In order to reach our destination, we have to all start from somewhere. Chef, author and blogger Chris Hill on his journey so far.
I think a lot of us struggle making peace with where we are and where our lives have taken us. We look at our current situation, and then back at the road travelled to getting here and think, “maybe I could have done things differently”, and indeed we would be right in saying, but this then leaves us feeling unsatisfied, unaccomplished.
I like to think of it a bit differently, after all, every decision made up until this point, everything that has ever happened to us in our lives is irreversible and that will never change — what I think we need to do is listen to our lives.
How did I get here?
How have I gotten here? How can I use everything, whether seemingly positive or negative to my advantage to create the best possible life for myself, from this day forward?
Exploring different options
A dozen years ago, I finished college, couldn’t find a job and ended up spending several years bouncing around making pretty good money by working in various restaurants around town.
In the next three years, aside from restaurants, I worked at a children’s museum in their marketing department, I went to real estate school, I interviewed to be a teacher, and I applied to an ungodly amount of jobs doing anything you could possibly imagine under the sun. I couldn’t figure it out, there was no North star pointing me in the right direction, and the more I acquaint myself with the world, I discover that this is commonplace for a lot of us.
We enter the real world, trying to figure it out, but that’s hard to do as an eighteen or twenty-two-year-old. After all, we aren’t supposed to die at eighty or ninety with the same understanding of the world as when we first set out on our own in our early twenties.
So, I went to grad school, got a decent paying job in consulting shop, but that didn’t feel right either, nothing felt right. So, I started over again and moved 500 miles north to Virginia and jumped into restaurants full time.
But, hadn’t I done everything right? I did what my parents, teachers and society told me to do, right?
and so it starts!
Soon, I was the chef and partner of a restaurant here, but it wasn’t working as we had thought — so I bowed out after five years. Along the way, I made a mess of my relationships, I wasn’t making any money — I was making all of these sacrifices, but for what? So, I bounced again, but this time to Atlanta to open another restaurant — my restaurant, but then that went to hell. It never got off the ground.
I felt like everything I had worked towards those last seven years in Virginia was wasted. Once again, I couldn’t see where my life was taking me. I withdrew from the world, my girlfriend, everything. I slept all day, pouted at night and day after day felt sorry for myself, until one day, I decided to just get back in the game — I needed to do whatever I could to revive myself. I needed to take that first step, however small that might be.
The first steps
So, I did.
I started writing again… And then, things started falling into place. My reach through writing exploded, and then that translated into social media — ten thousand followers on Facebook soon became fifty and it has more than doubled since — all in about a year. Momentum started building and the next thing I knew, I was self-publishing my first book back in June. I was getting opportunities to speak at events (and actually get paid), podcasts started reaching out to me, and the list goes on.
So, here I am today. Not in a million years would I have thought to have ended up here at this exact point and in this place.
At one point in my life, I thought I’d be sitting at a desk making deals all day long, then I started thinking I’d be working in restaurant kitchens until I was sixty, but now my life has taken a different turn towards having the opportunity to make a bigger impact in the world through my work, and since, I’ve gotten paid to do things I never would have dreamed of.
Falling into place
As all of this stuff falls into place, I look around with tremendous gratitude.
