brobot-thoughts

[brobot-thoughts]

Journal 2: Being Myself

I don’t know if anyone else has problems with this, but I grew up doing my best to suppress my feelings. From both personal experience and what others have told me, this is a very bad decision. Before I get into my feelings about being myself, I’d like to give a little exposition.

There’s a social skills book out there called Wired That Way. It’s an update to another book called Personality Plus. Both books contain a simple personality test that has you choose which words best describe you, then you refer back to a cheat sheet at the end to identify your primary and secondary personality traits. They call these traits “temperaments,” a tern used in various other, very similar tests. My personality is described as a “Peaceful Phlegmatic with Perfect Melancholy” (or as another test calls it: green with blue). This defines me as an introvert with a large apathetic streak, but also a perfectionist with either a highly technical or deeply artistic brain that bears a stubborn, intense passion for certain things. 

I was the only boy in my family besides my dad. Having more than one older sister means I’d likely be outnumbered in most “family decisions,” so I quickly learned that my opinion didn’t count. There was also the factor that I have “Helicopter Parents” that try to run my life even while I’m hundreds of miles away. I rarely got the chance to make a decision so I didn’t. The impressive part is that I didn’t really rebel either; I just sank into my video games and tried to live in a world where people were free and could make their own decisions that would eventually change the world, but even that was laid out for me. (I would mention a few games that helped me learn more about life at this point, but that wouldn’t add much to the post).

My first real choice in life was deciding to go out for a sport. My parents acknowledged it as a good idea until they realized that I didn’t have a set schedule anymore. That tore them to shreds. I loved the time away from my family, the time with people other than my stifling parents or my malicious sister (all but one had moved out by my freshman year of high school). It was at this point that I started being extremely dissatisfied with my parents, so I picked up more extracurriculars and did my best to stay away from home. I never turned to drugs or alcohol; that wasn’t a choice in my head and it still isn’t. The problems came to a head my sophomore year when I tried to commit suicide. Obviously, I failed, but my parents decided to back off. They told me they didn’t trust me, but I was still able to continue my extracurriculars so that I could get into a good college. After that point, I started making more of my own decisions, but since I didn’t have the emotional base, I made them primarily on a Utilitarian basis.

Two years later, I head to a military school (one of the big three). It was here that I was finally confronted with my inhumane ability to make decisions. I could make basic decisions for myself, but I drowned myself in work to avoid potential distractions: standing watch, tutoring my classmates and underclassmen, and spending extra time working out so I might try to get a SpecOps appointment at graduation (that’s a different story altogether). People would always ask why I never went out, why I work so much, why I didn’t try and party, or why I never tried breaking the rules. For me: it was because none of those things solved any of my problems (at least, that I acknowledged); they were just in the way of my progress. These problems would arise during my sophomore year where I would have a series of catastrophic decisions based on me not being mature enough to handle all of the emotions I was told I could feel.

So, junior year of college starts at a new school and I see people I never expected to see again. This was very unfortunate, but I made a new group of “friends” that I spent time with and started working. As always, I drowned myself in work so that I wouldn’t have to think about things and I’d always have an excuse to remove myself from distractions (I didn’t have a day off from work between my return to Nebraska the summer after my sophomore year until I flew up to my current company’s headquarters the day before my orientation). I ended up repeating the cycle: shutting myself out from the world by keeping myself overly preoccupied with work. This came to be a real problem as I never really let my feelings/emotions develop. I’ve done some crazy, stupid things in letting my emotions run because I had no idea how to control them, and every time I had one of those events I’d shut down again. Despite how difficult I made life, shutting down made things somewhat easier.

Now, coming back to my childhood: it wasn’t entirely true that I never had an opinion. I did try to make friends that shared interests with me growing up, but it rarely worked out. I was always the weird kid that was nice to people, but people rarely understood him. I constantly felt alienated in any and all situations because I couldn’t be myself and share my interests. I know that not everyone will like the same things I do, but I was ostracized for my interests and my quirks. After a while, I became known as the quiet, nice giant. It was actually a common conversation in middle and high school that people were nice to me primarily because I was the kid that was expected to bring a gun to school and start slaughtering people because I was “too nice” and I “never retaliated.” I’m sure other people have experienced being the “friend” people spend time with at school, but will never invite over or out for anything. I wouldn’t have been able to join, but that was me too.

So now in modern day, I don’t tell people what music I like, that I play video games, that I love exploring the world of culinary sciences, or even that I like things like animated shows and kids movies. This feeling of alienation has haunted me from childhood, and it’s partially because I’m afraid to be ostracized by people for my interests. Even at my job, I once let slip that I like to cook and that I made something on a catering menu myself and it led to a few weeks of jokes about me being a good wife. and the reason I don’t go out is because I’m constantly cooking in my apartment. I know I should be emotionally stronger than this, but opening old scars isn’t the easiest would to get over.

So  thanks for reading today’s thought. 

[brobot-thoughts]

First Journal: Meal Prep

I think about food a lot. It probably isn’t the same way other people think about food, but I do think about my cooking and ways to evolve and adapt what I do to prepare better-tasting meals. Since the majority of my cooking revolves around meal prep (what with working 70+ hours a week), my current challenge is to create dishes that can retain flavor and moisture when being stored for up to a week.

In my experiments, I’ve tried chicken chili with rice, teriyaki chicken with rice, teriyaki pork with rice, sloppy joes with rice, Italian chicken and noodles, BBQ pulled pork with rice, BBQ chicken wraps (with rice and cheese), BBQ chicken wraps, and two kinds of egg breakfast wraps (one American theme and one Italian theme). In the dishes above (except the wraps), I tried storing meals as half-and-half: side-by-side or top half and bottom half. The wraps are always made and stored in pairs.

I’ve found rice isn’t the best item to add for meal prep unless you have something else that can lend moisture to it during reheating. White rice seemed to retain more moisture and accept more flavor, but brown rice is the healthier option and the flavor difference wasn’t too great. In all of the dishes with rice, the sloppy joes were the most successful at retaining flavor and moisture for up to a week, but that’s probably because the sauce is thinner and a bit greasier. The chili came in second place, but part of that was because I could add the rice to the chili itself instead of having the two take up halves of the container. With the teriyaki options, I’ve found that all of the moisture goes to the rice despite my attempts at increasing moisture content (more oil in the teriyaki sauce, more honey, adding minced white onion, decreasing soy sauce). While the dish still smells and tastes good, I end up with chicken/pork jerky, dehydrated vegetables with teriyaki flavor, and teriyaki rice.

Following these attempts, I tried a meal prep service to see what they did for their food. 20 meals later, the only thing I learned was that wraps can retain moisture very well. As an added bonus, I now also had 20 containers to help me portion my meals. So the experimentation with wraps began...

I first made a BBQ chicken wrap with rice and cheese. It was great, but the BBQ flavor was heavily subdued and I didn’t put enough cheese inside. The next time around, I had run out of rice so I didn’t both trying to make any and just went with the meat and cheese. I noticed that the wrap had considerably more moisture, the tortilla was soft and everything was warm throughout; even the smoked cheddar I had shredded was smoothly melted around the BBQ mix. The only problem I have now is the higher moisture content; I’m working on various levels of draining to see how this affects the post-reheat moisture levels, but I only make these wraps every two weeks.

The breakfast egg wraps have been a different story. At one point in my meal prep career, I just made eggs (with various ingredients) and threw those in a container to eat the next day. I took a few notes from those old books and tried that with pretty good results. My American style eggs tend to be higher moisture than my Italian style, but that could be due to the fact that I don’t try to drain those ingredients. I also noted that sharp cheddar is much more runny and moist than my parmesan/romano mix; the latter seems to turn itself into a dry, stringy consistency while the former likes to run. Either way, both are successes among my friends as standalone dishes.

I might try to make a frittata, slice it into logs, and wrap that to see if it works. I also need to start making my own BBQ sauce and possibly even a Buffalo-Ranch sauce. The world of cooking is full of mysteries and experimentation and it’s the most exciting thing I get to experience on a regular basis. I’m grateful for the TV show Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma (食戟のソーマ) for showing me that the world of food and cooking is much more advanced and expansive than the limited experiences I’ve had as a kid and a broke college student.

[brobot-thoughts]

Preliminary Thoughts

As my title and description state, I’ve been quiet for most of my life. This first post will give a glimpse of who I am (at this point in time) and a small smidgen of what life is and was for me.

First, I’m currently 24 years old. I’m of mixed race background and was raised in a small city in Nebraska (USA). I work as an engineer for 70 hours a week and that doesn’t include commute, night calls, and work from home. I was forced out of my first college and finished my education at the second. I was the 4.0+ student with extracurriculars that spent college with two to three jobs, a full-time schedule, and donating plasma to help keep down debts and pay life expenses.

I’m an introvert with social skills despite my upbringing. (Fun fact: in two different MBTI’s I’ve been identified as an ISTP and INTJ). I’m homo-romantic and gray asexual (homosexual) and I’m out to friends back home but not to coworkers. (For those of you that don’t know the precise terminology used in the previous sentence: I’m gay, but I rarely care about sex). I avoid alcohol, drugs, and smoking. The gym and the kitchen are my two happy places, especially if I can work towards a goal with someone else in either place. I love sleep, but don’t try hard enough to fulfill my sleep schedule.

There’s always more to someone’s story and I’m not the kind of person that lets my thoughts stay shallow. You might read more about any of the above information in a future post, but don’t worry too much about this; it’s just the ramblings of someone that wants to vent. Don’t expect my writing to make too much sense or to be too thorough all at once because my brain functions oddly in that it rarely has a complete thought all at once; things will continue to pop up as I write or as days go on.

Thank you for reading.