It’s the day before the reshoot of The Kolache Episode, and I’m making final preparations. I’m going to try to keep this one tight—under 20 minutes, if possible. To that end, I’ll be making a dozen kolaches, most of them savory, and no klobasneks. I just don’t see the point. Now, if I were making the sausage from scratch, that’d be different.
In the background, I’m also prepping for The Macaroni and Cheese Episode. A whole lot of carbs and fat these last couple of weeks, and I’m feeling it. Dead certain the wife is too—and I don’t think she’s happy about it. Sorry, honey.
I’ve been thinking about this cooking thing—my cooking thing. Why I’m doing it. It’s not just that I’m hungry; it’s almost a compulsion. Which means I have to be on guard about it, and I don’t care for that much. But I get hit with these urges, almost like a mania, and I have to discharge them or carry the frustration. A thought will hit me: the gouda and the sausage and the apples work, but the gouda’s a little greasy. What if you stabilized it in the form of a cheese sauce? And then I have to find out. Now!
It’s a little weird. It’s also why the next shoot is the mac and cheese episode.
Earlier this morning, I was making onion jam for tomorrow—and whatever else I might need it for. I was thinking about cooking (in general, not the onions), and I just had a lot on my mind.
An old co-worker contacted me yesterday. I think he wants me to go back to my old life. I just can’t. I’m not that guy anymore. The things that made me good at what I did are being used elsewhere—like here—and I can’t risk it getting derailed. Dealing with the day job is already about as much distraction from my real life as I can tolerate.
Even now, as I’m writing this, I’m being called to get something done. Oh, well. This is how the bills get paid.
A guy I work with now—someone I also worked with 20 years ago—is asking me about software. I’m trying not to be rude. I despise unnecessary rudeness. But he keeps bringing up different professional-grade engineering packages, and honestly? I just don’t care anymore.
The man he remembers felt obligated to know everything about everything. Compelled. Couldn’t rest until he knew. And honestly, what the hell for? Thousands of hours, thousands of dollars, just to stay current on everything. Sixty hours a week at the office, another forty at home, all to be the best. Fuck “the best.” All he was best at was squandering his existence—missing the things that mattered to him.
I own my bitterness. I earned it.
I don’t hold anything against either of these guys, but they do make it harder. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not tempted to go back. But no matter how much more money I could make, it wouldn’t cover the cost to me. I love my current life—or at least, the parts of it that are truly mine.
I tried to explain, via text, to the guy who reached out yesterday, how liberating it is to be unimportant. Truly unimportant. Replaceable. Expendable. Just one of many. No decisions. No one’s future riding on my judgment.
There’s another guy I used to work with, a couple years older than I am. Late last year, he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to one of his lungs. He was what I used to call a “milk man”—the kind of guy who’d show up to a job and work just slowly enough to rack up overtime and extend the project. Milking it for all it was worth. He retired a few years back, I think at 55. And now he’s got colon and lung cancer. It’s only been three years since he retired.
And I think about another one—also just a few years older than I am—who died at 52, behind the wheel of his car on the way to get hip surgery. Heart attack. Boom. Gone. Fifty-two.
The friend with cancer is still alive. Doing chemo, pooping into a bag, building fences. He sent me a picture of one he just built. Said he tore his stoma doing it, but that’s the worst of it. I’m happy for him. He may get better. He may die. But regardless, he’s living like a human being.
The other guy is still dead. I’ll let y’all know if that changes. Hell, I’ll let everyone know.
So I’m slivering onions for jam and thinking all this over. Being back in an office just isn’t for me. I’ve gone feral, and I’m okay with that.
Not that it matters. Say I could rein in feral Justan and go back to office life, become a milk man, learn to tolerate it—I still couldn’t do it. I can’t do the things I need to do in an office.
My workday starts at 0500 and ends at 1430. Yeah, I know—that’s more than the eight hours I’m paid for. It’s my decision, even if it’s technically illegal. I give them the extra time because at any moment, I can go throw down some onion jam if I need to. I can run to the kitchen and test a theory. Hell, I can hit the grocery store if I drive aggressively enough—and that is not a problem for me.
On slow days—and there are plenty—I’ve got a 3D model on one screen, a drawing on another, and on the third screen I’m editing video or writing crap like this. Can’t do that in an office. People get weird about that.
Then there’s the commute. I live in Northwest Houston, which means anywhere I could work is going to be at least an hour away. That’s the rule in Houston: everything is at least an hour away from wherever you are. So that’s two hours a day, plus another hour for lunch. That’s 11 hours away from my work—the real work of my life.
My current commute is walking from the couch to the bathroom to drain the morning lizard, then to my desk to fire up the work PC. Let the dog out. Make coffee. Log in. Ten minutes, max. Unless Windows updates, which is my version of being stuck in traffic.
So what’s the point of all this?
I cook as a declaration of independence. My cooking, this site, the videos—these are the only things I have total control over. No one looking over my shoulder. No one telling me to do it differently. Just me. For me. I don’t cook for anyone else—not even my wife or son. I mean, yes, I make them food. But I’m doing it for me. It’s an expression of myself to them—but still for me.
But why is it a declaration of independence?
Because it is. Duh.
When you cook for yourself, you’re telling everyone else: I don’t need you. Not in a nasty or vindictive way—just the truth. I’ve got myself covered. You don’t need to feed me. I’m not a threat. I can come to you as an equal, needing nothing but you—and you can come to me the same way. Independent, yet together.
That doesn’t mean I won’t cook for others. I cook for my wife all the time. I’ll even adjust things to suit her tastes—because that, too, is an expression of love.
Now, if it wasn’t weird enough already, I’m about to make it weirder.
When I talk about sex, it often sounds like I’m talking about food. And when I talk about food, it frequently sounds like I’m talking about sex. Because in a sense, I am—at least from the standpoint of pleasure. The sensual experience of eating and/or sexing.
Consider what I said earlier—cooking for yourself as a declaration of independence. How is that different from masturbation? Self-pleasure? Knowing what you like and how to get there on your own. You see what I’m saying?
And cooking for others? Still an analogue. I can share what I do for myself with others, and if they’re good with that—awesome. But to truly cook for someone else is about giving pleasure. Finding out what makes their soul cry out, “Oh, fuck yeah,” and delivering that. That’s what I give when I cook for someone. And that’s also why I don’t do it professionally. It’s too intimate. I lose too much of myself in the process. I feel violated. Used.
Yeah, it’s fucked up. I know. But I am what I am.
In the last post, I talked about consent. In my worldview, all human interactions must be voluntary exchanges—value for value. A consensual transaction where everyone gets what they want. Not a compromise, where both sides give up what they want just to make the other give something up too. That’s a monstrous goddamned concept—and another blog post entirely.
I only cook for others when I can do it freely, as a gift I want to give. This website, Skillet and Flask, the recipes, the future cookbooks—those aren’t gifts. Those are pieces of me I’m willing to sell. Still personal. Still intimate. But within limits. Which is why I’m following the OnlyFans model; I can’t escape the parallel.
If you’re one of those rare people I cook for, take it for what it is: a gift. A piece of me. An act of love. An act of vulnerability. I’m not trying to impress or wow you. I just want you to know what I believe: your life is beautiful to me, and I want to help you sustain it. I also want to show you that doing so can—and should—be pleasant. Just like living.
And that’s why I do what I do and won’t go back. Not unless there is no other alternative. I can’t be this at the same time as that, and I don’t want to lose this.
In my old life, I wasn’t me. I was the guy they needed me to be—efficient, knowledgeable, dependable. Impressive, if you like that sort of thing. And for a while, I thought that was the deal: perform well enough, get fed. Say the right things, get patted on the head. Be useful, be rewarded.
Turns out, living for validation is a great way to misplace your actual self.
Now? Now I cook. I make videos. I slice onions at five in the morning while contemplating mortality and cheese sauce. Nobody’s handing out gold stars, and that’s kind of the point. I finally stopped auditioning.
This is my life. It’s messy and quiet and smells like sautéed things. And it’s mine.
Now go cook something. For yourself. Or maybe rub one out. I'm never really sure which one I mean.
