There is a well known rebuttal to the saying that, "the grass is always greener on the other side". The rebuttal being, “The grass is greener where you water it”! 

I remind myself of this when its time to get to work sowing those seeds for future benefit (strap in for some gardening analogies). Especially in the age of social media where you see only the best versions of other people's lives, it is important to understand the effort behind it. As for me, I invest daily in creating a life full of friends, laughter, and enduring memories. All of that starts in the home.

 

It is an investment in time and resources that is well worth it to create the lifelong memories.

 

I, like many of you, have taken a round about path to my passions. Fresh out the gate I was primarily interested in what jobs would make me the most money and sound the most impressive. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with that! Traveling for work enabled me to avoid learning important "adulting" skills. I was constantly eating out (or at least grabbing take-out) and utilizing laundry services on the road, or just buying new versions of whatever. So messy and so wasteful. 

But eventually, I wanted to do work that I found more fulfilling. So I dived straight into the deep end of hunger related issues and realized just how little I knew about real life. Step one, immersion. Get slapped in the face with the gravity of the issue. Check! Humble myself in the face of anyone willing get real with me. Check! And become financially humble to boot, because it turns out non-profits don't pay a whole lot. Hooray! However, during this time I came away with a lot of insights and potential solutions.

At the very root of it I realized I had to learn how to make healthy food taste good before I could ask people to change their habits. But as I mentioned before, I had postponed any such adulting skills and was now an addict of unhealthy fast foods myself! I felt like a hypocrite but decided to take it on as a case study, a road map to ditching the quick and easy for the labor intensive and healthy. I gave up the drive through (mostly) and enrolled in culinary school. Thats where people learn to cook, right? WRONG! But thats a story for another time.

Throughout my career I have taught nutrition and cooking classes to children. Tricked countless said children into eating vegetables by providing massive daily dinners! I have trained incredible adults with "barriers to employment" (criminal history, disability, lack of access) French Classic Culinary Arts. And helped place them in gainful employment. I also had the opportunity to manage, cook, and reorganize at a free sit-down homeless cafe, serving high end nutritious food with dignity.  

After being all consumed in other peoples lives, trying to give them the best shot possible, I decided to take some time to water and tend my own garden. Taking the time to focus my energy on building the life that my hubby and I always hoped for. I have aptly titled my professional position in the home as our "Life Curator", ha!