F🏳️‍🌈k Me Very Much.

We’ve all been there. The post-breakup makeover, the fuck you new hair or tattoo, the “I’ll show you” competition or career move. The motivation spurred on by a negative experience is undeniable. It’s like post-traumatic growth, but with two middle fingers and a sneer. 


I think 90% of moves I’ve ever made, from competition to career, have been fuelled in some way by spite…until recently. The thing it’s taken me til my mid 30’s to realise is that, once the rage and fuck you-ness has subsided and you’ve mentally or physically moved on, you’re stuck with that decision, and if it’s more permanent than an undercut or rose gold toner then you could be in for a bit of a fucking time. 


I used to be a chef and it was fucking terrible. Terrible because two of my most hated things in life are late nights and being told what to do, and both of these elements seem to literally underpin the entire hospitality industry. The reason I put myself through both chef school and 5 years of a vocation I absolutely hated was even more terrible though. Basically I liked a boy and he always gave me shit about my cooking. To be 100% fair to him, I was atrocious, and once melted a plastic spatula into the scrambled eggs I was making without noticing (and still ate them). We were housemates at the time, and my ‘dinner night’ became the butt of his jokes, a matter which I took extremely personally because I was obsessed with him and wanted him to like me back. 


In some misguided attempt to both impress him and prove him wrong at the same time (is that a thing?) I made it my goal in life to not only learn to make food better than he could, but to literally make doing that my fucking job. Ten years and an entire career later I regularly eat 5 day old meal prep and couldn’t make a beurre blanc if someone held a gun to my head. My short lived stint as a chef is laughable in retrospect, and I can’t help wondering where I’d be in life now if I hadn’t wasted half a decade trying to spite someone who probably never gave my culinary efforts (or me) a second thought. 


My point in sharing this quite embarrassing and pathetic story is that because my whole hospitality venture wasn’t based on any actual intrinsic desire or interest, I burnt out very quickly, and the shit and hard parts of the job became overwhelmingly tedious and unbearable in a matter of months. If it wasn’t for my stubbornness and former view of giving up on something as a failure, I may not have ended this short lived career by walking out of the last kitchen I worked in and going home to burn my chef’s uniform in the backyard. 


There was a long time - in life and in training - when I felt like I had a point to prove to everyone who’s ever made me feel not good enough. From former employees to coaches to training partners and ex’s, these collective bees basically filled my bonnet with motivation to be better and kept driving me toward the next metaphorical kilo. Not only was this vengeful mindset tiresome and anxiety inducing, but it made every achievement I made rather hollow and pointless. What I’ve learnt is that the not-good-enough stuff is really up to us and what we choose to take on, and if we make decisions based on the opinions or projected opinions of others, we’re likely to end up feeling fairly bitter and dissatisfied. 


So there you have it. Do fucking you, and make sure that it’s truly you, because if there’s nothing under the layers of angst and 5-day-old beef to sustainably support whatever goal you’re working towards, you’re likely to end up the person you’re really sticking it to, is you. 

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