Why hello there! And welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe’s semi-annual segment, “State of Catastrophe”, which is the one where we talk more about the nitty-gritty details of the site, rather than anything particularly cooking related. For the first couple years, we had it as a sort of annual debrief/New Year’s Resolution for the site, and then, over the last couple years, we kind of forgot, given the sudden develop of a much larger state of Catastrophe. So, while the wider world is still struggling, it’s also time to start pulling the pieces of “normalcy” back togeth…you know what? No. As many have said before, “going back to normal” is a fool’s errand. Let us instead seek to rebuild the familiar structures of the past BETTER. And to do that, we have to work SMARTer, as well as harder.

Is this accurate? I don’t think so. But it’s the most reasonable message seemingly written in ketchup I’ve ever seen.

For instance, reading over the 3 previous January States of Catastrophe, you see the same things promised again and again, because while I KNOW the things that would help me and the site the most, I struggle to bring them together because of my own frailities and issues.  But hopefully, by setting some SMART goals for myself, I can try and overcome this. (And yes, for the next little bit, this is going to turn into something of a self-help seminar by way of demonstration, so…deal with that however seems appropriate.)

Okay, SMART Ass

If you’re not aware of the “SMART” goals system, congratulations on never having to interact with an HR department, or particular kinds of educational styles. The breakdown is simple: the goals that have the highest chance of being achieved are those that adhere to the mnemonic breakdown of “SMART”. Which various groups then disagree with the exact meaning of the five letters involved, but here’s what I was taught:

S is for “Specific”. Specific goals are better than general ones because it’s easier to figure out the best paths. “I want to be happy” is a very general goal. “I want to be prouder of my music” is specific. It tells you the path you should probably follow (practice your music more.)

M is for “Measurable”, which is helpful because a measurable goal makes it easier to measure success, progress, and hold the idea in your head. A common example is “I wanna make more money” is general. “I want to make $5,000 more this year.” Is measurable. That way, you don’t work ONE extra weekend, make an extra $50, and tell yourself “I mean, it was MORE money”, while feeling like you did nothing.

A is…I actually forget.

Despite appearances to the contrary, I am not always the smartest man around.

I thought for a moment it was “attainable”, but on retrospect, I think that’s R for Realistic. On second thought, I think A is “Action-oriented”: you want a goal that you have to DO things for. To take our specific example from earlier, “I want to be prouder of my music” is a nice goal, but…it’s also a little out of your hands, right? Who knows if practicing all year will get your music to a place where you’re “proud” of it. Better to set out a actionable goal, like “I want to practice my music more often.” (and, to make it measurable “I want to practice my music for 1 hour a week.”)

R is, I guess, Realistic.  If your current salary is $50,000 a year, “I want to make $5,000 more” is probably fairly realistic, depending on your free time and situation. “I want to make $500,000 more” is…less so. Making your goals “attainable” (ie, framing them relative to your abilities or resources) means you’re less likely to emotionally abuse yourself striving for something unachievable. (This criteria can also be important for learning what issues in your life are unworkable: some things are out of your control, and recognizing that is an important step.) To go back to our music example: one hour a week is probably pretty achievable, depending on your schedule, but imagine if you’d committed to, say, 10 hours a week? You’ve basically given yourself an extra part-time job.

And unlike this one, you don’t have to be smiling during it!

Lastly, T was taught to me as “Timely”, as in “assigned to a specific time”. To revisit our music example: “I want to practice my music for 1 hour a week” is good…but when will we know we succeeded? Is it every week forever? A simple addition at the end of “I want to practice my music for 1 hour a week for the next six months” gives your brain a grasping point: “I only have to do this 24 times.” It gives you a time when you can check in and see if you’ve met the goal, and if you need to revise it. If, in 6 months, you think you’re making good progress, do it another. If you found it was easier to fit into your schedule, maybe consider expanding or adding to it.  This also helps with setting smaller goals: “I will have next Monday’s report finished by Friday”, or “I will call 3 friends this week”. By giving yourself a deadline, you give yourself a place for accountability (and a window for procrastination, if you need it.)

Making it Personal, and a little Painful

So, since we STILL have the same general goals as before, let’s see how we can SMARTen them up, eh? But, here’s the thing: one of the problems with being the head honcho of the site is the amazing amount of respect it earns me. MORE RELEVANTLY, it’s that I’m not typically accountable to anyone other than me in a direct sense. So, let’s put some stakes on these goals, too. Failure, this time, will come with a price.

Gonna be harder to type my A’s after this one…

“Be better about hitting holidays” – Why don’t I hit holidays? Because I forget they’re coming. So, easy fix: “By the end of this weekend, I will set reminders 2 weeks before each major holiday/event, so I have time to plan dishes for them.” That’s an easy one. For the stakes… that’s probably, what, half-an-hour of work? Maybe an hour, if I want to mentally lay out all the pieces. Like, check birthdays and so on. BECAUSE it’s such an easy goal, let’s make the cost higher, since I have plenty of opportunity. So…one day offline. If I don’t do this by the end of Sunday, next Tuesday, I will not go online (barring business or medical needs.)

“Improve our social media presence” – This one is super-easy to make specific. “I will make 5 posts split between our social media feeds per week, beyond the automated ones for the site (**OR ONES ANNOUNCING DELAYS**) for the next 4 weeks.” I picked 5 because I took a Skillshare class that says, technically, you should be aiming for a 20-80 split of “links to your blog vs less pushy content” which means we should be aiming for TEN posts a week, thanks to the two automated ones, which…man, that sounded like a real drag when it came up. But 5 MORE feels achievable. That’s basically one per day we aren’t posting. Tweets, Patreon posts, Instagram, FB, all that jazz, we’ll be looking at it. I also like the idea of 5 per week because it feels like a not-unreasonable amount to see suddenly, since we tend to only post…wait, let me go back and amend the goal so I can’t abuse my own poor time management to make the goal easier…there we are. Sorry, I was saying five per week feels like it won’t be a huge pain on anyone’s feeds, to go from “Kitchen Catastrophe is posting twice a week” to “roughly one thing a day”.   Stakes on this one, let’s say “every missed post is $2.50 to a food charity.” I’ll figure out which one, or ask for it online.

Do I have an earlier major contender? Yes. Can I be swayed away from him? Sure.

And let’s wrap up with a riff on a brief goal we set for ourselves a while back: during 2020, there was a while where we tried to have one vegetarian/vegan post a week (back when I was handling the pandemic by posting three times a week, until it burned me out.). And given the needs of climate change, better diet, and all that, it feels like guaranteeing more space for those kind of recipes is a good one. (And, with Anna marrying Stephen, helping him get some more meal ideas feels like a brotherly thing to do) Also, getting my fat ass to eat healthier is a selfish but necessary goal as well. So let’s aim for “for the next six months, at least one recipe per month will be vegetarian or vegan.” Failure on this one…let’s make it big, because this should be another easy one. “For each month I miss, that’s 2 days of self-imposed vegetarianism.”

Alright, that’s three goals of varying length (one week, one month, six months), arranged on SMART principles. Let’s see if working SMARTer gets us closer to our goals this year.

The Other Guys

Adding to that/in other, non-goal oriented discussion, a quick run-down on what we’re looking at.

I am, as usual, immediately in two plays after returning from Leavenworth, so I’ll be trying to schedule stuff around those rehearsals. (While those rehearsals in turn try to schedule themselves around COVID issues)

I’ve got…2-3 recipes pre-made and photographed in the backlog (One is an American camping snack, another is another Asian Instant Pot dish.), and I’m currently working on ideas for upcoming dishes. (There’s a pizza recipe that, when I read the name, I immediately added the cookbook to my Christmas list, and looking at the recipe in question, it really seems fun.)

I just remembered/discovered yesterday that Monday is MLK day, so now I have to scramble to get more of The Meal That Never Was ready this weekend. Which, the meal was Fried Chicken, Sweet Potato Pie, Ham, Collard Greens, Black-Eyed Peas, and Sweet Potatoes. I already did the chicken and Pie, so I guess I gotta do Ham and a side.

 I had a plan for something to set up while I was in Leavenworth that didn’t come to fruition, so I’ll try and work on it over the coming weeks. (I was going to do a “12 days of Christmas” thing, with all the backlogged Patreon Universal Yums posts…and then some fluctuations in the work schedule ate up the free-time I was going to use to prep it, and it fell apart.)

I’m going to make a concerted effort to try and get some more culinary variety this year: my mother’s continued consumption of Asian media is definitely resulting in a LOT of Asian foods, which are great, but mean I’m covering a lot of the same ground (like Monday’s reference to our oft-repeated point on the problems of Romanization.)

And that’s what we’ve got cooking the Catastrophic Kitchen. I’ll talk to you all Monday or Tuesday, depending on when I get to work out the meal. (I have rehearsals Thursday-Sunday, so the meal itself might be Monday night dinner, post out on Tuesday, sort of deal.)

MON/TUES : FUN FACT, I DON’T LOVE HAM. SO MAKING A HAM STEAK AND COLLARD GREENS IS GOING TO BE…”FUN”.

THURSDAY: SCRREEE