04: Working my Ass off
When I was accepted into the Work Study program at Esalen I knew that the work portion of the program was important, but little did I realize it was going to be one of my favorite parts. When you apply you can select a department you want to work in, ultimately though they assign you departments. Praise be, I got to work in my first choice - the kitchen. I had this amazing fantasy that I'd learn all of the Esalen kitchen secrets, I'd be working behind the scenes and getting ideas on how to bring recipes and food wizardly back into my real life. As I like to say, "oh poodle, that's cute." Turns out reality could not have been more different.
Working in the kitchen is one of the only departments that has a set schedule - 7am-2pm. What the literal fuck. I'm not a morning person, so this already started me off with all sorts of hesitation. Second of all, you don't get to cook ANYTHING. Like literally nothing. Wait, what? I thought I was going to be organizing the Iron Chef Esalen cook off. Nope. The collective we (students) don't get to touch anything electric or motorized. What does that leave us with you ask? That's right, chopping vegetables and washing dishes. And I have to admit it, IT WAS AMAZING.
Each week you had 2 kitchen hand shifts and 2 dishwashing shifts. When you're working as a kitchen hand, you basically do whatever the chef on duty wants you to do, except cook anything, obviously. The job of students was to prep food before a real chef actually cooked it. But don't worry, I asked almost every day if I could make something. Eventually one of them caved. (I won't name names though.) My most proud moment was cooking hundreds of scrambled eggs for breakfast. Seriously, it brought me more joy than I should admit. And obviously we had to do a photo shoot to commemorate it. On our last week the whole crew got in on scrambling eggs. Teamwork! The worst thing to prep was onions or chard. And of course there were endless cases of both.
On the flip side, washing dishes was awful and amazing at the same time. The dish room was appropriately named "The Pond" and when you worked in the pond, you were a Duck. Working in the pond guaranteed the following: being soaking wet by the end of the day, burning yourself on clean dishes, being drenched with sweat from working so hard/running around and lastly being totally grossed out from some disgusting food waste. On good days, we would get ahead of the dishes and then be able to help with kitchen prep tasks. On shitty days, you would be trapped in the pond for the entire shift.
The best part of working in the kitchen though were the people. On a daily basis we would talk about life, philosophize on why we're here, make inappropriate jokes, talk about what inspires us and what annoys us and what makes us who we are. We connected with each other in ways that I don't think I've done in any other job. When you're standing around and prepping onions for hours you have a lot of time to talk about life. And as many of you can guess, I was more than happy to talk to people about the most intimate and mundane for hours on end. In 4 short weeks, it felt like a little family. I was excited to get up at 6:45am and go to work. It was apparent from early on in the month that we were an unstoppable recipe for success. It was our group of students, the kitchen staff and, if I may say so myself, the Megan + Deeann magic. Deeann is my most fabulous, incredible, amazing friend that I'm obsessed with. I can say with the utmost confidence that we made that job so much fun. All of this made working in the kitchen in June THE. LITERAL. BEST. I don't want to speak for the Esalen staff, but I'll speak for them. They said we were the best. I have the text messages to prove it. ;)
It took me a few weeks at Esalen to come to the realization that I probably got more out of working in the kitchen than anything else. It was a lesson in the power of being present and also on how to show up as your true and authentic self. It was such a gift to show up to work every day knowing that I could be my me and the staff and my student colleagues would appreciate and respect me for that. Working in the Esalen kitchen is far from easy. But it sure was the most fun I've had in a long time.
- M
