The Butcher Doesn't Care About Your Plans
The other day a friend asked if someone were to find my journal and publish it, whether that would be a true memoir, and I replied yes, it would be true, but that truth would be humiliating. I’ve long since stopped writing a journal as if I were writing for an audience (that’s why I have this newsletter), less concerned with what people might think if they happened upon it, and more concerned with spilling my guts so that I can move on with my day. It’s messy, frenetic, poorly written, juvenile at times, narcissistic always, and exactly what it needs to be.
But also, interspersed between meditations on why I do the things I do, school-girl notes on crushes and unrealistic fantasies, there are grocery lists and dishes to cook that week. Ingredients denoted by where I’ll be buying them, days of the week assigned to certain meals. This is partly a hang up from my disordered eating days, where I would log everything I ate and write down promises to myself (“no more carbs”, “more protein”, “smaller portion sizes”) that eroded my sense of self.
Ten years on, this level of planning is less about control and punishment, and more about getting excited for the days ahead. The prospect of a roast chicken slathered in a paste of paprika, sugar, salt and pepper propels me forward to the weekend, the future smell of stock already filling up my nose. Planning a day of grocery shopping in a certain part of town literally takes me out of my flat, where I can too often spend hours motionless: sitting, reading, watching and wallowing.
Despite being an expert planner, I am not immune to the inevitability of plans falling to pieces. This is hyperbolic when it comes to the food I intend on eating; nothing terrible happens when you can only get chicken legs instead of a whole bird at the butchers, apart from it takes less time to cook and you can’t make as much stock. Hardly something to cry about.
Other unexpected turns: a cancelled trip to Paris, a disappointing piece of news and a lost wallet. Instead: a free weekend in the sun and a cold dip at the ponds; a pinched nerve that seemed to arrive between sitting down and standing up - a stark reminder of the ageing process; some time to spill my guts on the page and plan a few more meals.
There’s a line in this Maggie Rogers song: you tell me you want everything, you want it fast, but all I ever wanted is to make something fucking last. I suppose this is a refrain I repeat to myself. The tension between impatience and wanting something to never end. It’s why I plan - I want to stretch out the memory. Playing out a prequel through prep, then hold onto the feeling by penning fantasies and letting them roll out in my mind before I fall asleep. Perhaps that’s why I like the preamble. The planning phase is for the dreamer, the one with an endless imagination. Planning is just a more structured way of fantasising - offering up outcomes but with a step-by-step, tactical way of arriving there.
I am constantly planning and constantly aware that these are little unrealities that won’t necessarily unfold. And even if I plan for all the possibilities, I’ll still be somewhat disappointed, which is the curse of planning, isn’t it?
It’s a funny sort of irony in cooking. That you can be a master at prep and mise en place, follow every instruction with exact precision, yet the end result is different from what you expected. I am not someone who is good at following rules in the kitchen, so I am never truly surprised at what I end up with. I’ve stopped being disappointed and instead find ways of adjusting the end result to my taste. A pinch of salt. A squeeze of honey. More chilli or a dash of water.
The same can be said of unrealised plans. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t react to disappointments with tears or anger or despair. I send impassioned voice notes to friends or more often than not, sighing passive aggressive, self-effacing messages; but then I try to retrofit the outcome. It’s a work in process, and sometimes doesn’t work, which is why there’s always a song, a body of water, a bottle of wine, a tiny afternoon pint, a meal you know like the back of your hand, or a soft pillow to sink into until things feel a little more hopeful.