What’s Your Jam?

I read a lot, a lot. I used to write a lot. Where I always saw reading as a way of engaging the brain — constantly ingesting new information and stimulating its ability to imagine things beyond the visible — writing was a way of translating and focusing the big mess of neurons into a tight medium. As life, the operational part, starts demanding its dues, this — the writing part — first took a step back, but then started taking weird turns. Because creativity needs to get out one way or the other.

First, I decided that cooking a new dish everyday was a goal that I had to set myself. Why? Because I was a bad cook before, with no sense of what flavors would go together. Also because after a year of living as a vegetarian, I noticed that paying attention to food, made me enlarge my spectrum beyond the standard 3-component dish. So there was this drive to learn. As I progressed, I noticed that I could follow complex recipes quite well, and even do multiple at once, creating — on my best days — multi-course meals or whole children’s party bake feasts.

All of this had professional benefits as well, perhaps only by bringing to consciousness certain strengths I had. I should say, that I’ve had a very colorful career, that took me from working in a factory — to fund my studies abroad — to a stint at what I perceived to be one of the most innovative companies in the world, to accelerating my learning through working in and at startups, to climbing a corporate ladder, to where is stand today — something I will disclose later and still feels like the first half of a journey.

Back to cooking. As I grew used to making these recipes, which can be seen as sometimes long sequences of logic, it became much easier to learn complex processes at work. And to build upon them, teach them or implement complex sequences. Now these, I’m not always at liberty to write about here, but I will share if I can.

If you’ve taken the time to read this, what’s my jam is about passions that I’m pursuing, whether it’s something as small or large. I have a small idea what I’ll write next, but will let it grow — or die — organically.

Thank your for reading.

Vincent