#1 - In Media Res
With a surprising number of celebrity references.
Lately one of my things has been to call people say, “I called you because you missed me!” It has been well-received and met with chuckles, so why not do it here?
Welcome back to The Mustard Sandwich, this time from Substack. I swear I’ve moved this thing more times than I’ve hit publish, but here I am again because you missed me. It has nothing to do with the enormous amount of guilt and self-loathing I feel from not writing, from starting something wholesome and not honoring it on the reg. I never do that.
2024 is the year of consistency, and my goal is to jumpstart this writing habit and not let the battery die again. That means publishing something, anything, once a week, hence the “—/52” counter above. I still work in public schools as an education consultant, but now there’s a twist, a foray back into food. It seems like an interesting place to dispatch from since schools remain a subject of fascination in our fraught society, and creative pursuits a universal point of curiosity. Still, if you want no part of this bailiwick, there is an Unsubscribe button here somewhere.
If you’re new here and this was forwarded to you, do come along.
On stories
Honoring the practice of writing means detaching from delusions of grandeur, mainly the expectation that everything I publish has to be some fully formed essay with enviable pacing and turns of phrase. Those happen, but only when I’m in the rhythm of doling out an everyday minestrone of words.
I seek to reduce the amount of time I let thoughts and reflections marinade, lest they become chunks of meat so brined that I can’t adequately describe their flavor. Instead, I need to bang these out “on the daily.” I don’t mean that literally, but essays should become sentences because an expressed thought is not wasted. It’s a start.
I often think about the accessibility of stories and how some become more accessible with time, some less. When I sold the family food business in 2018, many folks in my circle told me to write about it and my family’s epic immigrant saga before the details faded away in my mind. It’s been almost five years and I haven’t written a lick of that history. It’s coming because I have a new vehicle for it (more on that later), but I simply couldn’t emotionally access those stories at the time.
Selling the business I grew up in was like laying a third parent to rest, the trauma of which was too new to describe. That sale needed to happen, but I also couldn’t help having a ground zero feeling, like I had factory reset my life without a plan (something you can’t really have, more on that later, too). I wrote through it all, but not about the business. Yet no part of it has vacated my mind. Instead, time has basted it into something succulent and I think about it constantly as the terroir of my life.
On underlying fears
A couple of days ago I was talking with a friend about how our fears undergo a subtle evolution as we age, and how revelatory it is to learn what they truly are.
When we’re young, one of our fears is, “What if this happens to me again?” We worry we’re caught in some cycle of doom unique to us and our fate. It’s all very romantic. As we get older, the question becomes, “If this happens to me again, will I know what to do?” We start to develop some comfort around things we don’t want happening to us happening and hope we’ll grow.
As time goes on, more resistance falls away, making way for even greater acceptance. Then the question becomes, “When this happens again, will I do the right thing?” Although there is an element of surrender here in the realization that whatever “it” is will happen again in some shape or form, there is also a knowing of how to proceed, gifted by time and experience, and there is agency there.
I would have loved to have had this conversation with an elder when I was 22, perpetually on the heels of heartbreak, lost in my work not knowing what work was, trying to figure out who I was, not knowing what to proceed with and what to leave behind. I needed details, not just the usual, "It gets better.” I needed to know that, whether or not it gets better, I would get better at dealing with it, spinning it, and taking actions that would somehow make it generative.
It’s become a hobby of mine these past few months to tease out these finer fears. As my parents age and small changes in them thrust me into terror, and I find myself getting angry at irrational and annoying behaviors of theirs, I realize that what I’m actually angry about, what is actually bothering me, is that I am in love with them, and they are leaving me.
Reality becomes more bold-faced each year that goes by. The saving grace, if you’re lucky, is that the same time passing by renders you more courageous to confront it with dignity. I never thought this person would be relevant to any of my reflections, but life continues to delight me with its mystery. A more apt example I could not find of a person hiding from her truth for millions in broad daylight, finally showing up just for herself.
On opportunities and regrets
Sometime around 2015 I went to Las Vegas and saw Ray Romano headline at The Mirage. I was with my sister and her law school friends, but they went clubbing and I went to the show, which was more my flavor. One of her more introverted buddies even helped me secure a last minute ticket to the show, which was only $50. It was in the third row from the stage, a primo seat, and I looked cute as a button in a flowy, candy red dress just above the knee. I wasn’t going to any club, but I still looked like a doll.
The warmup act was Jon Manfrellotti, who played Gianni in Everybody Loves Raymond. I was in love with both of these middle-aged, hilarious Italian men, and was delighted when Jon walked onto the stage. I don’t even think he did any bits. He just talked and we all laughed our heads off because it was like we were on set for an episode. Ray Romano was excellent, and delightfully a little saltier in real life. You realize after watching him do standup that who he was on the show is who he really is. That’s why the show was so successful. He was just being himself there. farting his way through.
At the end of the show, Jon and Ray just talked out at the audience, saying hi to random people and mocking distinctly midwestern dad outfits. They asked if anyone wanted to come on stage and take a picture with them. My heart leapt. A couple of hands quickly went up. Eager beavers whose parents had raised them to be confident. A lull, and then a few more hands. Anyone else? The lights were on by now and they both stood waiting.
There I sat frozen, a fully upturned lipstick in a sea of beer bellies in earth tone Costco polos. I could have sworn Ray and Jon were looking right at me, glaring at me like teachers to raise my hand. This is what opportunities you’re about to miss feel like. They goad you and make no bones about their disappointment. I’m sure the guys talked about it in their dressing room afterwards: what was with that girl?
As you may have surmised, no pic so it didn’t happen. I have nothing to show but my regret. And I know what many of you might be thinking: who cares, it’s just Ray Romano and his weird friend. That’s beside the point. This moment remains so seared, so teachable in my mind to this day because it was one of the few times I had immense clarity on exactly what I wanted and I was perfectly poised to snatch it. All of the forces were on my side, yet I hesitated. The ingredients that make a once in a lifetime opportunity also make an epic failure if you miss it.
On progress
I share this story because 2023 was full of opportunities ripe for the plucking, and I’m happy to report that, with some of them, I did know what to do and I did the right thing. With some time and age on my side, I took them rather than relegated them to the graveyard of regrets.
Chief among them, getting Los Compas Coffee, a small business I had been incubating in my heart and mind for years, off the ground. I know, way to bury the lede. I have a story coming about how this all came about. It involves a cigar-smoking ex-cop and almost dropping a 100-lb machine on some feet, but I’ll save it because I have to write 51 more of these.
I have big goals with Los Compas, and one of the reasons I’m reviving The Mustard Sandwich is to have an outlet to share everything I’m learning on this creative journey as community-based entrepreneur.
Los Compas isn’t just a business — it’s a social enterprise that I hope will tackle youth workforce challenges in my community by giving young people an opportunity to learn work and entrepreneurship skills in an equitable and dream-forward environment, something we’re not always good at doing in school.
I hate to end with jargon, so I’ll share a picture of some young people at the school site I work at brewing and serving Los Compas’s coffee to staff on the morning before the holiday break.
If you’ve stayed this long, thank you for reading. If you liked this, please share it with some buddies. I’m trying to expand my reach this year, both to feel a greater sense of community and spread the word about social work I’m doing.