December 26, 2014: A Few Steps Away From the Office

We all hear about work-life balance.  In the last few years, with the advent of ubiquitous laptops and smartphones, the more accurate phrase is work-life integration.  Both intrude on each other.  Some days you'll be at the office until 8.  Some days you'll leave the office at 3 for a parent teach conference or take 3 hours in the middle of the day to have tires installed.  

This post is not about work-life integration.   Take a few steps away from the office.  Separate yourself from your work.  

This Christmas I was able to spend Christmas in person with my teenage son with a visit from my brother and video chat with the rest of my family.  It was such a different experience.  We did not get a tree.  We bought some poinsettias, and put one in the middle of the living room with Christmas lights in it.  The gifts went there, of course.  We woke up late, and after our Christmas morning gift thing, we played video games together.  Our current favorite is Crash Team Racing, a game from 1999 on the original Play Station that we play on the PS3 now.  

In the afternoon, we put a ham in the oven and then took a nap.  Then we made doughnuts.  Real doughnuts.  You make the dough, then let it raise for an hour.  Then you form it into doughnuts and let it raise for another hour.  Then you put them in 375 deg oil for 1 minute per side, and put them on paper plates with paper towels.  Then you add the glaze.  They are crunchy, and when still warm they are amazing.  Unlike Krispy Kreme or Dunkin, the dough isn't very sweet.  I had 4.  

As I sat there, a chunk of warm ham in one hand, a warm glazed doughnut in the other and my son across the table from me, I felt that Jack London-Herman Melville-Ernest Hemingway feeling.  You know it.  "This is life," I said to my son.  The feeling would have found place in a king's hall with a tankard of ale in a fantasy novel, on the open sea with a Viking.  And it found me in my cozy dining room with my son, eating our fresh pastries and plotting how we'd blow each other up with missiles while racing.

To be sure, I have had many years of enjoyable work.  Sometimes even joyous work.  My chosen career path, however, is not primal.  And it's good to get to that primal place sometimes.  So I suppose cooking is primal for me.  What is primal for you?  When do you feel like you can look up at the sky and shout, "THIS IS LIFE!"?  Do you know?  When was the last time you did it?  

How soon will you do it again?