Externals were certainly part of what went through my mind when I decided to leave academia as well–as Jon put it, the “the low pay, long hours, and appalling working conditions,” although of course those are all rather worse in a kitchen than in a university, even as a temporary worker in a university (although yeah, it can come close sometimes). And having a clear ambition that you perceive as simply incompatible with an attempt to pursue your original goals probably also makes the decision a lot simpler, and may make it a lot easier (those aren’t quite the same thing, of course–sometimes it can be blindingly obvious what you need to do and still be terribly difficult to do it).

It’s interesting that you say you’re not sure you were all that passionate about it, at least not all the time. (Although really, nobody’s passionate about anything *all the time*–sooner or later you just plain run out of energy for that sort of thing. I’m assuming you mean you weren’t passionate about it all that much of the time.) Was this even true when you first, say, started graduate school, or when you started writing your dissertation? I ask because I find it hard to imagine embarking on such projects without a fair bit of passion being involved; writing a dissertation in particular is hardly the sort of fun and high-paying work that attracts those who are just wandering through.

If you *did* lose passion somewhere along the line, did something happen during graduate school to change the level of passion you felt for your field? Or is it just that you now notice that you don’t miss it all that much, and infer from that that it couldn’t have been all that important to you to start with?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=1

–

that expresses both what I’d like to have been able to do and what I feared.

This speech — Chang yelling at his staff — is again, something I long to be able to do, and something I’m glad I can’t:

“I haven’t been spending that much time in this restaurant because of all the shit that’s been going on,” he began, “but the past two days I’ve had aneurisms because I’ve been so upset at the kitchen. On the cooks’ end, I question your integrity. Are you willing to fucking sacrifice yourself for the food? Yesterday, we had an incident with fish cakes: they weren’t properly cut. Does it really matter in the bowl of ramen? No. But for personal integrity as a cook, this is what we do, and I don’t think you guys fucking care enough. It takes those little things, the properly cut scallions, to set us apart from Uno’s and McDonald’s. If we don’t step up our game, we’re headed toward the middle, and I don’t want to fucking work there.

“We’re not the best cooks, we’re not the best restaurant—if you were a really good cook you wouldn’t be working here, because really good cooks are assholes. But we’re gonna try our best, and that’s as a team. Recently, over at Ssäm Bar, a sous-chef closed improperly, there were a lot of mistakes, and I was livid and I let this guy have it. About a week later, I found out that it wasn’t him, he wasn’t even at the restaurant that night. But what he said was ‘I’m sorry, it will never happen again.’ And you know what? I felt like an asshole for yelling at him, but, more important, I felt like, Wow, this is what we want to build our company around: guys that have this level of integrity. Just because we’re not Per Se, just because we’re not Daniel, just because we’re not a four-star restaurant, why can’t we have the same fucking standards? If we start being accountable not only for our own actions but for everyone else’s actions, we’re gonna do some awesome shit.”

What does anyone in my department care about anyone else’s work? Or even about what I think of their own? Or even about what *they* think of their own work? That passion just isn’t there. And we’re not a team. There isn’t a sense of our striving towards something bigger than us. There are aspects of that in academic philosophy (a little, sometimes), but they aren’t centered around where you work, or how you work on a daily basis…

(I should mention — for those that don’t know me — that Avrom knew me when I was under-medicated for depression etc, and hence actually acted (a little?) like Chang in the above. I’m better now, and mellower. But less passionate…)

It *is* true that I figured I’d have an easier time as an amateur cook than as a am amateur philosopher. But it isn’t the same thing, really. I can play around in the kitchen, but nothing hinges on it. I’m not making a living, I’m not pushing boundaries (I don’t have to), I don’t have to be perfect every day.

Philosophy doesn’t, for me, have that level of intensity. I can be a flake one day, and it doesn’t matter. I can teach a bad class, and it isn’t a huge deal. But even more to the point, I can do *nothing* for a week, and no one will really notice.

The amateur cook community is *weird* — and I say that with love. But seriously, if you hang out long enough at eGullet, start reading IdeasInFood regularly, etc., you start to get a sense that something is missing… We’ve let technique overtake passion. Or perhaps, I’m just a little burnt out on technique right now.

And, I’m off to give a job talk (!) on Wednesday. And — I had my first “academic” nightmare (that I remembered) in years last night. So maybe I’m not over philosophy, either…

jk

There’s something, in particular, interesting about cooking–something it shares with the arts, and (arguably) in recent years journalism, which it doesn’t share with academia, and shares even less with fields that actually have licensing requirements (such as medicine or the law)–there is a role in our society called “serious amateur chef.”

I don’t think very many people who describe themselves this way are at anything like your level (for those who don’t know Jon, we’re talking about a level of seriousness and sophistication that is “amateurish” only when compared with that of ua tiny handful of professionals at the very top of their field), but people who, to a lesser or greater extent, devote themselves to cooking without expecting financial compensation or recognition by the professional community are not terribly hard to find, and I don’t *think*–although in fairness, I don’t know–that they’re automatically looked down upon by the professional community. This is in contrast to fields where amateurs really are more or less automatically looked down upon or where amateur practice is actually illegal (again, see medicine, or law).

I’m also fascinated by your theory that maybe you didn’t enter into cooking professionally precisely because you were *too* close to it. There’s something in that that resonates with me. “Follow your passion” is advice that’s repeated so often it has become a platitude, but like lots of platitudes, maybe it’s not only truistic but untrue. Perhaps it’s possible to be so passionate about one’s work that the relationship becomes an unhealthy one–not simply in the trite sense of workaholism but in the sense of a nearly–or even actually–unbearable feeling of responsibility, or a similarly unbearable dependence between one’s work and one’s sense of worth. I used to think of philosophy as an almost holy undertaking–perhaps I should have regarded that as a warning sign right there. Thinking of something that way is likely to make your relationship with it quite frought.

I guess I don’t consider myself a “failed” chef because I never really tried, or never got far enough along that path that leaving it was costly in the way you describe. But I do wonder sometimes why I didn’t pursue it. My standard answer — that it was the best job I ever had except for the low pay, long hours, and appalling working conditions — is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. I often wish I’d gone for it, or at least gone a little further…

For me, now, being a professional philosopher lacks the passionate commitment that cooking had, and sometimes still has for me. I enjoy my research, and sometimes I’m even excited by it, but I have trouble feeling connected to it. It’s too individual, too cut off. When I went back to it, I did so because it was convenient and easy for me to do so, not because I really loved it and missed it. So now I don’t know. I miss being involved in something that I’m passionate about — that I can say “this is only worth doing if it is worth doing well, with all your heart, with an eye towards being the best.” I don’t feel that way about philosophy. I do feel that way about cooking professionally. But perhaps that’s the reason I didn’t want to do it — perhaps I didn’t want that level of commitment and responsibility.

Hmm… I’ve got to run now, but I’ll come back to this…

jk