Sometimes (OK, frequently) I pick but don’t grin

And this time, I wrote about it in a guest post for the American Psychological Association.

If you really want to know how I’m doing right now, look at my thumb. It always betrays me. My face will, from four decades of muscle memory, arrange itself in a way that will not cause you worry. My voice is calculated to extract any upset so it will not leach in and erode your wellbeing. But my thumb can’t lie.

More specifically, the skin to the right of my right thumbnail, and if things are especially dire, the left of the left one, too. If it’s smooth and un-pocked, I’ve been OK for at least a few days. Roughened, but not raw means there was a tough patch in the recent past but I’m on the upswing. Actively bleeding, I’m doing my damndest to keep it together in front of you, and bandaged—I’m trying to protect me from myself. And you from having to look at it. Or really look at me.

I pick at my skin when I’m anxious, which is the rule rather than the exception. Particular things trigger it: running late, leaving the house, running late because I was afraid to leave the house, crowds, phone calls, being called into meetings, stepping away from my desk, the IRS, my husband going on an airplane, walking under scaffolding, deadlines, haircuts, being handed a baby, narrow lanes of highway traffic, and more, so much more. But also nothing. The panic just strikes from nowhere, like a yowling, feral cat with a stepped-on tail. My heart hammers and my throat closes and I suppose the only thing I can think to do is sink my nail into my skin and dig until I’m flinching and distracted.

It could be worse—I know this all too well—but it’s not good and I’m trying to find a better way to be. Talking helps. I’ve come to understand that over the past few years as I’ve gotten less and less apologetic and infinitely louder about the fact that I’m not OK, and that I’m OK with that. It seems to relieve the pressure not just for me, but for the other people, loved and strangers, I see walking around with their jaws tight, lips bitten and fists balled. The more we can say the words, let them dissolve into the air around us, the less we have to draw our own blood, inflict misery on our own brains and stomachs and skins in order to hide the pain we’re in.

So I’m typing these things out into the world in the hope that anyone who needs to read them can stop and unclench just a little bit. There may be a little bit of blood on my keyboard and on the hand I’m reaching out, but it’s here if you need to hold onto it for a little while.

Read it at YourMindYourBody.org

Sometimes I eat performatively

Kat Kinsman portrait
Photo by Melissa Hom

As the editor-in-chief of Tasting Table, Kat Kinsman — like most fortunate food journalists — has a job that entails eating a lot of excellent meals. (Before TT, she worked as the managing editor of CNN’s Eatocracy.) And so this week, Kinsman treated a hard-working colleague to lunch at Babbo, hosted a dinner with Hugh Acheson, and traveled to Chicago for the James Beard Awards, where she stopped by Avec, Big Star, and a whole lot of other restaurants, all within a span of two days. Even when a server called her order “aggressive,” she didn’t slow down.

Read my Grub Street Diet

Sometimes I try to give career advice

Kat Kinsman screw fear quote

YOU HAVE AN MFA IN METALSMITHING. FIRST OF ALL, THAT’S AWESOME. BUT SECOND, HOW DID YOU END UP IN A CAREER AS A FOOD WRITER?
Thank you! When the apocalypse comes, I can forge weapons and tools for people. I’ve had a really strange career path that somehow all led up to this. I moved to New York City thinking I was going to be a seeeerious arrrrrtiste, and worked for a billion different established artists for a while before realizing that I’d stopped making any work of my own. Then I was the office manager for a psychiatrist and a graphic design firm because I was scared to make any work of my own. Then I got mugged on my doorstep by seven guys and thought, “Screw fear.” I worked as an art director for a few publications (CitySearch, Maxim Online, FHM Online) and skulked around the edges making sure that writing was part of the gig. I took a multi-year detour to the product and advertising side and when I had a chance to take on a summer grilling editor job at AOL, I grabbed it and never looked back.

More from an interview I did with the smashing folks at Lux & Concord

Sometimes I swim in a fishbowl

FBNY: What advice would you give people who want to go into food writing or food media in general?

Kinsman: Ask yourself what’s the story only you can tell, and really figure out what your point of view is going to be and bring that to as many pieces as you possibly can. Don’t be afraid to let you shine through. All the food writers I read are people who, I can start reading a piece, not even see the byline and know whose it is and that’s because they let a little bit of themselves into their writing without making the story about themselves necessarily. And that only comes from working really, really, really hard and trusting what you have to say.

And be a utility player. Be as flexible as humanly possibly. You need me to go profile this chef? Yes, of course I’ll go do that. You need me to call around to all of these different restaurants and see if they have a kale salad on the menu? Yes, go ahead and do that. Nobody can be above doing anything. So long as you can kind of do both of those parts, be a generalist and be specific, they’re going to find a place for you, somewhere.

More from my interview with the dandy Corinne Grinapol at AdWeek

Sometimes I get Punchy

From the marvelous people at Punch:

Can bar food stand up to large plates? Do restaurants make inferior cocktails? Find out on a brand new episode of PUNCH Radio! Hosts Talia Baiocchi and Leslie Pariseau are joined by Tasting Table Editor-in-Chief Kat Kinsman and PUNCH contributor Regan Hofmann. Tune in for an insightful conversation on the current state of bar food and restaurant cocktails.

Sometimes things are splendid

Life goal achieved, getting to chat on The Splendid Table: Ep. 574: Bulletproof Recipes

Melissa Clark: Why has food become so important to people in the media? What are they looking for?

Kat Kinsman: It’s the only subject that you can cover that absolutely every single person has something to do with. Everybody eats. Not everybody is fetish-y about it, and that’s OK.

I do a little game with myself if I’m traveling. I try to talk to three different people who I’ve never met before. The inroad is always food. Somebody has eaten today. Somebody is thinking about where they’re going to eat. Everybody has a stake in the game.

Read and listen to the rest at The Splendid Table

Sometimes I write about being a misfit toy

How I stole Christmas
Getting through the holidays when you’re a misfit toy (and married)

I don’t want to screw up anyone’s holiday, so I’m mostly staying out of it. There is, so far as I’ve gleaned, right and proper placement for the ceramic Snoopy ornament from grade school, dishes which people are legally and medically required to consume on 12/25 and exact times at which particular singing, reading and unwrapping rituals of must be enacted. If any of these things are even vaguely askew, the section of the continent on which the offense occurs will crumble down into the Earth’s core and Christmas will be ruined. More specifically YOU will have ruined Christmas whether or not you wanted to participate.

Butbutbut, what sort of person (barring a religious or cultural disinclination) would want to opt out of Christmas? Some joy-loathing gorgon? Some Scrooge? Some Grinch? Sure, kick me and my ilk while we’re at the bottom of our seasonal ebb if it makes your yuletide brighter. I probably can’t actually feel worse, or I might even be numb at this point, so by all means, shovel it on, coal lumps and all.
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