Down on the farmstead…a happy Joe in 2012, on leave from his full-time job at The Washington Post.
Wondering how to transition from a blog whose subject no longer thrills you? Looking for a career change or a way to recharge? Joe Yonan understands the positive power of change and has accomplished many shifts in his career.
The award-winning Food and Travel editor of The Washington Post spent 2012 in North Berwick, Maine, on leave from the Post to learn about growing food and homesteading from his sister and brother-in-law.
Earlier, he started the Post’s Weeknight Vegetarian column. There was a big to do, since people assume newspaper food writers are omnivores. Now he’s writing about growing food on his 150-square-foot urban front yard, in addition to managing the food and travel sections of the paper.
And happily, speaking of more change, his two cookbooks, Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One, and Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook are a little less relevant now, since he’s in a relationship.
I heard Joe speak on change while at the International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC), and I wanted to follow up. So many of us become experts in a subject and then want to expand or move in another direction, but worrying about the consequences keeps us treading water:
Q. How do you know when it’s time for a change?
A. For the homesteading in Maine, I had this feeling that something had to change, more of a primal sense of necessity. My dog had just died and I couldn’t stand to be at home. My community garden closed. The newsroom had been through financial difficulties and I was out of fresh ideas for how to do more with less.
A way to look at things differently just hit me. I’d gone to my sister and brother-in-law’s place for years. It was always a source of inspiration for me, it just seemed like I had to do it.
When I asked the Post if I could have the year off, they could tell if they said no I was going to quit.
Q. How hard is it to follow your intuition?
A. It gets easier as you get older. I’m 49. Experience reinforces intuition, so the more times you regret you’ve not listened to it, then the more open you are to listening the next time around. It’s a matter of trusting yourself.
Q. When you announced your year off, did your colleagues support you? How important was that to you?
A. My supervisor guaranteed my job when I came back. My colleagues were jealous. I was walking away from my salary for a year, so that was courageous. Other journalists were awestruck and couldn’t believe that I asked and that The Post granted me a year. They thought ‘I wish I could do something like that.’ I think people can! You just have to figure out how to set it up.
Joe’s cookbook has mostly vegetarian recipes, without announcing it.
Q. Let’s talk about the vegetarian column. Were there road signs that it was time to change?
A. My cooking and diet shifted. I realized I wasn’t cooking meat. I kept buying this beautiful humanely raised meat and then waiting for a dinner party to cook it. My first cookbook was two-thirds vegetarian.
My Cooking for One column became vegetarian and my colleagues noticed, but I was afraid to pull the trigger (to change the title). I was afraid of the reaction, that people were going to dismiss me as a serious food journalist because I admitted that I wasn’t eating meat anymore.
Then I started shifting in my restaurant meals too. That was the last thing to go. I knew my next cookbook was going to be vegetarian, but I was still not telling anyone I was a vegetarian. I forecasted it in 12 consecutive columns, using words like ‘mostly not eating meat.’
When I came out as a vegetarian, friends were surprised. People just didn’t want to believe it was a real shift.
Q. Having taken these career risks, what is the upside?
A. The big upside is my energy and creativity were re-animated. I also had a clearer focus, and a lot came from the year in Maine and not multitasking with social media and email all the time. Instead, I spent a good part of every day on single-minded gardening tasks like shoveling manure and breaking up mineral dust.
To be in your body and not in your head was important to me for a while. Not that there aren’t complexities, but to concentrate on covering tomatoes with manure instead of ‘Does this restaurant deserve this feature story?’ was refreshing. It helped me be clear and more efficient when I got back, gave me new ways to look at stories, and gave me new creativity around agricultural issues.
Q. Do you feel that you would have kept growing and learning if you didn’t make this changes and still stayed at your job?
A. In some ways, yes. I wasn’t so stagnated that nothing was happening at all. Since I came back, the Jeff Bezos acquisition was happening and there was new energy and resources. I was primed for it and was able to ride into the wave of better morale and energy.
Then I bought a townhouse with a small front yard, where I built six raised beds. It has been a source of such joy for me since I came back, that and writing the column on urban gardening. I’m thinking of taking a class on master gardening this winter. Who knows what that will lead to? It involves a lot of community service work and I’ve been feeling a pull towards that.
Q. Let’s talk about why people don’t change. Do you think people become complacent because they have worked so hard to get where they are?
A. Yes, that’s definitely part of it. I was working at the Boston Globe on the night copy desk. I had a flash of inspiration that my true passion was food. I went to culinary school during the day, an intensive year-long program. There was a voice in my head saying ‘you’ve paid your dues in journalism, why are you making this change?’ I didn’t want to waste all that. I had thought about opening a bakery.
But none of it was a waste. I decided to turn my journalism to food. Everything in my life up to that point informed my next decision.
It’s so easy to keep doing whatever you’re doing, because you know how each day is going to go. The hardest thing is to make a change, especially if the change is just making yourself happy. You don’t know whether people are going to accept you.
Ultimately, you have to be true to yourself and not make any apologies and excuses about it. So if you’ve been writing for 10 years about vegan slow cooking and your doctor says you’re low on iron, and you start craving meat, then you should do what you need to do. You have to articulate the shift in a way that seems authentic to people. The ex-wife of Morgan Spurlock, Alex Jamison, stopped being vegan and caught a lot of flack for it. But I’m sure she’s happy eating what she wants to eat.
Q. What advice would you give people who are afraid to make a change?
Joe bought this book and started the visualizations, then realized his fate immediately.
A. When I was having this career crisis and I felt stuck, I got What Color is My Parachute? I read the exercises about a series of visualizations: Imagine yourself working. Imagine yourself happy. Imagine yourself working and happy. Then identify what other things are in that vision and what that clues you into.
I got ready to do the first visualization, and closed my eyes, and I went ‘Oh it’s food.’ It was like a lightening bolt! All I wanted to talk about was food. Then I had to decide what it means, and I had to get a culinary education.
I just allowed myself to open up and pay attention to possibilities.
For others not in a crisis, try to think about experiences you’ve had that are particularly meaningful, that satisfy a passion, that feel important, where you’ve felt really fired up, passionate and engaged. What does it mean? Work backwards from that into how it would translate into a change.
* * *
I’d love to hear from you. Are you wondering about changing your focus, but not sure how you’ll get there? Do you find it hard to stick with one subject when you have other interests?
Thanks Dianne and Joe for such an inspiring Q&A. I chuckled when I got to “What Color is Your Parachute” because it helped me (so many years ago) to set sail on the sea of food journalism.
You are welcome, Sharon. I laughed when he said that! The book is almost a cliche, but there’s no denying its value over many years.
Such a timely article Dianne. My heart skipped a beat when I read Joe describing how when his dog died he didn’t want to be at home. I had to say good-bye to my dog just two days ago and I can completely relate to not wanting to be at home where all the memories are. My only child is away at school and now the house is truly empty. I have no obligations or anything standing in the way of making a much needed and over-due change in my life. I have been writing a baking blog for three years, and although I derive much joy from it, I’d like something more. The hard part is knowing what to do next. I’ve always believed that when the timing is right, the right opportunity will present itself. I think it’s time to read ‘What Color is Your Parachute’.
So sorry about your doggie, Mary. I hope you will figure out a new path soon, whatever it might be, or sometimes you need to do something else in addition, not instead of. Best of luck.
My husband and I are the King and Queen of reinventing ourselves and we do it in a country that frowns upon it. But I agree that we have to take the chance, shake things up, in order to find our own happiness as well as find what we really love, what we are good at and what best suits us. I have changed careers several times, finally discovering writing… and that first step, the first submission was scary; I remember sitting down and saying to myself “What are you waiting for? It is now or you might as well give up!”. Now I am at another starting over point with the hotel but oddly enough, I find becoming a hotel manager is easier than changing my blog! I desperately have needed to change the course of Life’s a Feast for ages and just haven’t found the courage. This interview with Joe has in an odd way encouraged me to finally take that step. If we get to a point where things have become stagnant then that is the time to kick it up and make some changes.
Definitely Jamie! Change your blog if it makes you happier. Like you, I have reinvented myself several times, but mostly because I want to try new things, and they usually fit in somehow with what I’m already doing. But a blog is a reflection of the self, and we have spent time making into something we share and identify with, so changing it seems like a bigger deal.
Thanks for the great insight, Joe and wonderful questions Dianne.
This is applicable on many levels in life and to many people who struggles to find what is next. Going through a change currently, questioning myself on the same stuff, wondering how to navigate career choices and I felt the same thing deciding on a change: I have spent so many years on building an engineering career, how do I switch to NGO and waste all those years? But nothing is wasted and there is also an opportunity cost to every minute you are not making that change.
Actually, I am also thinking about not doing food blogging anymore and changing areas and trying new hobbies. There is so much out there and in terms of hobbies for example, if something becomes an obligation and stress source rather than pleasure, we should not wait a second to walk away from it.
I’m with you, Ilke. Nothing is wasted when we shift to something else, because we are always something to learn in the new thing. And yes, you are allowed to quit food blogging if it no longer gives you pleasure. You can keep it online as a time and place memory, and you can go back to it if you choose.
I too have lost interest posting on my blog…and need to find another focus….I am going to have to re-read your post..and also get my husbands copy of the “What Color Is My Parachute”….I have recently seen it going into one of the moving boxes…..or, maybe it is writing the book I have been wanting to do for a long time…
Sometimes adding a new activity gives me so much pleasure that it re-energizes me, and that way I don’t have to stop doing a task that I thought I had lost interest in. But sometimes it’s time to stop. I hope the book will help you figure out what is next, Maja.
Funny how change is so inevitable all around us, but changing ourselves feels like such a stretch. Even tweaking what we write about! This is an encouraging q and a and thread, too. I do find it very difficult to feel the freedom to write in a variety of genres and areas, and spend maybe too much time cognitively creating the continuous line throughout it all instead of just digging in the dirt, doing the work itself and allowing for continuity and connections to organically arise. Good thoughts. To work!
It’s true! We are often terrified of even the smallest change for no good reason. But when it keeps us from growing, well, we need to look at that.
What a terrific success story about change. Joe has the perfect attitude. And he is right, when you trust yourself, change is a whole lot easier.
Whether change is necessary, pulling at you or something out of your control, we should remember that life is nothing but change so if we are smart about it, and embrace it no matter what the circumstances, we can find change is refreshing and necessary.
I certainly dragged my feet about moving from Florida to Kentucky (the ultimate change-moving), and we had to move (to follow the money) but I found since the move, I am more focused, volunteer more, and I am closer to nature developing my photography skills. These little things make me happy, because no matter what I have in Kentucky, I miss my friends and the ocean like nothing else.
Oh and I love What Color is Your Parachute-such classic and timeless info. Visualization is key and works for many things like losing five pounds, writing a book or learning to play the flute.
That is a tall order to embrace change no matter what. What a big shift for you, to move from Florida to Kentucky. Sounds like you are making the best of it, Maureen.
Yes, I have used visualization techniques as well and find them very effective.
The title of this popped out at me when I was going through my emails today, and I read it immediately–I have not listened to my intuition twice this year and it has cost me (I literally just posted this to Facebook before I saw this blog post!). If we don’t change, we die, creatively and otherwise. I really love this Q&A. My writing shifted from music and arts to travel to food to where I am now, which is food, travel and some yoga thrown in. I’m about to re-do my entire website with a brand/theme in mind, and it’s personal and scary but exciting and feels 100 percent right. Thanks for this post, Dianne. Seems like it has offered some wind to our collective sails.
Hey Carrie, this sounds cool: food, travel and yoga. Who wouldn’t want a life like that? I hope your redesign goes well, and that maybe after reading this post, it won’t seem so daunting.
The idea of change scaring the pants of you came in full and fierce this year when we changed the name of our blog. However, the relief was great and the change itself wasn’t nearly as hard as we thought it might be.
While we dipped in our page views for a while, it is slowly building itself back up to close to the old name, and we have a new and refreshed focus on what we do. It was well worth the effort and fright.
Listen to that little voice that tells you things aren’t right, it will be all right!
So true, Alison. It seems so scary at the time, but it turns out all right at the end. I have that problem myself when starting a big project. Fear of the unknown can be stressful, so it’s good to keep the end in mind when taking the plunge.
I recently told a friend an anecdote I’d heard about the Jordan river and how when written down it seems like a placid place but then seeing it during flood season shows how tumultuous the waters really can be. I mentioned how I had been thinking of crossing the river– she stopped me and said, “it sounds like you already are in it.” I have described this year as living in my own rock opera and at times the transition and risk-taking is scary, but it’s reaping such incredible things in my life and health. Even when the waters rise, I am on a firm foundation. Even as I continue pursuing that which brings joy, allows me to exercise my passions and help others in the process, I find it mostly exhilarating. And, I appreciate hearing Joe’s comments so much. They resonate well.
Wonderful. I’m glad the ride is mostly exhilarating!
Wonderful interview, Diane! Change is indeed scary, but it’s very crucial for our development. One thing I learned and live by is “Never say never”. We always change and we should definitely be open to it.
Easier said than done, at least for me, Shinee. I have to be ready for change. Sometimes that takes a while. If you are good at jumping in, you are fearless!
Agreed! It’s not easy, that’s for sure. At least, I try to be open to it. 🙂
I’m getting ready to quit a job I’ve held securely for nearly 10 years but I can’t take sitting all day any longer. I’m not meant for that, esp. since my beautiful girl is in daycare and she is miserable as well. I’m planning my escape for March, just in time for gardening and moving on…it’s quite scary to think about though…
It does sound scary, but all big decisions are scary, I guess. I hope it goes well, Sonja!