I could see brown rice porridge in the pot. I wasn\u2019t trying to make porridge, and I don\u2019t remember using brown rice. It tasted like sludge, and there wasn\u2019t enough community Sriracha hot sauce left over to mask the flavor. Rookie mistake, sure \u2013 but at the moment I thought it was unforgivable because it wasn\u2019t my rice to burn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll still eat it,\u201d say the unfortunate souls who agreed to let me cook dinner. I would eat it too of course, but this was embarrassing. I promised two new friends that I would cook for them, eager to show off what I had learned after hovering over their shoulders as they made stir-fry the past couple days. \u201cAre you sure about cooking dinner?\u201d \u201cOh, absolutely!\u201d Two hours later they were greeted with so many apologies that the word \u201csorry\u201d lost its meaning. It was a simple pot of rice, and yet, I still took it personally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWesley, don\u2019t be sad. We weren\u2019t expecting much anyway, and I\u2019m happy that you made us dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blunt truth and gentle encouragement \u2013 more comforting than sugar-coated compliments and forced \u201cmmmm\u201ds and nods of approval will ever be.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t even that focused on whatever I was cooking anyway \u2013 they had more pressing concerns, like not being homeless for the year after realizing that the landlord had tried to scam them by advertising apartments already filled. And yet, for all that time (or at least for that hour I was cooking), I had felt that the whole world revolved around me, what I felt, and whatever I burned inside that pot. Me, me, me. Now that\u2019s<\/i> embarrassing.<\/p>\n
This example is a tad melodramatic, but you get the point.<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
Say a loved one cooked something shitty, and everybody in the room knows it. Saying it isn’t bad won’t make the food taste any better, and it won’t preserve their precious ego either.<\/p>\n
So the best thing you can do in a situation like this? Tell them to cook again the next day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I could see brown rice porridge in the pot. I wasn\u2019t trying to make porridge, and I don\u2019t remember using brown rice. It tasted like sludge, and there wasn\u2019t enough community Sriracha hot sauce left over to mask the flavor. Rookie mistake, sure \u2013 but at the moment I thought it was unforgivable because it … Continue reading “Burning what you touch, or self-pity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3MSpn-3e","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}