In his book, "Flow", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes "a state [which] ensues when one is engaged in self-controlled, goal-related, meaningful actions". Time seems to stop, distractions disappear. Hours may pass.

I've had this experience before, sadly, rarely. Usually when I've been engrossed in some seemingly-intractible computer problem -- putting mental gymnastics to work. But it happened this past Monday -- and it has been happening to lesser extent all this week.

The normal course of our class is to have a series of demos, followed by sessions cooking, with lectures interspersed (there were more lectures and demos in the beginning, now there are fewer lectures, and demos are more brief; more assumed by the student [or we're left to synthesize what's missing, using our knowledge and/or intuition]).

My partner for the week, Michele, suffered heat stroke over the weekend (she's doing OK now). Despite what is often a miserable commute for her, she showed up on Monday anyway, but she was clearly not "with it". She left shortly after.

All of a sudden I was working by myself. Two peoples' efforts, one me. We were on station 2 this week, and station 2 does dishwashing duty for the week (for the whole class) -- it isn't difficult, but more time-consuming than most of the other station duties, and it needs to be done in between cooking sessions -- most other duties are done only at the end of the day. This added to the stress -- but I guess the sum of them sent me over the top and into "flow". The choices (which fortunately, I did not think about at the time) were either panic or coping -- "fight or flight". I came to an unusual level of attentiveness.

The din of the vent fans faded. Clarity over what I needed to do (the instructions are sometimes confusing -- whether this is intention on the Chef-Instructors' part or not)... came. I set about my tasks. I did them on time, and I did them pretty well.

It occured to me only after the day was over, that this is the way I was was accustomed to cookiing -- with little or no help in the kitchen. I know how to do this. Unfortunately, we're in teams at school, and the class is oriented around training people to work in the food industry -- where they'll need to work in teams. So the challenge for me to is to continue to grow personally, while "playing by the rules" of the class.

The focus continued, even while working in tandem with Michele. We disagreed on some points as people may, but my "learning" for the week was how to concentrate and interact with other(s) in the kitchen. Its difficult for me, but I am getting better at it.

At the end of the week, I asked Chef Tony rhetorically "Have I seemed to have found my stride?". He smiled, said that he'd been planning to tell me exactly that; that since the mid-term I seem to have "gotten down to business" (my words, not Chef's). Would have been nice to have heard it first-hand from him, but the confirmation was also really nice.

Actually, it seemed to have happened just about when I'd hurt my foot getting off the bus, and had to work through the pain. Not an experience I'd care to repeat, but a valuable one nonetheless.

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