Opening My Own Place...You Are Now Leaving The Comfort Zone.

Every great restaurant story has a really great "how I got the doors open" story that precedes it.  Each and every single one.  I am not talking about those stories where someone is given a restaurant or inherits a place.  I am talking about the ones where someone looked at a bare patch of land and constructed something there, and put their lives on the line, or at the very least, their homes.  If the place was hard to get open, there is a story behind it.

When we thought about the kind of place we wanted to see, we (my fiance and I) , thought about our values and the things that we wanted to see out in the world.  Standard operating procedure is to look for something that is missing that you think will make money and put it out there.  There are plenty of things that are missing in the world, and no shortage of people who think they have what it takes.  When we looked at what we wanted to do, we paused to wonder if this was even a ludicrous idea and to consider what we were getting into.

Was this something that we should wait to do?  Were we in a position to do this and still live the lives that we wanted for ourselves.  Then (and this is why I love the man) we reached a conclusion simultaneously that seemed to say it all, "Why not?"

We didn't say it in the #yolo sense, but in the sense that because we are committed to the values that we are going to instill in this place, to not do it and to not do it the way that we wanted to would have meant a somewhat dishonest life.  So it became do we spend the next 20 years hating our jobs and going to and from work only to be miserable and complain about it, or do we spend that time living out values, instilling those values in our children, and generally living with the decisions that we have made.  Essentially we asked if we should be corporate miserable with flashes of happiness throughout the years in vacations or be independent with moments of worry but being able to spend the day with our child teaching her things, being able to leave whenever we want or need, etc.

Each of us come from self made parents who have achieved some success in their lives and each of us then went to college and began to work for massive corporations just like our parents wanted us to.  If I could believe that there was any flaw to my parents methodology for raising me, it's that they didn't want us to do what they did and that didn't encourage us to take those leaps.  Regardless of how we got here, here we are, about to take a massive leap and walking fiercely out of the comfort zone.

This weekend, I am going up to Shasta, CA to look at cows.  I have butchered whole cows and pigs and I have seen them live, but with this new venture I will be responsible for their care and feeding.  The same thing goes for the chickens and the goats and the turkeys and my husband even wants to get a peacock and a peahen.  It goes without saying that when I serve something, I like to know where it comes from.  This way, I will.  Not only will I know where it comes from, I will know what went into it.  I want to know more about my food than most.

People ask me why we are taking such measures so early in the game.  Well, there is a saying that a year from now, you will wish you had started today.  I started yesterday.

Carol Jordan tweets at @9t9knives and can be reached via email at 9of9productions@gmail.com