(re)Fried Dreams

“I’m making family,” my coworker announced on a slow day in one of my catering kitchens. I watched over her shoulder as she started the beans: chopped onions, jalapeños, garlic; sautéed them in a little oil; added pre-soaked black beans, lime zest and juice, cilantro, salt—then let it all simmer. Soon, the skylit perimeter filled with a smell that made me feel like I’d accidentally stumbled into some abuelita’s home. She pulled the mixture off the stove and funneled it into a blender, pulverized it… then put it back in the pot? I watched as she added whole black beans into what I thought was the finished soupy paste, and I couldn’t keep quiet. “What are you doing?” I only half-joked; truth was, I really didn’t know. She snickered over the stirred pot. “You got a better way to make refried beans, foo?”

Now, put that on the back burner and cut to me sitting in my mother’s apartment in 2010, opening my 11th college rejection letter—I had only applied to 13. Hofstra wanted $24K a year, which was completely unfeasible for a single mother and a working teen, so really, it was like 12 rejections. I opened the final letter and saw $120K in bold. Thinking it was the cost, I immediately started reconciling my future as a tradesperson and plotting my escape from home. But on closer reading, I realized it was a scholarship—what the school thought I might do with my writing. I had done it. I had made it into college. And now, I believed, the rest of the millennial dream would fall into place.

A four-year degree in Film would land me that awesome starting salary—because duh, I had a degree. What else was college for if not to weed out those who hadn’t done their time in solitary? Salary—check. Next: find the love of my life whilst stacking modest wealth from my passion job, buy four walls and a roof (the city girl in me was fine with a condo or a house), and the final touch—some carbon copies running around.

It seemed doable. It also seemed expected. Naturally, I thought getting into college guaranteed the whole bundle of life events. Everything would unfold according to the Master American Plan, right? And I’d be the first in my family to graduate college, so I took that to mean the difference between becoming working poor or falling into young pregnancy was a degree—the one thing they didn’t have that I would. Hopes were high. So I shipped out to the cornfields of Wisconsin.

Here’s where the dream starts to corrode. 

My college didn’t actually offer a Film degree, despite being listed as one that did. I didn’t find out until I got there. My options were either to create my own major—pending approval—using the visiting film theory professor (who, after a few 1:1s, I realized didn’t believe women belonged in critical film discourse), or to change my major entirely, which would change my post grad plans drastically. I chose English, with a focus in Creative Writing, hoping it would bring me close to screenwriting. I even managed to petition into an exclusive abroad program in Prague and earned a Screenwriting certificate from FAMU.

In retrospect, that compromise was the first hint that things were starting to turn.

Things between my mother and me got tense by the midpoint senior year and I found myself homeless—my rabbit had already been kicked out to live with a close friend, along with a decent chunk of my shit. Strike two, I thought: now I have the wrong degree and nowhere to live.

I figured it out with friends after graduation and started applying to jobs in my field—because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? But suddenly, every “entry-level” position wanted to see internships I hadn’t done, GPA’s I hadn't achieved, and master’s I had no intention of going for…all for a $12 an hour.

The audacity, I thought, when we had just emerged from a recession where a whole generation of grads came out to no jobs; bet they were the first of us to really see the gaping holes in the Master Plan. I took the L and started at a juice bar, thinking it’d be a holdover thing while I kept applying to more degree centered jobs. But juice bar girl turned into the spin-class front desk girl, turned into the usual cycle of starter jobs, all at starter pay.

Where was the part where all that student debt bought me more than minimum wage?

Having lived through some wars, some terror attacks, and some dumbass leadership, this year takes the cake for serving up eye opening understandings about what I once thought was The Dream. It has become painfully evident that we are bred to work for the weekend, think about it: you grind 5 to 6 days a week at The Job, just to get 14 days a year to yourself (possibly a few extra for sick if your company doesn't think illness is your financial burden to bear). And you can’t take those days off consecutively, gotta stay considerate of The Company, oh and then could you stay a little longer today? We really need this extra bit of work done and since you’re salaried we’ll just assign it for Saturday. Hourly? Didn't you ask for extra hours last month because you had to take time off for your bad ankle? Thoughts and prayers, but we can't have everyone going over 40 hours (that's waaay too much OT on payroll), so we’re just going to cut one of your days entirely and throw the extra two hours onto each remaining day! Oh, we’ll also need you to open tomorrow.

The cycle is crazy. It also hasn't changed for decades, just like the federal minimum wage ($7.25).

Now funemployed for the summer and reflecting on my relationship with labor, I had to ask myself: in a country led by a president who legit can’t see his own ballsack, a global economy rigged for the already wealthy, and a social fabric unraveling in real time due to both of those—why am I still chasing the same Dream? My short, horrendous stint in corporate—and its ugly stepsister, corporate-lite (that small nepo tea gig I had)—helped clarify a few key things that are now setting me free:

-I’d been mainlining the college > job > homeownership > kids narrative like Kool-Aid through an IV. When that path dissolved in front of me, I felt betrayed. But I had to sit with that feeling—allowing rage and hurt give way to clarity. The truth is, I hadn’t failed and I wasn’t underprepared to achieve The Dream, the problem was that dream was never mine to begin with.

-Kids were never part of my plan, but the societal noise around a woman’s biological clock, its implied search for a “life partner,” and then defining womanhood through motherhood had me questioning that. For a while, having kids felt like the stamp of personal and financial success. But the idea of procreating exhausts me. The thought of sharing time, energy, and resources with anyone but myself ignites a selfish nerve that makes me want to remove my uterus yesterday. Finding a partner who shared the sentiment unburdened me—we could pour into our dog and, more importantly, into each other.

-A Brooklyn brownstone was the holy grail growing up in NYC and I was sure I’d have one with my name on it by 30. What actually happened by 30 was that I had traveled extensively and found more joy in the nomadic rhythm of fewer possessions and broader ways of living. In every apartment and shared space, I’ve managed to hang art, keep a pet, sleep in a cozy bed, and bask in sunlight. That’s what home is for me—a feeling I can create anywhere. In all honesty, I’d probably get restless tied to a single plot of land. Plus, after hearing horror stories about co-op board politics from actual brownstoners– hard pass.

-I live for one thing: to eat as deliciously as I can, as often as I can—and that realization simplified everything. Some people chase six figures or status; I chase great food. That craving naturally implies travel, since the best meals are scattered across continents. It’s made my relationship to work clearer: make enough to keep eating well and moving freely. If unlimited money and time landed in my lap, I’d be doing exactly that—so why grind myself into someone else’s dream? I’d rather take a low-stress, low-responsibility gig and use the time to feed my own joy.

-Full-time employment at a single location was never going to work for me. I started working at 13, and 20 years later, I can confidently state that I’m a gig girly. More than five days a week around the same people gives “live-in” vibes, and my ADHD thrives when I can bounce between part-time gigs, fresh spaces, and different coworkers. Routine bores me; rotation feeds me.

Collectively, it’s been a lot. It’s felt like an entire overhaul on how I was taught to be a model American citizen. At a certain point I wasn't sure there were any other routes, if thinking like this was allowed, if they would lead to the same prophesied happiness The Dream did. 

And this is where the beans come in.

I had never thought to think that refried beans literally meant re-fried beans. The idea of a finished dish built on a blended version of itself had just never occurred to me. That base—jalapeños, cilantro, onions, garlic, lime—holds so much power, even though by the time the beans hit the table, it’s invisible. You see nothing more than a stippled black mound of spoonable deliciousness.

That’s how all of this has felt: like learning to make refried beans. My original dreams had a set list of ingredients—the ones the cookbook said would guarantee success. Eaten alone, those elements might be harsh or unpalatable, but blended together, they start to make something. At first it’s soupy, unstable, toothless. But then come the whole beans—the new ideas, the roots, the real stuff you grew yourself—and suddenly, you’ve got something real to chew on.

The flavors of what’s been blended in—the early experiences, the burnt bits, the learned beliefs—will always shape our final dish. It's easy to get stuck in the mind of only being able to perform how we’ve been religiously told to, and to fear shifting that mindset, as status quo questioning is often stymied. I had known refried beans as the thick soup that came out the Goya can, and there I was witnessing it take new shape, flavor and texture, mesmerised by my friend’s ability to boldly change the recipe, not yet knowing she was showing me new life in an old pot.