This Could Be The End.

There are always thousands of reasons as to why chefs quit. Some see it as a weakness but I just like to think of it as a change in desire. You do it because you love it. When you don't love it anymore, you don't do it. Simple.

But it can also be pressure. Allergy. Family. Age. Mental breakdown. Seachange.

Even the sudden inability to multitask.

A chef is not just a chef. A chef is a matrix of occupations. You must be able to watch over ten pans simmering away, to the confit trout in the oven, whilst simultaneously acting therapist to your sous chef who just caught his girlfriend cheating on him with the mailman who is also your second cousin and not to mention doing all this while pretending to be a plumber as you unclog the dishwasher with the aid of a flexible spatula and your soup ladle.

That aside. At 22 years old this could be the end for me.

We talk of fancy tools. But it's all talk. Sous vide machines, razor sharp knives, our wit, our comedic effect, our passion...

But really, we have two best friends.

The first being your Sous Chef.

Guarantee: stuck in the city, drunk at 3am with no cash and someone else's vomit on your singular shoe? I'm not calling my parents or my partner. I'm calling the guy who puts up with me day in and day out through every mood, who just like 8:15 on a Friday, is at the ready and prepared to pull me out of the shit.

And the other?

Well the other best friend is your back. You can't do what we do, without the back of a Roman warrior.

And the other day I truly fucked mine. I gave my boyfriend a slightly too enthusiastic hug and I heard it. The bit below my shoulder blade.

So I see the physio tomorrow and the specialist on Monday and I am really scared of what they'll say.

Medical experts have never understood what we do. I once got told to take four days off work when I had the sniffles. I only went to the GP in the first place to get the cool painkillers not the shit ones.

Hunnybunch, unless I'm bleeding out of my eyeballs or chundering into my Jerusalem Artichoke soup so that it is ACTUAL chunder and not just soup that looks like it...

I'm going to work.

So here it goes. I could be returning to work with a clean slate and a very expensive bill and even more expensive reference for 'The Best' deep muscle therapist in Melbourne, or you could see me sitting down on an ALDI stool at the register at age 34.

Wish me luck. I am not ready to give up yet.