Author: Jen Easterbrook

When Passion Smacks Me Upside the Head

I’ve been passionate about a lot of things. The most consistent part of my life that has held my passion, is medicine, the art and practice of medicine. I have worked in various capacities of the medical field for over 20 years. I always thought it would be my career calling, to take care of people, to watch them heal.

Caring for Covid-19 patients left deep..jagged.. scars on my heart. I woke up from nightmares of the death of my patients, watching their bodies finally give out after days of fighting. We went almost three months without a single person coming off the ventilator alive during one particularly painful stretch.

As the daily heaviness of Covid-19 patients began to lighten, I found myself tired, tired of taking care of people, tired of feeling and watching. Counseling didn’t take away that weariness of wondering if this was what I was meant to do with my life. Talking exhaustively with coworkers and friends didn’t change my pull away from medicine. Stress leave didn’t help, six months off for surgeries didn’t help. I began to come to work realizing there is more that I want to do, besides medicine. That perhaps my torch had been carried through the months of Covid-19 patients, that maybe I needed to look for another way to live out my passion, to find my passion again.

I’m an artist, so I create things. I tried a few directions, but kept coming back to food, to my passion for food to be healing and uplifting. I love exquisite food experiences and ways of searching out ingredients. I love the way that food dances and plays around with your eyes and taste buds. In traveling, I love how food expresses the soul of it’s location, how the pride is displayed in those who share their food.

I’m still wielding this passion, savoring it to figure out what I want to do with it. It’s uncomfortable still. But I would love to make beautiful food and share it with the world.

When I get lost from time to time

Sometimes you just have to start in order to start. I am a supreme procrastinator and can find a million things to do besides what i should be doing. Mostly it is because I frequently paralyzed by the need to be perfect.

Getting to this blog, this website, posting on Instagram, has been a tedious endeavor with my thoughts and fears. I have all the ideas, with terrible follow-through. My kitchen/living room/carpet/(insert random location here) will get cleaned instead. I’ll go through all my bills or I’ll end up going to the garden or drawing, or something equally unhelpful to my end-goal, which is to find a job that I can do from home to support my family, and to find location independence with my work.

I see you in there, those people who get distracted, who might or might have not been diagnosed with ADHD, those people who constantly beat themselves up over losing focus. I also see those people who can get things done without distractions, and I marvel with how well they function, while also understanding that their ability to follow through may be an impetus for them to have more work piled on them.

I want to help you find tools to do better, giving little shortcuts that help you keep going. I want to give you quick ways to find success in even the small endeavors. I’m here to listen to your frustrations, and I’m also here to push you just a little. I’m going to post a few things this week, but first I’m going to pick up this silly messy living room that the boys left messy. And maybe shampoo the carpets later today. And then the sinkful of dishes. Ooh, and fix the broken tile in the kitchen. And maybe I’ll make some jewelry. Or go mow the lawn.

This is post-party after a family of six came to barbecue with us. I don’t like doing dishes when guests are there so usually just leave it till the next day.