“What if who you are is not what you do?”
I've been sitting with that question for a year and change, since the layoff, since the savings started to get smaller and the calendar started to feel emptier. For most of my career, I'd have answered without thinking. What I do is who I am. The job is the self. Then the job went away, and I realized how much of me was wrapped up in it.
Early on, I tried to fix it. I did what you do: updated the portfolio, sent the resume out, took the calls. Nothing came of it. So I stopped talking and started listening. What I heard, eventually, was that my identity had been wrapped in my work and my ability to make income. Not in how God sees me. Not in who I was outside the job. Giving up that perception of myself to become who I'm meant to be has been the quiet work of this wilderness season. It's slow. It's mostly mundane. Turns out doing the work meant the daily, ordinary things, putting my hands to what God had put in front of me.
There's a Korean drama I think about a lot. It's called Late Night Restaurant. A tiny place tucked into a Seoul alley, open from midnight to seven in the morning. The owner is just called Master. He serves simple food to people coming in off the street, carrying whatever they're carrying that night. He listens. He doesn't try to fix anyone. He just makes the food and pays attention.
That's the part I keep returning to. Not the recipes, not the restaurant. The attention. Master shows up the same way every night, not with grand gestures or profound advice, but with presence and care.
I think that's the part of me the wilderness hasn't touched. The instinct to pay attention. To listen for what's actually being asked for. To make the thing that serves what the moment needs.
Whether it's a warm meal at three in the morning or a tool that understands you, we're all just trying to get through life with a little more confidence and a lot more care.
I drink a lot of coffee. Specialty coffee. Pour-overs that take three minutes to make and ruin you for every other coffee. If you ever end up in Kyoto, Kurasu is worth the walk. Asia's coffee culture is, as my kids would say, cooking.
On Sundays I run the coffee scene at my church. Ok, it's a cart. But don't let the wheels fool you: this little beast packs a two-group machine and a pro grinder, the same gear you'd find in any specialty coffee shop. Best of all, I get to inspire and teach twenty-one people how to pull a proper shot, steam milk into silk, and whisk matcha that doesn't taste like wheatgrass from one of those smoothie joints. No offense to smoothie joints.