I read this quote a few years ago that said, “What you used to be afraid of is your comfort zone now,” and I’ve thought a lot about that since: comfort zones, living in them and breaking through them. Right now my comfort zone is a few streets in the middle of a city in Mexico that I didn’t know existed three weeks ago. My comfort zone is this little garden level apartment that really feels like home to me now. Home has become hard to define for me over the last year, or maybe easier — easier because it’s taken so many forms. It’s every place I’ve slept, everywhere I’ve unpacked.
I’m a regular at the Starbucks near me now, in Monterrey Mexico, so much so that he always has my coffee waiting for me. I go to Starbucks because it’s the only coffee shop anywhere near me, and I order the same thing every day because I’ve finally grasped how to say it — “un cafe frio vente con leche soya.” I know how much it costs so I don’t have to fumble for change, trying to remember what the 10 pesos coin looks like, and the entire experience makes me feel a little like I really live here — like this neighborhood of mine is actually mine.
I’m a regular at Tocumbo, too, my favorite little fruit stand. I go when I’m hungover. I go when it’s hot. I go when I’m bored. I go almost any time I’m within ten blocks of it, and sometimes I go twice in a row. Maybe it’s the comfort and familiarity I crave. Maybe it’s the liters of coconut & mango aguas frescas that literally give me life. Tonight the boy at the counter laughed at me and said “coco y mango? De nuevo??” (Again??) It’s a funny thing to feel recognized in a city that still feels so foreign to me.
Here's something that very strongly wasn’t in my comfort zone: working dinner service in a kitchen I don’t know, in a language that I barely know. My friend and I successfully put on our sold-out pop-up dinner last Saturday, a 4-course menu I designed, prepped, and cooked, for almost 100 people with the help of some badass local line cooks. We plated 92 salads, chicken breasts, steaks, and tarts within a few hours, and to me it was a cyclone of an experience — three or four hours of running around cooking and plating food, of running out of food, of running to the corner store for cauliflower, of trying to communicate, of hearing and speaking words in Spanish I didn’t even know I knew. But ultimately it went well and the food was well-received, so that’s good. I stepped out into the restaurant to a room of drunk and happy people, singing and sitting around a guitar player, and sipped tequila til the sun came up. I have another pop-up brunch this weekend, and then Mexico City will be home for a while. And then my sister’s house again. And then..? Only time will tell.