The Recipe for My Awesome Sauce

Allow me to share with you the recipe for my Awesome Sauce.

This recipe has been cultivated over 37 years through trial-and-error. It's not for everyone. It's an acquired taste. But it's one I've learned to love.

And also, it is not food. It's not edible. It's not literally a sauce, you guys.

My Awesome Sauce recipe describes the components that make up ME, wholly, fully, as I stand today. There are sweet parts and bitter, and no one ever knows whether it's best served hot or cold.

But, take it or leave it, 'cause it's what's on the menu.

Last week I just felt so.... low.

I saw people in my life who seem to have so much more.

I saw happiness and ease, while I felt like I was drowning.

I felt myself spiraling into self-pity and self-deprecation, thinking of all the things I don't have or can't do. I felt inept.

In the past, a "gratitude bomb" would help. I'd list every thing I could conjure even the tiniest speck of gratitude for, including so many things I take for granted-"I can see!" "I have a home. With central air!" "My work is meaningful." "I get to eat three meals, plus more, EVERY day!" But last week it felt too trite, almost insincere- I couldn't really generate gratitude for my lunch of canned tuna and baby carrots, when I what I really wanted was a hot meal prepared by someone else. Not my proudest moment, that baby-tantrum-whiny moment.

But, hey. I'm being honest.

So at the end of one of those tough days, I found myself mentally going over all I had to do, couldn't do, felt compelled to do and all that jazz, when slowly a list of things I had done, was doing, and doing WELL started intruding on these thoughts. Instead of wrestling with them, I wrote them down.

What I saw was astounding.

There was even a page two.

(See the arrow in the bottom right-hand corner, so I could remind my future self that the list doesn't end there?)

Is this possible? There seemed to be a LOT that I was doing well! Like, at home, as a parent, in my work in nonprofit, my relationships, my health, my volunteer roles.... I mean, I'm KILLING IT!!!

But tonight, my Awesome Sauce recipe needs an adjustment. Because yeah, I'm DOING a lot of stuff these days, but my sauce is awesome even when I'm not.

Last Sunday, lying in bed all day?

Awesome.

Tomorrow night, planned vegetating with NO tasks to do after work?

Still awesome.

It does feel great to get shit done, and for me it helped to acknowledge the things I was accomplishing in the midst of near-total overhwhelm.

But my new-and-improved recipe will include that ways that I am BEING me, not just what I'm doing.

Stay tuned. And write your own recipe in the mean time. I'd love to see it.