Surfing Ruined My Life

Things never get dull in my life.  Just when I feel like I have finally got into a comfortable little groove I decide to go off into left field and change everything.  As human beings we are creatures of habit and I especially find myself constantly getting into a routine.  Once Im in this common set of parameters I begin to go mad, yet the idea of changing it is a horrific thought.

The summer 2010 will go down as one of the flattest in California history leaving periods of time where it was borderline east coast flat.  Im talking 3-5 day flat spells (that’s a bit of a lie cause all I really had to do was drive an hour or so north and could have easily been furnished with chest high waves, but who really wants to go through that much effort for less then average surf?  Not me).  These flat spells got me to thinking about my life and its current direction.  This is never a good thing to do when your already feeling a bit depressed.

As most of you know my sham of a professional surfing career came to a screeching halt when Globe finally dropped the axe upon me this past June.  Don’t cry for me Argentina, I saw the writing on the wall back in February.  I was surprised they kept me that long after I did absolutely nothing the last year or so except hang around Santa Barbara.  With no prospects on the table and nothing really happening for me with the exception of trying to make a promo video, which Im still sort of working on, I was forced to reside in the fact that all I had amounted to in life was a night time gas station employee.

Although it paid the bills (barely) I found myself in front of one of life’s cross roads.  Do I continue cleaning up piss, shit and other bodily excrement off the bathroom floor every night with out gloves because my cheap ass boss stopped buying them pretending that something was “going to happen for me” in surfing or whatever (deep down inside I still really believe someone is going to show up at some point in my life and hand me a brief case full of money).   I knew I needed to do something better with my life.

My friend Ryan would constantly joke about how I was the most intelligent over qualified gas station employee ever.  I had been considering going to culinary school since I was 15 when I used work at the pizzeria, yet was always dissuaded by my mother or school guidance counselors telling me I “had to go to college”.   Fuck high school guidance counselors.  I don’t think those guys ever pointed anyone in the right direction.  They told my buddy Chad Griffin he should go to college and the guy could barely read or write.  The world needs garbage men too.  Enough on how I feel about guidance

counselors cause I could write an entire rant blog on them alone.

I love cooking and have always felt at home working in a kitchen.  Its hard work, but its honest noble work and I happen to be good at it.  I had planned to go to culinary school with in the coming year, but I had been saying that for the past two years as well.  After this summer I was determined to set my life on the right course, tired of starving for an industry that used me up and then threw me away when I was of no more use to them.  I surf for me now and actually have way more fun and get way less hassled in the lineup.  I truly am the definition of hard core, soul surfer, but that is another blog for another day also.

One day in early August I was surfing with the guy who is actually Will Smith’s personal chef.  When I asked him how he got into it and if he went to school, he replied he had just applied for jobs and worked his way up to his current position.  Dude reckoned that was probably better then any education a school could give and you get paid for it instead of paying them.  Heeding his advice I began applying for every kitchen position I could find to no avail, everyone wanting at least three years line cook experienced.

Discouraged after nearly a month of rejections I resolved to wait out the winter and then try and go to culinary school in the spring.  Then about a week ago I got a phone call from this position I applied for, a cooking position at Westmont College.  Excited I went to the job interview and the head chef Jose was super pumped on me even though I was a bit inexperienced and offered me the job. He probably figured he could get me at half the price of a trained chef and train me how he wanted to with no ego problems.

I was offered a full time chef position, $11 hour, and benefits after three months.  The only buzz kill was the hours were 11am-8pm seriously cutting into my surf time forcing me now to have to get up at 6am to go surfing as oppose to my cushy 8am surf check.  I could not make up mind so I did what I always do leave it up to other people.  I told my boss at the gas station if he would give me a dollar an hour raise thus matching the pay of the chef job I would stay.

The owner of the gas station flat out rejected it.  I guess I was not worth the sale of one pack of cigarettes and a candy bar (comes out just under $8).  I was still considering staying, when that night Jose called and convinced me otherwise.  I took the chef job and told the gas station to kiss my white ass.  So now I work 5 days a week nine hours a day killing myself in the kitchen so exhausted when I get home I can barely hold my head up, but I am learning a craft I hope to become very skilled in.

I am currently on a thirty day trial period and at the end if I don’t cut it Im out the door.  Im not going to lie I am definitely a lot more deficient then I had expected to take on a position as such, but Im learning fast and putting in all my efforts.  I will make the cut and in a few years come out of this a skilled chef.  To put things into Star Wars terms I am like padawan learner novice to the ways of the force, but hoping to make full on Jedi.  Only time will tell my friends.  Wish me luck on the new endeavor.

Here is the trailer from 1999 motion picture Simply Irresistable, a movie in which Sara Michelle Gellar gets a cooking position in a fancy restaurant, yet has never cooked before in her life.  Luckily for her a benevolent crab helps her out after she spares his life by not cooking him.  I know its a pretty bizarre movie, I saw it on a plane on the way back from Cali or something.