How can I try to be a food writer when my life is falling apart?

I don’t even know if I’m trying to be a food writer, not really. I just love food. And I love writing—mostly, when I’m good at it. And the whole reason I started this Substack was to have a place to chat about the food I was eating, because all I do is eat food, and sometimes, the food is so good I want to tell the entire world about it. So I come here, to my fifty subscribers, and that feels good enough.

But I haven’t been eating a lot, lately. Or, I haven’t been eating anything glamorous. It’s been quick one-pot meals and Sweetgreen salads and, on my busiest days, a Hustle and Muscle protein smoothie from Juice Generation. My food life is not something to be romanticized right now. It hasn’t been for quite some time.

Today, at my corporate job in publishing, I realized I hadn’t posted on Substack since April. Now, that’s only, like, two months ago in real life time, but you wouldn’t believe the trajectory my life has been on in the past two months. There was depression, and then my grandpa died, and then I dealt with an extermination issue in my apartment, and then I entered the apartment-hunting hell that you are only privy to when your lease ends in the summertime in New York City. Amidst all of those bigger things, there were smaller things, too: My skin has been breaking out in hives and itchy bumps for months, and eight visits to two different dermatologists later, I still don’t know why it’s happening. One day recently, I was walking down Houston Street, and a shattered glass bottle fell from somewhere in the sky and hit the side of my head. I was literally almost van Gogh. My sourdough starter—which I renamed Georgia, because I felt like the name Adeline was cursed—died. Again.

Food hasn’t been something extravagant that I’m enjoying lately. It’s been sustenance. Something passive, a check on my to-do list. Make dinner. Eat it. Onto the next thing. I even stopped watching Last Meals. I love Last Meals.

I just don’t know how to find inspiration in food when I can’t find inspiration in my life. I don’t know how to be a food writer when I’m not eating, and I’m not writing.

It’s Thursday at 11 p.m. when I’m writing this. This weekend, I get to cook for a sixty-person party because my cousin is graduating high school (shout-out Willeum). I’m making meatballs and chicken piccata. There are six pounds of ground turkey and six pounds of chicken cutlet in my freezer right now. I hope I remember to defrost them in the morning. I hope that cooking reminds me why I love doing this work—the cooking, the eating, the writing about it all.

Because I do miss this work. I miss being excited about food and excited to write about it. I miss having something to say. I miss you all, my Substack subscribers, and I just had the inclination to tell you that.