Guide Books
some thoughts on transitional times
Please pardon this slight intermission in my origin story and recipe accompaniments while I catch my breath from one of the biggest transition weeks of my life – the closing of the bottle shop/wine bar I lovingly created from the ground up – The Exchange at Edmund’s Oast.
More on this chapter later, but for now I did think you might enjoy knowing some of the books seeing me through this change. As we all know, change is inevitable – the one constant in life. But of course, it’s easy to say such words and harder to live them.
I have experienced many, many changes throughout my life, and while I still have teary mornings and might fight transitions for a moment, I do think I have gained some perspective throughout the years and can weather the turmoil a bit better. But still, it’s not easy. And a good guide book helps!
Here are a few I have been reading religiously over the past few months! I highly recommend them for any transitional times in your own life!
I am sure that most folks around my age have at least seen this book in passing. I believe someone first gave me a copy at the end of college. Since then I have bought it innumerable times as I always seem to give my copy away! It’s by Brazilian author Paolo Coelho, and it is a fable of sorts detailing a Spanish shepherd’s search for his “Personal Legend” (or greater purpose in life).
When I picked it up this time, it was actually the same copy I had read nine years ago when I was really setting out on the wine chapter of my own journey and contemplating opening a business on my own versus other options. So, it’s quite interesting seeing the highlighted lines and notes in the margin (yes, I write in books)! While there was some overlap in my highlights there were also differences.
Here’s a fave highlight from my current reading:
“If you concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, there are stars in the heavens…Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.”
Journey to the Heart by Melody Beattie
A friend gave me this book back in the spring when I had inklings of the changes coming my way. He was in a similar transitional time and swore by it. It’s written as daily meditations, and I opened it up immediately yet found nothing resonating. Fast forward a couple of months when I announced the imminent closing of The Exchange, and suddenly nearly every passage was a solace. Since I started this book on a random day in a random month, I have chosen to simply flip open to random pages each day and read one or two of the short passages. Showing how different folks can be, my friend laughed lovingly at my approach as he chose to stick to the actual dates of each passage with a religious fervor! What can I say, I am a rebel!
Making this book even more special, I recently learned at the memorial service for a dear friend that this book was a favorite of hers as well! And we crazily shared a love for the same passage. Here it is:
“Joy is a choice – a deliberate, conscious choice. That choice is available to us each day. Our joy isn’t controlled by others or by outward circumstances. Joy comes from a deeper place, a place of security within ourselves. It’s an attitude not a transitory emotion.”
My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes that Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl
Well, if you are as food obsessed as I am then Ruth Reichl probably needs no introduction, but just in case you have missed out on her awesomeness…Reichl was a longtime restaurant critic (at the Los Angeles Times and then the New York Times). She left the newspaper world in 1999 to become editor-in-chief of Gourmet and breathed new life into the iconic food magazine. Yet in 2009, Condé Nast abruptly decided to shut down the magazine – giving their staff 24 hours to gather their belongings and vacate the building. Reichl found herself at a loss as to her path forward, and this book (part memoir/part cookbook) is the result of this soul searching time.
I have long loved Reichl’s other memoirs but had yet to read this one. I was hooked from page one. Her own thoughts on loss and transition resonated with my own transitional time. And of course all of the recipes are tempting. Leading me to thoughts like: “maybe I will finally succeed at bread baking or mastering pasta carbonara!” But mostly her lovely prose reminds me that oftentimes change pushes us to find the best version of ourselves.
P.S. I was inspired to re-read all of Reichl’s memoirs and picked up this book after listening to an interview with her on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s new podcast Wiser Than Me (which I also highly recommend checking out, especially for all the ladies reading this)!
Thanks per usual for reading, and to those of you who attended the finale party for The Exchange this past weekend – thank you – that was the most amazing happy/sad celebration. Y’all are the best!!