Little kids, especially toddlers, are fearless. They run around with an insatiable curiosity of the world that drives them to seek out bright stoves, dark electrical sockets, and climb everything in sight. It's not until their little blank slates start to fill with experiences of pain, embarrassment, fright, and ridicule that fear of the unknown starts to develop and slowly snuffs out any further attempts at doing something bold, foreign, or new.
It is really hard to step out of the comfort zone. Even though I moved back to where I grew up (more or less), most of my close friends with whom I grew up are either elsewhere geographically. Or we've grown apart since high school/college and have become different people with different priorities. It's been a challenge for me to have meaningful personal experiences outside of work and meet new people who share similar interests. Work and working long hours became my comfort zone. Indeed, for most people in a new city, work seems to starts off as the most common comfort zone - it's convenient and easy to meet people through coworkers and their friends. In my case, because I advanced quickly, my peers at work are not in the same place in life as I am - they're all older and have kids. While I get along great with them and we'll occasionally hang out, it's not the same and I can't meet people the same way my friends in other cities do.
And because I'm the kind of person who hates inaction in the face of discontent (Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results), I did something about it. A few months ago, I signed up for a beach volleyball class on a complete whim because it sounded like a fun activity and potentially a way to meet people. It was hard to go that first week - I wasn't sure if I was going to the right place or if I was wearing the right thing... but it ended up being a great experience for me and a reassurance that I can still be like a little kid and fearlessly explore the unknown.
In many ways, this 10,000 hour project is all about stepping out of my comfort zone. While I have no problem going somewhere foreign or talking to strangers, work has long been my security blanket that I've taken around with me everywhere all the time.
Today is the beginning of learning how to fold the blanket and put it away at night and on weekends: I just booked two back to back trips with the main goal of getting some serious hours in on this project. 8 consecutive business days and the surrounding weekends off and spent traveling... I'm vacillating between excitement and panic at taking this much time off. But mostly excitement that I'll have plenty of interesting things to photograph. First stop will be up to the Bay Area and doing a multitude of touristy things I never got around to when I actually lived there and then it'll be off to Louisville to visit a sorority sister, drink my way down the Bourbon Trail, and check out Churchill Downs.
And as a birthday gift to myself and in preparation for this trip, a new camera lens with a wide aperture for shooting in low light that arrived a day earlier than expected from the magic that is Amazon Prime:
And of course I had to play around with it, so I took a pictures around my apartment this evening, including the yummy tequila lime chicken wings & drumsticks I made in a slow cooker, which were fall-off-the-bone tender and juicy:
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| Wings & drums in a crockpot - brilliant! |
Tequila Lime Crockpot Wings & Drums:
Tools: Slow cooker, some mixing bowls or a large ziplock bag, mixing utensils
1 - 2lbs of wings & drumsticks
4 - 5 Limes
1.5 - 3 oz Tequila
0.5 cup Ginger Ale
Olive oil to coat
Salt, pepper, garlic power, cayenne powder, chili powder, cumin, paprika to taste
- Coat chicken lightly in olive oil. Toss and then coat with the dry seasonings in a bowl or in the ziplock bag. Marinating for a few hours is probably a good idea, but I didn't today and it still came out delicious.
- Juice the limes into a mixing bowl. Pro-tip: microwave them for ~10 seconds to get the most juice out of them. Mix in tequila and ginger ale.
- Place the chicken in the slow cooker and pour the tequila lime mixture over.
- Cook on high for ~2.5 hours or until cooked through.
Hours to Date: 18