Tag: cooking

Oh, I’m still around. Kinda.

To be honest with you all, it’s been a really rough year for your best pal here. Essentially, since last summer, like June of 2024, I have been unemployed. That job I had with the farmers market organization did not happen the way not only I thought, but how they advertised the gig, would turn out.

The position was banked “Market Coordinator” and after sending my resume and stating that I have written about half of the vendors at their markets, I was certain that I would be some kind of liaison, doing office stuff, helping with social media, etc. Nope. All I did, 2 maybe 3 days a week, was show up to a market early, help set up their info tent, work that info tent, break down the info tent and go home. That was it.

At first I thought that it was just training before moving me up. Nope. That. Was. It.

Around May things here in Tucson were heating up and the notion of working the markets in 100+ degree heat was not ideal for a 50-something food writer that mainly spent his hours indoors.

One day at the big market at Rillito Park a woman approached the info tent saying that someone had spilled a drink by the band tent. Me in my usual humor said something to extent of: “Oh don’t worry about that. It’s like ninety degrees. It’ll evaporate.” I said this right next to my immediate supervisor, who didn’t find that funny.

Then later that day I heavily criticized an app of a former employer who teamed up with the farmers market organization, that employer who just up and let me go one day saying they are ‘moving in a new direction and need to catch up financially’. That food focused app wasn’t synching with the farmers market app and it was just becoming boring and a pain. Anyway, I said something like “No surprise that app sucks. Because they suck.” Mind you, in my best “professional” totally hushed, behind the scenes voice.

A day or two later I get an email from that supervisor with the heading “Unprofessional Conduct”. At first I thought it was a training tool on how to deal with customers with unprofessional conduct. Nope. It was directed at me and my “unprofessional conduct” that Sunday at the market. I cracked back saying the evaporating drink was supposed to be funny and the rip on the “app Incident” was said in confidentiality. Then I said I was being grossly underutilized, you’re sitting on a goldmine here, blah blah, and, yeah. That was that.

Then the long dark days of summer hit and I spent my time mainly job hunting, throwing resumes and portfolios out into the ether of my laptop looking for anything close to my skills and experience. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well kids, if you don’t already know I’ll tell you all now:

I have lived with depression and anxiety my whole life.

As a kid I could remember telling my dad that I “didn’t feel good”. When he asked what was wrong I couldn’t give a tight answer. I just didn’t feel good.

One day I told him it feels like I’m underwater in the deep end or like wearing that bulky vest the dentist puts on you before doing x-rays. It was that weight, that heaviness that came with my depression. It was the only way I could describe it at the time. Still is.

So imagine having a condition you have to deal with and a situation you can’t get out of. The wife makes decent money so we are ok, but that overpowering feeling of having knife twisting guilt of not being able to land a job was, and is, sometimes absolutely crushing.

Heck I couldn’t even get a part time job in a cute spice store, one where the owner has a seething hatred for Donald Trump and the GOP. This is a no brainer. They need help, I have retail experience, am a home cook, a food writer, a user of their products and I too have a frothing hate for Trump and the GOP. Easy.

I thought the interview went great. Okay, let’s go. Put me on the schedule!

Pretty sure it was the next morning, morning!, that I got an email saying they are moving on to other candidates. You have got to be joking me.

Some days were, and are, better than others.

Some days I see the wife off to work, I tidy up the kitchen or whatever from the night before, make coffee or tea, write a bit, clean a bit, tend to the garden, run errands, read some and before I know it she comes home and its family time.

Other days, not so much.

There are days when I can’t even get out of bed. The brain churning on about the dread of yet another day alone in a small dark house, doing chores, sending out resumes that mimic tossing pebbles into the Grand Canyon, trying to write, not being able to focus on words, completely uninspired on what to cook for dinner, freaking out about being middle aged and unemployed – it gets to a point where I do the bare minimum that day. If anything at all.

Okay, that line about being “alone” is a bit dramatic since we do have our fabulous cat Franky. But he doesn’t speak English. And he sleeps on a patio chair all day.

But I am trying my best to get back to being my best.

I’ve started this new supplement called Gaba, which I take at night, and it seems to be helping with the anxiety. The depression is being fought by drinking a lot less and keeping active as much as possible. My park walks will continue by autumn when it cools down but I am now a member of the Reid Park Zoo, which is mostly shaded, so I hit that up now and then for power walks among the animals.

The writing is slowly coming back but after being screwed yet again by a local food publication, the love of it has been sort of pounded out of me. I’m working on it kids. I miss typing and I miss you guys reading my stuff.

Honestly I do enjoy being a house husband these days. I’ve taken up baking, love planning dinners, love cooking dinners, the garden has expanded and is doing well, nice to fix up bits around the house and, of course, being a stay at home cat dad.

But the not working, not bringing in any income does not sit well with me. Sure I’ve gone through unemployment spells but this is on a whole new level of holy crap. I don’t even qualify for unemployment benefits. Its like, c’mon!

Then I think the great magnet is trying to tell me something. What that is, I have no clue.

Anyway, that’s the gist of my jive.

Thank you to those that have reached out to me, talked me down via text talks or facetime or anyone that has asked “Hey, where have you been?”

I’ve been here.

But I sure haven’t been me.

And that is something I miss most of all.

Cheers.

7/12/25