juniorkoyama

[juniorkoyama]

How this blog came about

   To be completely honest, I am incredibly hesitant to even write this post. Even now, I am quite literally debating whether or not to erase this and change subjects. I have to consciously force my fingers to type these words. But I made a promise to post at least once per day, and I have not had the time or inspiration to churn out a bulk production of material as of yet. So, as the digits on my monitor tick steadily closer to the midnight deadline of a new calendar day, I find myself at a loss as to subject matter. A couple of hours ago, I toyed with the idea of casually letting just this one day slide. “I can make it up tomorrow by posting twice...”. But a promise is a promise and I made the promise of posting daily in order to better myself and in the hopes of making writing (something I have always been attracted to, and feel fairly capable of) into a habit. As I was simultaneously persuading and dissuading myself in regards to posting today, I found myself wanting for subject matter. Nothing seemed fun, inspiring, intriguing. So, I thought, maybe I should just provide a little background on myself and how I found myself in this situation.

    The quick version (I promise I will post more on this and elaborate heavily in the future, think of this as an introduction) is that I absolutely hate to appear vulnerable, show weakness, or feel incapable. I also despise using any disability or setback as a crutch and an excuse to not be the best you can be, and to not accomplish what you want in life. The reality is that over the past 5 to 6 years I have felt an ever increasing presence of all those things which perturb me, as well as much other pain and hardship. You see, on my 33rd birthday, I was finally diagnosed (after several years of unknown and ever increasing physical ailments, and waning physical performance) with Late Stage Lyme Disease, which becomes known as Chronic Lyme Disease or Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome if the symptoms continue to persist one year or longer after antibiotic treatment.

    Before becoming infected with borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria which is responsible for Lyme Disease, I was carving out a career in the restaurant industry. I hesitate to say “I was a chef”, because that term is thrown around all too often and far too gratuitously. I got my first restaurant job at the age of 17 as a dishwasher, and moved my way up through the ranks (not at the same establishment, but through many different restaurants) to eventually be a lead cook. I attended and graduated from Le Cordon Bleu with a degree in Culinary Arts. I then worked at several other restaurants and held various positions, from Prep Cook to Sous Chef, and eventually opened my own food business. Notice, at no point have I even said I was a ‘Chef‘... yes, I held a couple of positions as Sous Chef, but, in case you are wondering, or perhaps do not know, CHEF is a position, a title, an earned demarcation which entails lots of blood, sweat and tears, and it denotes a certain element of respect within the restaurant community. So, yes, I have held a position as a chef, but I am not a chef. I unapologetically state, right here and now, that it is a personal pet peeve of mine when ‘Chef’ is thrown around willy-nilly. I know, many people do it because they think they are being respectful or polite, and some companies call all cooks ‘Chefs’ in order to.... well I don’t really know why, except maybe to make their company seem more prestigious than it really is? Perhaps this is a skewed and negative perception, perhaps it is the truth. At any rate, if you are someone who calls anyone in the professional kitchen ‘Chef’ please refrain from now on, as it is not as respectful as you perhaps intend, and likely makes you seems much less knowledgeable than you surely are. Don’t worry, there will be plenty more rants and raves about restaurant industry happenings in the future of this blog, so, if it is something you enjoy, stay tuned!

    I digress, and to bring things back round to the crux, I was a career restaurant employee, and it is a highly demanding job, physically, mentally and temporally. To sum things up (as I said earlier, I will elaborate on everything in much more detail in upcoming posts), I ended up having to routinely quit new cooking jobs after only a few months, sometimes only a couple days weeks, of work. I became worried about my health, as it felt like I had the flu (minus the gastrointestinal issues) for nearly two whole years, and it had taken a toll on my physical, mental and emotional well being. It certainly didn’t do anything positive for my résumé either. I didn’t have health insurance, and was quickly finding it difficult to pay my bills. Finally things got to the point that I was unemployed and essentially bed ridden due to chronic fatigue and constant peripheral neuropathy - you know, that fun feeling of all your nerves and muscles constantly burning. I found this particular peculiarity highly intriguing, and it got me to researching possible diagnoses of my symptoms (self diagnosing is NEVER a good idea, just don’t do it... seriously, don’t... you’ll make things far worse than they really are) and set me on a quest to obtain consistent medical evaluation for the uninsured and broke. Eventually I came across a clinic which met these criteria, and I ended up telling my physician that I basically felt like I always had the flu, and that my muscles always burned. The best way I could describe this was being akin to when you are doing a heavy toning workout lifting weights, and you near the end of your final set, when your muscles literally feel like they are on fire and you push through those last, glorious few reps which make you feel so incredibly accomplished. It turns out, as a matter of fact, that there is a very specific biological reasoning to this highly descriptive feeling of this very specific symptom of Lyme Disease.

    And so there were many schedulings of appointments at various places, I was insanely fortunate to get an absolutely incredible medical team who actually wanted to get to the root of my problems and figure this thing out. After three rounds of blood work, for a total of 10 vials of blood, and several months (all heavily laden with doctor’s appointments) of waiting for results, I got the diagnosis. It was a bittersweet discovery, on the one hand it felt great because now there was a course of action to combat a known enemy, on the other hand it was almost worse than not knowing, because so little is known on a clinical level regarding the treatment of Late Stage Lyme Disease.

    You see, most Lyme Disease cases are diagnosed within 3-6 months of contraction. If this is the case, a short course of antibiotics and a small bit of follow up evaluation, and Bob’s your uncle, you’re back to your old self. If, however, you remain infected and undiagnosed for years rather than months, well, then the bacteria really wreak havoc on your body and play a little game of their own called “your symptoms are gonna go ahead and persist even after you kill us”. So, basically, even after diagnosis and treatment, I am still unable to function ‘normally’, as I used to. I am unable to work a ‘normal’ job like a ‘normal’ person. I can’t be relied on to show up for scheduled shifts or appointments with any sort or regularity due to my continuing symptoms. I had to figure out something to do with my life to give it purpose again.

    Writing is something I have always enjoyed, it’s been something that I have always found a comfortable creative outlet, and it has steadily rode sidecar in my brain throughout my life; constantly, though gently, pushing me to dedicate myself to it in one way or another while my conscious brain made all sorts of excuses why I shouldn’t pursue it. After a bit of thought, and a few brainstorms of various writing avenues, I decided to start this blog. I like the idea of the freedom it offers. I don’t have to write about only one thing for any length of time or number of characters, which is ideal because I love learning and sharing knowledge about so many things. I don’t even have to stick to one style of writing, and can fill in posts with pictures and other media if fitting (or if I’m lazy!).

    I thank you for bearing with me for this bit of a ramble. I usually am very disciplined about editing my work, I hate for anything to go out with errors. Today is an exception. As I finish writing this, my mind is clouded, I am about twice as tired and sore as I was an hour ago when I began this post, my forearms are burning and I find it increasingly difficult to keep track, keep course, and stay on topic in any sort of coherent and naturally flowing fashion. My vocabulary steadily declines, and my focus diminishes. I normally read through and re edit anything I write which meets another persons eyes with dogged determination so as to present my best possible work. I re-read through for continuity and flow, check for grammatical, syntactical and punctuation errors. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to proof reading an editing. But, as I said a bit ago, today is an exception as I feel the Lyme Disease winning this fight. I want to go on, to clarify points, to expand on particular events, it takes all my self restraint to NOT proof read and edit, but there will be plenty of time and opportunities for all of this later. I know this post is a bit of incohesive and semi- stream of consciousness writing. But thank you for reading, and, hopefully, not judging too harshly. Enjoy this rarity of unedited spew of speech placed in to text, for I am not going to read back through or edit this before posting. Hopefully I do not read it back tomorrow in a pool of regret, but c’est la vie, non?

Junior

[juniorkoyama]

A quick note

   Today’s post is going to be fairly short and sweet, because I am absolutely exhausted from working the family’s herd of cattle - more on that later, perhaps tomorrow. We raise our cattle to be sold to the Beef Market, and, regardless of anyone’s opinion of this or thoughts and feelings regarding the chain of events which brings that steak from a field to one’s plate, it is an undeniable fact that there is a very specific de facto process which takes place. It’s not just for beef, the vast majority of food that is consumed by Americans and most First World countries today goes through a very similar logistics chain. And before you think I’m being biased, I readily include myself in that grouping of ��anyone” previously mentioned.

    I will get to my overall point, because I said this would be short and sweet (maybe bittersweet, but oh well). There are many thoughts and opinions, and even more supposed data on the food chain system in place. Some of it might be right, much of it is wrong, and most of it is, at the very least, either improperly presented or skewed to reflect certain, specific biases. But the fact is that almost everyone agrees to one point, and that is that there is a great need for a change in the food chain. Our food chain is broken. We have millions of people starving while simultaneously disposing of or destroying tons (yes, literally, as in the weight measurement) of perfectly good, usable, nutritious food for various, generally bureaucratic or monetary reasons. Not only is the food chain broken, people’s perceptions and understanding of where their food comes from, and how to prepare it for their own nutritional intake, have become convoluted, diluted and frighteningly close to non-existent.

    I apologize for this not being quite as short as I had originally planned, but I promise this is the conclusion for today. Hopefully you have stuck with me this far! So I finish this brief blurb both as a note to myself for continuing the discussion of food in a follow up post (it will likely be many, many posts, but we shall see where it goes), and as a bit of a teaser and insight to you, my dear reader, as to some of the content to look forward to in this blog.

Until tomorrow,

Junior

[juniorkoyama]

...a beginning...

    Hello, and welcome to Junior’s Journal - wow, that sounds entirely boilerplate and completely void of any real feeling, but how else is the beginning supposed to begin? To be completely honest, this blog has no real point, other than to serve as a creative outlet. There will be no cohesive structure, no overall theme, and no particular underlying lesson to be taught from all my “glorious wisdom” (yes, that is sarcasm, and I suppose there will likely be plenty of that, maybe there will be one theme after all).

    So the journey begins, I can’t really tell you where it will go, nor can I tell you what will transpire or what stories of reminiscence we may spin at journey’s end; perhaps there will not even be a journey’s end. At best, I have a vague suggestion of which cardinal direction to set forth in, but certainly no map, no itinerary, no plotted path, not even a list of landmarks to view along the way. I simply can not tell you where it will go, because I do not know myself.

    As I take the first step upon this new venture, I am vividly reminded of so many incredible tales of unknown quests written by such brilliantly talented minds: Bilbo Baggins’ adventure in The Hobbit along with Frodo’s in The Lord of the Rings (and their respective companies, of course); Alice innocently and heedlessly bounding down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass; Dante, on the precipice of Hell ready to plunge to it’s depth for the sake of love; the reader of Robert Frost, standing betwixt two paths, unsure which to take, with a single certainty that the only way is forward.

    With all this in mind, I have set forth only one rule for this endeavor - I am to post something to this blog every day, at least once. Now, I might write something every day, though that is unlikely. What is much more probable is that I will write many things in frantic bouts of fervor, transcribe them here and schedule them for posting. These cycles of productivity will, in all likelihood, be followed by sorrowful stretches of malaise and “uncreativity”, which will, inevitably lead back to a flow of innovation and clear vision.

    I say these things not to worry anyone regarding my mental health (perhaps I have dramatized it a bit, I am writing for creative purposes after all), rather simply to illustrate my own creative process; one that I think is likely familiar to many creative types. You see, I believe there has been a misinterpretation of creativity, and human productivity in general, in modern times. Much of this, I feel, is due to our instant and consistent accessibility of information as a result of technology and social media. I won’t get into a whole diatribe about this now, perhaps that is better suited for another post, but the point is simply this: it is all to easy for it to appear as though individuals are “always on” and that people have a robotic like capacity for production. We constantly see influencers and media darlings at their best, without seeing any negativity. Because of this, I think many viewers are under the impression that, for instance, a blogger constantly creates golden content on a daily basis, when the likelihood is that they have limited days of ingenuity, the product of which is then allowed to be distributed into the public eye in a trickling fashion in order to provide viewers with the creators best work in unfaltering perpetuity.

    Or maybe my creative process is not like others at all, and most people do create exemplary work on a daily basis. Who am I to know? Who am I to judge? Well... no one. I am simply me; doing what I do, how I do it. So, if you feel like you have something to offer the world, don’t give a second thought to the fact that your process or your content isn’t tailored to the structure others tell you is needed. Don’t worry about whether or not everyone will like it, appreciate it, or even understand it. Do it for you, and no one else.

    I hope you, dear reader, stick with me for this journey, and I hope our company may grow in strength and number, for the road ahead may be dark, treacherous, and fraught with peril, but I am most certain it will equally be filled with light, triumph and exceptionally fair fortune. Who knows what tales we may tell come the ending of this beginning?

Junior Koyama