Exhaustion

Singing.... "I'm tired. So tired."

Those of you who have been following this blog will notice that my schedule of a post a day, has been disrupted. I have been pleasantly very very busy of late assisting our population of students competing for scholarships in two different programs. Needless to say, I have been running around helping make the experience for the students as well done and enjoyable as possible.

The end result were phenomenal, and that is all the really matters. Watching the students walk in their fate and upcoming careers, taking on their adulthood, is very important to them and us as well. I tend to look upon them as a parent should, knowing their childhood is nearly over and the adults that emerge in their place, can be a very different person altogether.

C-Cap awarded over $400k worth of scholarship assistance this year and NAACP ACT-SO is preparing for our trip to the National Convention in Cincinnati Ohio, were they will compete for National medals and scholarships. Spring is blossoming in new life and academic success.      

Squeaky Wheels

There is a saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In the kitchen, as well as other aspects of life, the squeakiest is typically the messiest. I learned long ago that it is better to just get it done, or corrected, than running in and out of the office complaining. Often times, those who are always complaining, are actually trying to use a tactic of painting the others as such a bad worker or person, in an attempt to sack the other's position. Often times this can work to the complainer's favor but usually just once. Eventually, the complainer's agenda can easily be seen through like plastic wrap, and instead of a devaluation of the other's position, the complaining party can find themselves in the hot seat. A pattern develops that changes the viewpoint of management.

The last thing any chef wants to spend their time on is interpersonal issues within the staff. There is so much more going on that can stress the kitchen, late deliveries, mistakes needing fix, equipment failure, heat waves or winter storms, theft, accidents, a whole list of things that need addressing or controlled. While the list of complaints may have validity, picking your battles is the best thing to do. If the mistake is small, it maybe best to just make correction than complaint.

The squeaky wheel may need replacement instead of support. I have been a part of a crew, and middle management, and I have often been told that I don't brother my up-line or upper management unless it is something that I can't correct on my own. I have always taken my positions seriously and when the issues are mine, or under my control, I take care of the issue. The way I figure it, I am being paid to control this portion of the company and bugging my boss with the trivial, like a tattle tail sibling, is counter productive. Anyone can miss something or run out of time to get something done, etc. Instead of wasting time having a meeting or complaining in the office, I'd much rather help out or make corrections.

A manager that cannot control their staff is often viewed as ineffectual. Complaining about the smallest of things, or the easily fixed, only serve to make the noisiest of us look bad. Problems are problems, the chef life is all about solving problems for our customers and each other. If I make a mistake, just tell me, and I will make changes to eliminate the problem from reoccurring. There is never a perfect situation for everyone involved, but the customer should never be impacted by the issues that arise as they have paid us chefs to handle whatever it takes to get the job done. The last thing that a customer should ever ask themselves is "what did I pay them for?".

Chefs don't always get along, and some, for whatever reason, try and make the day harder for other workers in an attempt to get rid of them. This is not a good look to have. Being messy over this or that is just petty. I have worked with people that I wanted to run them over with my car, but I did my work and didn't complain until it was appropriate. Pick your battles wisely. Be the one that helps out the rest of the crew, instead of the one that is always snitching. Stay in your lane and watch the road ahead instead of focusing on someone else's journey before you run into a ditch.

Angry Mama Bear

Yesterday, I hear upsetting news about one of my high school students who was grievously attacked during the school day on campus. She will be missing a few days of school because of this. I will spare you the details other than she suffered a broken cheek bone.

At first, the story spurred me to be inquisitive but after hearing the details from a member of our security staff, I got upset as if the same injury had happened to my own birthed children. I can't even find the words that are adequate enough to express myself.

This population of kids already has a lot to deal with from the neighborhood, the schools, the politics of our city, the rampant stupidity and injustice that is pervasive in their lives. This incident is have a bit overwhelmed as she is a likable sort who really doesn't bother anyone. To have her face hurt like this is such a piss-off.

I am going to leave this here before I upset again.....  

How I got my life back....

When I began working in the industry I was 18 years old, in the age of dinosaurs, and I committed to working hard, working long hours, and never turning down an opportunity to learn. I was successful in my pursuits as the hospitality work is never ending.

I was lucky that one day one of my professors at Roosevelt University took me by the hand to the Palmer House Hotel where he was the Food and Beverage Director. He set a meeting for me to get introduced to how that organization operated and I was quickly hired by the Exec. Chef. I was placed in the party department and began to expand my craft. I failed to realize the good fortune in its fullness, at the time, as that department allowed all the team members to work a steady shift 90% of the time. We were on the 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shift. Employees could use the hotel gym that included a sauna. There was an employee cafeteria where we could eat for free.

With the goal in mind, to never turn down an opportunity to learn, I soon found myself also working as cocktail waitress, a couple nights a week, in the hotel bar. This gave me some very nice additional income and taught me more about good customer service. When I would work a shift in the bar, I would get off work at 4:30, grab some food, maybe even hit the gym, and then change from one uniform to another, starting a shift starting about 7 p.m., and work until the bar was dead quite or ready to close at 3 a.m. Afterwards, I would take a cab home, nap, and come back to work at 8 a.m.

This hamster wheel kept on turning for about a year and a half. I enjoyed it. I like talking with customers, I especially liked the extra cash, and I was single and living alone with my cat, so I didn't need a good work/life balance. I needed the money and I was, and probably still is, a adrenaline junkie. I was young and able bodied so the industry opened up for me and gave me as much as I thought I could handle.

With age comes wisdom, and aches and pains. I got married at 27 years old and was immediately pregnant with my eldest daughter. At that time, I was working in the social service arena, and that job was rewarding and wonderful, as I could adjust my schedule for the needs of the pregnancy. I had PTO hours and a standard 40 week, so I often worked 10 hour days so that I could have a 3 day weekend often, giving me some needed downtime. The pregnancy changed a lot of my career habits. Being a parent made me make different choices about how, when, and where I worked. I love being a chef but the 80 hour work weeks were too difficult to maintain while parenting small children. I wanted to parent them myself, we didn't have the aid of extended family members, as some do, for childcare. I was the mommy and the wife. I wanted to be these things so I had to make changes in the way I worked to do it.

I think it is sad that I had to find alternative places to work ,and use my skills, so that I could take care of my life and those people in it. So I worked for a homeless shelter, then a church organization, then as a grocery store bakery department manager, a teaching and demonstration chef, a pastry cook at a university, and lake dinner cruise company, all so I could have an adequate family life, and even so I was sacrificing more than mothers that had a standard work week. My career as a chef was diminished, slowed down, and almost derailed. I lost my connections, I had to use differing skills because working in a production kitchen requires too much time and physical endurance. If I hadn't make the choices that I did, I would have kids that I hardly ever spent time with when they needed me the most.

Some male chefs do not put their careers on the back burner like I did, and some would say it is easier for the guys to do this than us ladies. I have never been a guy but it does seem likely. Chefs do often get divorced and are all work and all play. The habit of chefs to unwind after a huge long day is to go to a bar and unwind. There is usually a spot where the whole crew goes and shut down the bar. Heavy drinking, smoking, and some drug abuse are all present in this lifestyle. In order to handle the stress and chaos, in order to keep going for 18 hours or more, in order to get up and do it all again the next day, in order to handle the chauvinism, the racism, the misogyny, the demanding customers, and all the big egos, many of us turn to chemical assistance to get them through it all. Some who do this can find it ruling them instead of them controlling their life.  

I love my career, I love what I do, I love serving my customers, and I love teaching these skills to others. Now that I am a lot older, as my eldest is now in college, and my health is a super bumpy road, I once again found a need to move away from the love of my life, a professional commercial kitchen. When I began I wanted a great big career, and company ownership, but also wanting a family meant something had to be sacrificed because the industry didn't have the ability for me to do both.

The chef life is as complex as some of the finest meals and most people have never seen what is happening on the other side of the kitchen doors. I have had relatives shame me that I couldn't attend this or that event because I was working. I have been accused of lying about my need for their help because there is no way that I needed to work a 18 hour shift. I have had the argument with an upset child about the recital I missed because I didn't get off work until 8 p.m. I now teach kids after school and therefore I don't finish up until 7 p.m.

Think about this: whenever you want to party, whenever you want to eat, whenever you need to celebrate, that's when chefs need to work. We work weekends, holidays, late days and early mornings. We are not the bank teller type of folks and working an 8 hour shift leaves us feeling like we are forgetting to do something more. Work/life balance in our world is a quick way to stunt your career unless you do something other than production work.

I am not the only writer talking about this subject, check out this article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2016/02/29/why-working-restaurant-industry-can-hard-your-mental-health/NaqWdSHvKJtZQCoberbLjP/story.html

Debate, Competition, Adversaries, and Allies

The topic of competition often comes up in dialogues about the food industry, any line of work actually, and more times than not, the dialogues can get heated. The art of debate seems to be fading away like a dream of an infant, quickly forgotten and hardly ever understood. I blame the years we, as a nation, spent under "mission accomplished" Bush as President, as he created the whole binary speak about patriotism. He helped the nation buy-in to the idea of "you are either with us or against us" type of confrontational speak that lead to this type of rational in many other areas.

Debate has a purpose that is not adversarial but rather designed to explore the topic at hand, amicably. A proper debate leaves the participating parties and the audience with a greater understanding of the subject explored. Nothing is black or white, all good or all evil, the world is a wash in tons of shades and colors. We more often learn more from our mistakes than our successes and allowing your opinions to change with additional information is an invaluable situation be to placed.

Sometimes this type of scenario can be present in personal relationships. I have witnessed groups of ladies where one member feels the need to compete with her peers, often to the destruction of the friendships, but the reality is the only competition that one truly has is against themselves. I strive to be better today than I was yesterday. I am one that will uplift my peers instead of tear them down. I have been known to go out of my way to lend a helping hand and would like to think that others who can will do the same for me when needed.

Within the food industry you may find yourself in the employ of owners that are overly protective of their customers, contacts, marketing schemes, or recipes, as if an employee is seeking out to steal them. This type of thinking is not healthy. It takes nothing to give others information or answers that will set them up to succeed even after they have exhausted the relationship with you or your organization. Instead we see the crabs in the barrel mentality when the reality is that there is more work out here in the marketplace that no one will ever be out of work for long if they have the skills. I can tell you how to to something or point you in the right direction but that doesn't guarantee that you will be able to get the same results that I have gotten.

Everything is situational....   (yes, I do know that this isn't really a word). I don't mind sharing recipes with people online or in person because many people that request the information will not make the efforts to produce the item, and they usually ask me to make it for them. I mentor and teach kids who like to cook and perhaps I will be able to start the next successful chef-in-training on the right path to excellence.

I have worked for folks who were victims of this mentality and they are usually toxic to everyone around them. It's easy to spot them in a employment situation as they are constantly seeking to horde all the information and control everything the employees do. This type of person tries to never fully explain the situation or decisions and is always very guarded. The rationale behind this behavior is to make themselves feel important by force, so to speak. No one can do any work unless they go through so-and-so, can't make a single decision, can't move on to the next thing, or use their own ideas, unless you get approval.  Too often this creates a false dependence upon another person and can be a fear reaction of the person who is exhorting control, afraid that the employee will run away with their business, do a better job than they could do, or get promoted ahead of them.

Most people can mistake their allies as adversaries due to a lack of vision. It's like the cheating spouse who constantly knows they are being cheated on, even without evidence, because they believe everyone is just as dishonest as their actions. I'm not one who adopts this thinking. If we are colleagues or friends, I am sure that there is something that makes you special and usually it is different than what makes me special.

Allies share, trade, and support each others efforts especially when the goals of both are the same. Two nations will become allies because they have mutual needs. They trade materials such as nation 1 is a great producer of wheat but nation 2 doesn't have the land type to grow wheat, so a pact is made to trade the wheat for nation 2's spices. The same can happen between to companies, two people, or two families. As a pastry chef, I have a few caterers that will call me to produce the sweets the client is asking to be made for their event, for example. The caterer has an expanded list of options that the client can chose from, the client doesn't have to search for these options with an additional company, and both the caterer and I will profit from the clients order, mutually beneficial.

Confidence in one's ability, self-confidence, honesty about you own knowledge and skills, understanding the limit of your own ability and where it can be improved, and having a centered humble spirit can be more valuable than all the money or influence in the world. It takes a certain type of humility that allows you to be in a position to both help others and be helped at the same time. No matter how much I learn or how advanced my skills become I remain humble because I have worked with and met some giants in my industry and I fully understand that there are some with skills that make mine look like a crayon coloring book drawings next to a museum quality painting.

In my opinion, seeing everyone else as your competition or adversary is a big red flag that this person is struggling with some deep identity issues. The need to always be in the spotlight, to control every thing and everyone, to dismiss people willing to help you or support you because you can't imagine that they are being honestly genuine, and always thinking of your needs as more important than anyone else's, are personality flaws that are not uncommon within the chef world. I also believe that the idea of celebrity chef is drawing more and more of people with these personas, who feel the need to prove their self-importance plate by plate.

The chef personality type is large and crazy but the real stars are those among us that are firmly rooted in reality while constantly reaching skyward to shine among the stars. You can shine as bright as the sun without trying to diminish someone else's light, in fact, lending your light to others doesn't reduce yours but in fact increases the light from you both.  

NAACP ACT-SO

Today is the day of our NAACP ACT-SO Image Awards Viewing party. This is a new fundraiser for the branch. We decided to host this viewing party after the lack of African Americans nominated for the Oscar's this year. The racial divide doesn't appear to be closing. 

As the board Secretary, for the Chicago South side branch, I have been lending a hand, preparing and grooming our competitors for regional and national competition. Our esteemed journalist, Vernon Jarrett presented his concept for an Olympics of the mind in 1976 and in 1977 the NAACP Board of Directors adopted his resolution and became the national sponsor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Jarrett 

ACT-SO sustains approximately 200 programs nationally. Over the past thirty years, over 300,000 have participated in the program. Our mission is to reward and recognize African American young men and woman for their scholastic and artistic excellence. We strive to honor, prepare, recognize, and develop the talents in our under-served community. http://www.naacpconnect.org/pages/act-so-history

Every year we do a lot of fundraising because this is a golden opportunity for our young people that they may never get to experience otherwise and we do not charge the participants, or their families, the expense of travel and accommodations to compete nationally. All of our efforts throughout the year is focused upon getting our kids ready to win prizes and scholarships and usher them into a illustrious college career. Thirty two categories covering categories of STEM, Business, Visual Arts, Humanities, Performing arts, Dance, and my personal favorite, Culinary Arts.

I began my involvement two years ago when my oldest child, Jacqueline Alexander, competed in the photography category. She worked during her Junior and Senior years in high school and went to national competition both years. The work we did with her did prepare her very well, not only for ACT-SO but for the other work she did in school and for the other avenues she explored for scholarships. This year my other daughter, Victoria Alexander, is competing in a music performance category, a visual arts category and a short story category.

Eligible students are 9th - 12th grade, they can compete in up to 3 categories and can compete every year until they have graduated high school. Jacqueline is still involved with the program as an alumni, mentor, and youth ambassador in her Freshman year of college. 

I am proud to sit on the board, and I am a proud parent as well. If you are interested in supporting our good cause, our young upcoming leaders, please come join us tonight and/or send a donation by way of purchasing a ticket to our event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/naacp-chicago-southside-act-so-presentsimage-awards-viewing-party-tickets-20877805077

We do lots of events, both online and in real life, to raise the funding needed to take our gold medalists on the South side of Chicago, to our national conference. We hope to send a larger contingency this year than last year, we hope to recruit more and more of our young people into competition, and we hope to be the lightening rod that electrifies their futures.

  

Knowing your worth.

This industry, like almost any other, has not only food and food production, it has every other aspect of business activities. Every office involves sales, human resources, OSHA, inventory, purchasing, hiring and firing, communications, profit and loss, accounting, and many more.... and so does every food business except we produce food as well.

 

Being a chef is like being a chemist and a artist at the same time. We apply cooking skills i.e. applied chemistry to food products and then make them artistic. All the personnel issues that comes with dealing with a staff happens everyday in a kitchen. You are in the trenches with the same people day in and day out relying upon them to bail you out and you to do the same in return. And that is long before you even open the doors to invite in clients.

 

So, how do you know what your work is worth? How do you judge if the company is paying you fairly or not, or even if you are paying yourself enough when you are in charge of the budgets? With the new age of information and immediate access, it is a good idea to go ahead and do some research into pay scales, after all, it can be done from the smart phone in your pocket.

 

There are lots of websites that have calculators online that you can use to assess your marketability. www.payscale.com  is one of these sites that ask you about your demographics, region of work, education, and skill sets, to determine what is an average salary for the job you either are seeking or already have. If you are seeking a new job, this can be used to determine if the company in question is adequately compensating its employees or you can check to see if it is time to request a raise from your current employer. When asking for an increase, this information can be invaluable as you can confidently give evidence as to why you feel that a raise is needed.

 

Every town and city is different. As I have been working in Chicago these last 20 plus years, I can tell you that the cost of living here is quite high compared to other markets and therefore you can ask for a higher wage than average because the cost of housing and food here is higher. A company cannot keep good staff if they cannot afford to live in the area as they will move away to more affordable regions to keep from risking homelessness or cut off utilities. It's simple mathematics.

 

Once you have entered the information and gotten a salary rage and a average salary for comparable work in your region, you must honestly ask yourself if you have adequately proven yourself in the position, or in the case of seeking new employment, have you had a strong track record to successful work history. If you are armed with this knowledge but haven't put in the extra work to get at the top of your pay scale, then you aren't likely to be able to leverage it into an increase or a new position paying top dollar.

 

Every one's experience comes at a price both for you to gain it and for your employer to use that knowledge by hiring you. The total of all you have done, have been trained to do, and the length of time you have been doing your job all comes into play when assessing the fairness of your compensation. Be honest with yourself and others when discussing this topic. Knowing your worth and what the next organization can and are willing to play, can make all the difference in your favor. 

Finding Your Roots

If any of you actually know me in person, you may already know that I have somewhat of an obsession about genealogy. Tracing my origins back through time, generation after generation, isn't an easy task, and often the discoveries made lead to more questions than answers.

When I entered culinary training, a good amount of the work would follow along either a technique, building skills, or it would be a grouping of dishes from one country and then another. I was surprised to learn that several of the dishes I grew up eating were cultural invites into other worlds that my family were not apart of to my knowledge. I remember learning that the oxtails my Grandmother cooked were not like the ones other blacks cooked that had come to Chicago from the Southern states, but much more in the style of Italian migrants, for example. We ate smoked sausages with sauerkraut, and I haven't found much in the way of German ancestry. As neighbors tend to do, Grandmother shared recipes with neighbors and friends.

Sharing food culture with others and the history of foods, their origins, and development, became a fascination for me. I once took a class at Roosevelt University all about the history of food. In that exploration, we ventured back in time to the cavemen days, and viewed history and archaeology of food, how food procurement is at the very beginnings of civilization itself. Farming changed us from strictly hunter-gatherers of nomadic origins to settlers and villagers. Yogurt changed trade routes and therefore economy. I will share more of this in later posts.

Even before Henry Louis Gates Jr. began televising episodes of his award winning show, I had a curiosity for this type of exploration. My companion podcast is a type of this kind of exploration as they are conversations with people about their relationships with food and by extension culture.

Chefs, foodies, critics, writers, culinarians, educators, artist, and any sort of people who eat have some type of connection with food. I am loving talking with my guests about the subject. Just in the first few broadcast, we have seen how the conversations have taken us into conversations about social unrest, cultural and religious rebirths, and dietary changes for religious and health reasons. These are all just breadcrumbs along the pathways of creation and generational growth.

I have a small collection of older cookbooks because I like to compare what was popular 20,40,60 years ago to what is consumed now. The techniques used, the flavor pallet, the available food stuffs, and the changes in the social norms of dinning etiquette and social graces, all change and as they change so does the preferred foods. The modern mothers of today, often can't imagine hosting a dinner party that consist of 9 or 10 courses of foods, let alone design, produce, and prepare such an culinary experience but it isn't so unusual for the cultured society women of the turn of the century.

No matter the era of your birth, your place in society, your ethic makeup, for country of origin, your immigrated home, your racial background, your chosen profession, your political background, or any other thing in which we classify ourselves, we all eat and we all have a love/hate/health relationship with food.

If you are interested in taking part in our weekly discussions, please leave me a comment with your contact information, and I will love to schedule a broadcast to explore your food history.

Listen in to our discussions both live and archived: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
If you like us, please Follow! I will be soon making this available on iTunes and other search engines such as IHeart Radio in short order.

Smoothie Fast Complete... sort of.

So earlier I wrote a post about embarking on the 10-Day Smoothie fast, it was successful. And I am still consuming a smoothie a day, and throughout the day, in order to keep my system optimal. As I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and some food allergies, I have had to make dietary and life altering changes in order to keep on the good side of feeling good.

I did the fast, as subscribed in the book, incorporating lots of green healthy kale, spinach, apples, flax seed, spring greens, berries, and mangoes. This allowed my taste buds to adjust to a lower intake of sugars and salt, while upping my nutrition throughout the day. As a chef, our breed often doesn't eat well, you would think that they opposite was the case, but as we work all day, long hours, often forgoing our brakes, we don't take care of our own nutritional needs. We see and handle food all day long and it can kill your appetite and at the end of a long shift of 12 hours or more, we usually just grab something quick and simple to consume leaving us with deficits and skipped meals.

With that in mind, I am striving hard to always make a blender full of nutrition to take with me during the day and/or be at the ready in the fridge when I need it when I am at home. It is helping me regulate my bowels which has been an issue for me for many years, but increased in the last two to three years. I feel more energetic during the day and I am not reaching for the candy or chips nearly as often.

Just like with small children, we must train out pallets to better habits of consumption. When the traditional habits are not leading to a healthy outcome, then we must do better and create change. Food is medicine and should be the first time we changes instead of asking the doctor for a new pill for this or that. All of the medications that the doctor can subscribe have side-effects that will cause another problem that will need addressing. The average American is taking more than 12 medications a day in order to function. This is not a positive trend nor a healthy one. The pharmaceutical companies are getting rich feeding us chemicals to correct maladies and discomforts. We are becoming zombies dependent upon corporations to feed us and make us remedies for our bad eating habits.

Not everything that is good tasting is in fact good for you. Simple changes and  little effort can make huge differences in our quality of life.   

Roots and Wings - Mentoring the new generation

For about a year or so now, I have began teaching kids culinary skills at a high school and at a youth center. The age groups are 5-8th graders and 9-12th at a CPS high school. Along with that work, I have been working with the NAACP ACT-SO South side of Chicago Scholarship program for the last two years and I now sit on that volunteer board as the Secretary after helping out when my eldest child was a competitor.

While I had anticipated doing some mentoring, and hoped to build into my business plans to find a way to develop an internship, I did not think that I would be, at this point of my life, doing as much as I am for and with kids. I have not yet finished raising my own children and now I am mentoring many more.

After a loss of position and a downward turn in my health, I was grateful for the needed time to investigate my medical problems. A return to working near 20 hour days for a business that was simply providing a hourly wage, making others much richer, and me only slightly better off, didn't seem possible or practical. I am not the same hardworking chick I once was and when the opportunity came to try my hand at teaching culinary, instead of only producing large quantities for service while my health worsened from the stress of the job, I accepted.

Both populations of kids have their associated issues of behavior, which is different for each group, but they have never done anything outside of the typical actions of their age groups. Pre-teens and teens have the prerequisites of talking too much, listening too little, short attention spans, easily distracted, thinking only about a response to questions instead of listening to the information given, and let us not forget the attention-seeking actions that express need for attention and acceptance from peers, adults, and members of the opposite sex. All that aside, let's talk to their needs for stability and the need for dreaming big.

The kids in my classes, and others to whom I speak to often, either have big dreams of their futures or none at all, it seems. Leaving them to either desire to do the impossible or misunderstanding that nothing is possible. I haven't seen much of a middle ground with these kids. While some wish to fly on wax wings too close to the sun, others are too scared to make attempts.

Every dreamer needs a good dose sense and solid foundation and every bird scared to leave the nest needs a firm push outward to test their wings. My high school kids are learning much more that culinary skill, if they attempt to pay attention to lecture and conversations, as I spend time teaching life skills, nutrition, household management, diets, social commentary, current affairs, and what else seems important at the time. Food involves aspects of culture, socialization, economy, mathematics, applied chemistry, art, tempting of all our senses, and transmitting care, love, and survival.

No matter what a young ones' desires to do with their years, grounding them in understandings, wisdom, and careful practices is doing them the service of your knowledge about life in our society. But be careful not to plunge their path into utter darkness and fear, so that they never attempt flight for in doing so, you steal the life blood from the innocent. It is not easy to strike a balance, give wise council, and fair warnings to individuals that think they know everything, hard headed, and stubborn. But to fail, or refuse to try, lending your experience to them so they may avoid the potholes and pitfalls is a sin. Failing to do your duty to inform the next generation leaves them to reinvent the wheel again without diagram or Allen wrench to assemble that which they bought at Ikea. Sad.

Too many wish only to complain and too few are willing to help; which camp is your tent pitched in?

Competition is how you see it.....

I am the secretarial chairperson for the NAACP Act-so scholarship program South-side branch and I have been working with our young people in this program and others. My eldest child, Jacqueline, competed two years and went to nationals. In this role, we do a lot to prepare them for competition and I keep finding myself talk to them about their nerves and who they are competing against.

It's natural to feel some trepidation about presenting a project or performance that you have pour time, energy, and bit of your soul into foe others to review, however, often times their focus is pointing in the wrong direction. I find that most kids fixate upon the other competitors instead of competing against who they were yesterday.

No matter what the activity or project, the only true way to measure your progress is compete against yourself. Steel hones steel and while you are counting the number of steps your colleagues, you miss count your own. This should be the foundation of your education, getting better and better piece by piece. Framing your picture in another's framework will not work. My favorite saying about this is "If I am busy being like my sister, then who will be busy being me?"

Young people have so much to consider, take on, overcome, decide, and to become. It is not a small thing for a teenager to decide to go to law school and make steps in that direction. With those words, you are trying to determine what the next 40 years or more of your life will become, having only lived just a few. Missteps and uneasiness are always apart of the learning process but can often deter a young person.

I have no magic wand to make everything okay, however, when I changed my focus from other's progress onto my own it helped me tremendously. It allowed me to be honest with myself about where I was on my journey and how much further I wanted to go. As a chef, the next chef on my team is not going to be happy if I can't hold up my end, or will be unwilling to pick up my slack, whereas when I am on top of my skills and work outputs, other's can then rely on my work and seek me out for advice or leadership beyond my work requirements which can make my participation a blessing instead of a curse. Hold up a mirror to yourself, not to groom your appearance, but instead to groom your ability. Life is not just about the destinations, it's about the journey. I don't expect perfection from others or myself, I expect progress.