has made me much more patient.

It's a lot like writing, when I think about it, and it's the very same feeling that I had when I started to write that I have right now with cooking. Look! I'm creating things! I'm experimenting! As of right now, the dishes I create are far from perfect, but I can eat them just fine one way or another, and I'm happy. Yet, little by little, my inadequacies are starting to show up in my food and I want to erase them. I would add too much soy sauce like so many words, ruining the flavor of a story. Or, I would add a wrong spice to the mixture like a bizarre phrase or paragraph, changing the very flavor of the concoction. I don't feel for the consistency of the recipe, or I overcook it until its natural flavors are lost. I edit my creations into oblivion until I lose the meaning I want to convey.

I don't know why I am attracted to things that demand a delicate touch. Either with cooking or writing, with one mistake you can make a catastrophe. If you're too attentive, then you can be so muddled in technique and precision that the overall picture is ruined. If you're too inattentive, then you can under-cook something so it doesn't fulfill its potential, or even worse, not even make the thing you intended to in the first place. Sure, you can salvage a bad meal with sauces and sides, or you can salvage a bad story with a good character or two, but in the end, when you're downing it, there's still that indelible feeling of disappointment on your heart or tongue.

I've been reading a lot of recipes and books on the subject of cooking in order to better myself. I have a gigantic cookbook of Martha Stewart's right next to my copy of Fitzgerald's short story collection. I go blind trying to solve the puzzle hiding the techniques of the great. I hunch over computer screens and stoves. I watch my concoctions boil, fry, and simmer, hoping everything will go alright. I am walking in the presence of giants, attempting to match their humongous steps by making every effort to match their pace.

I really shouldn't be looking at it that way though. Like everything else I care about, I stick my nose in too deeply in the subject and try to rush its stages. I need to learn to revel in glacial paces. I always feel like I'm stagnating if I'm still, just waiting, and I tend to rush things to get to the next point. I think that the best things about both cooking and writing is that I can try again a near-infinite amount of times. It's not like race car driving or snowboarding, wherein if I meet a fatal accident while attempting to be the best, it's a career ender. The worst accidents that could befall me writing is carpal tunnel; with cooking it's um... burning my house down. But barring the worse, the great capacity of both of these activities, to be able to try again in order to strike that fine balance, to be able to change something because there is no finality to it, I think that's what I like best about it. In my quest to attain a near-perfection, it excuses my imperfections.

That, and I find it a lot of fun. A LOT. There aren't too many things that make me really excited. And of course, not everyone is going to share my enthusiasm. I won't ever hear from my roommate, "boy howdy writing! What are we waiting for?" nor will I hear, "hey, spending hours trying to make a cake? Sounds like a weekend!" But these are the things I like, and I guess that I make so much of an effort towards them because I want to enjoy them to my fullest.

That's not to say I'm anywhere near-good in the kitchen. Honestly, I'm pretty awful. Or if not awful, nearing adequate. I can't say that much about my writing either. I keep hearing that we need to approach our works with confident strides and strokes, but I'm sure that's not an approach that works out for me. I guess that I constantly demean myself so I never get too full of myself, and due to that I never stop to strive towards bettering myself. I'm realizing the flaws in this though. Because I stop myself so constantly, I miss so many paths due to me dwelling on a point. Like making a steak too well-done. Or never finishing the story you want to write.

All I can do is steadily improve, and try to take the steps that I should be making.