An Assertion of Me as Me, at 30!

I turned 30 yesterday...wahoo! Sunday, I celebrated my first anniversary as Manager at Luna’s Living Kitchen. And so many other wonderful things have marked this just being an incredible month. Let’s just say that August of 2013 has gone down in my personal History Book of Life Changing Times.

In addition to these landmarks, I launched The Lavender Lunchbox. It’s been a long, long - did I say LONG? - time in the works. It may not seem like a huge feat, but I’ve actually launched a blog before that I only kept up for one week. I got sick, and my excuse was that I couldn’t taste anything. That was four years ago.

I’ve spent the years since envying other bloggers both for their beautiful imagery, their way with words, and the fact that they were simply diligent and brave enough to put themselves OUT there. I never fully understood how some bloggers got to be so well-known - even some that are terrible. Now I understand that what goes into it is not what one expects to come out of it.

The Lavender Lunchbox represents a willingness to embrace my own ideas as important, and put them out there. Forget what other people think… the most terrifying aspect of creating this blog was a paralyzing self-doubt that I’ve had for years! My greatest achievement to date in creating this has been to demonstrate that I have outgrown that paralysis enough to keeping writing and posting. Hooray! Oh god...

Okay, so what’s more scary than putting myself out there? Well, other people, of course! I know that people are insanely critical because I am one harsh critic myself. Just ask some of my friends and former partners. But let’s all admit that we’re no harder on others than we are on ourselves, right? So putting my ideas, thoughts, recipes (heaven borbid!) out on the whole WIDE world of web for others to see has certainly been Parlysis-Inducing Fear number 2. I madly respect those bloggers out there who, frankly, don’t give a shit! So many of them are doing such a great job, and not because they have learned all of the most amazing techniques to creating a perfect blog. Albeit that my be my aspiration [insert.sarcasm.here], they are succeeding because they continue to do good work- gigantic emphasis on the DO in that statement.

So, getting back to this month, and what I have going on in my life to celebrate.

I am celebrating having officially gone VEGAN. For me, going vegan wasn’t an easy decision, but not because I thought giving up meat and dairy would be difficult. That certainly has been a part of it, but the truth is that I’ve eaten mostly vegan for almost 5 years now. Rather, I’ve always had an aversion to being lumped into any identifiable group that has strong stereotypes attached. I’ve always wanted to just be me, and for some reason that seemed really difficult to do when so many identifiers have so many things unrelated-to-me attached to them. I also know how critical I can be towards people who change their mind - like, stick to something already!

But this month, this year, I’m giving myself permission to even change my mind if I want to. I put that critic aside and let myself just BE (and DO!), and all of these wonderful things keep happening.

It was actually in May that I went vegan, promising myself I would take it one day at a time with no pressure to call it a “lifetime” decision. A month later, I told one friend- my awesome coworker Matt who is an amazing cook and a passionate ethical vegan. He gave me mad props for keeping it under wraps, which - since not-so-secretly I do like people to know alllllll about me - made me just want to tell more people! But instead, I kept it to myself.

Only a few days ago, three months after that first tough week, did I actually decide to start calling myself “vegan.” Blast!! I’m one of them! But I’m also so fortunately just me. 

Since these two great things have happened, both of which have entailed ME becoming ME, many more feats have taken place. These other things are wonderful, but they may or may not be here to stay. Who knows! I like running today, but I just may decide tomorrow to never set sneaker to pavement again. And truthfully, I could do that with this blog or becoming vegan as well - except that these are things that I feel an association to that I’ve never experienced before. An assertion of me as me. That comes more easily to some than others.

So what does all of this lead me to? Well, it’s both very related and completely unrelated to a super fun recipe I want to share with you. In June, my company celebrated our 3-year Anniversary. I had so much fun making these classic throwbacks to the traditional Deviled Egg that I promised myself they would go into a post. I can’t claim the idea, as an original, unfortunately, but I am happy to claim the specific recipe that I concocted. Hilariously, that’s only because I lost the original recipe I found. (It got swallowed up by the wwweb.) From there, I used my tastebuds as my guide.

So without further ado, Vegan Deviled Eggs for the LLunchbox! Or Potato Angels if you so wish. :)

Click here for the recipes!