What's simpler than a menu?  You list a bunch of stuff out and people choose one and tell you, yes, give me that one.  Right?

 When I started Edzo's in 2009, I had a couple vintage pepsi menu boards with the little plastic letters you jam into grooves listing out the various items.

People would verbally just tell me their order and I would punch it into the ancient push-button cash register machine with thick plastic overlay so the buttons didn't get greasy.  That was just for ringing up the sale.  I'd have to then tick off their choices on a little order pad I had pre-printed with the various choices, writing special requests in on the side in my little squished writing, and pass that ticket down to the cooks to tell them what to make and whether or not to put onions on it.

At the end of the day, I'd do a "Z" report that would print off on the receipt paper, which I would then pore over, transferring the sales data onto a spreadsheet I created.

It was terrible.  So slow.  So inefficient.  So many opportunities to make mistakes.  And we did.

At some point, we upgraded to a touchscreen point of sale system where I could punch in the choices and tickets would print for the cooks.  Way better.  Credit cards were processed in the same box rather than a separate little machine we had to have a separate phone line for also. 

Then all the online ordering apps came along and we had to have 3-4 separate tablets sitting up by the register and when they chirped, we'd go over, read through the order, and punch it in manually on the old Micros touch screen. 

That's when things really started to change.  People got used to ordering on Door Dash or Uber Eats and looking at--and interacting with--menus on their phones.  Many folks enjoy the newfound sense of control.  Being able to look through every possible option and tick the appropriate boxes to customize their order to their heart's content appeals very strongly to a certain mindset.

It was too expensive for most restaurants to create their own in-house ordering apps so most of us found ourselves at the mercy of the third parties for a while if we didn't want to miss out on all that online ordering business.   So we used them, even though we lost money on most of the orders we took through those services and their business practices (and their drivers) were often shady.

Then the technology kind of caught up with the ordering apps.  Square and Toast came along and leveled the playing field, offering restaurants the ability to set up their own online customer-facing ordering systems which could then connect seamlessly with our kitchens.  

Someone on their computer or phone could scroll through a menu we write and maintain ourselves, places their order, pays for it, it populates into our kitchen and the money gets transferred into our bank account.  No middleman except the credit card processing fees, which we're already paying anyway.  Tickets print, food starts to get made, all without the manager on duty in the restaurant having to do anything or even touch a button or a screen.  Amazing.

So when I re-booted Edzo's in 2022, I embraced this technology, as I had embraced each new development that came before.  One of the first challenges I encountered was writing the menu in a way that it could be both customer-facing AND allow for quick efficient in-house communication about the menu items (mostly via printed tickets or touch screen monitors).

 Like for instance, on my menu that the customer looks at, the fries have always been called "fresh-cut fires with sea salt".  But on the printed dupes that the fry cook's printer spits out, it just says "small fries" or "large fries".  We dispense with the flowery descriptive language when we're just talking between ourselves, it's not necessary and it's usually too wordy.  Grilled Chicken Breast Sandwich becomes "Chix Sand".  You get it.

But the Toast system didn't allow me to vary the language for customer-facing vs. back of the house.  I just had to choose one name which would be used throughout the system for each item.  Which made for some funny-sounding conversations on expo.  

 "Can I get that patty melt on table 9, please," I would say.  My cook would look at me confused, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.  Long pause.  Then..."ohhhhhhh, wait...you mean 'The Classic Diner Patty Melt'?  Oh, ok.  coming up, 2 minutes, chef!"  Eventually, I gave up trying to use BOH lingo and just went with it.... "how long on my Classic Diner Patty Melt for table 3, please?"  After a while, it even got shortened to stuff like "how long on the Classic Diner with tomato for 11, please?"  A very strange evolution.

 There were lots of little tweaks along the way.  The "single" and "double" burger items became "build your own burger" so folks would understand what to do.  (Cause without that instruction, they didn't).  Rather than just leaving people to figure out that they should choose "no bun" if they want a burger without bread, we added a "burger in a bowl" menu item.  But "burger in a bowl" looked so similar to "build your own burger" on the ticket that cooks quickly skimming tickets during busy times kept mistaking one for the other.  So eventually the bunless burger option (sorry, no, we will not "wrap it in lettuce") became just plain ol' "Burger Bowl".  

It was a fairly constant struggle to find the right language to strike the balance between being as descriptive as I wanted to for the customer's experience and using words and phrases that our cooks with varying English language skills and education levels would be able to understand from reading a greasy 2"x2" paper ticket on the fly during a hectic rush.  

One thing I've discovered is that customers love to order items with a simple, nondescriptive name.  "Freddy's Wonder Burger" will get ordered a lot more often than "Double Mushroom Swiss with special sauce, lettuce, pickle on a pretzel bun".  

This is counter-intuitive to me.  I personally prefer non-cutesy names that are just a simple description of the food contained within over some gimmicky cartoonish faux identity that tells you nearly nothing about what the food actually is.  I've come to understand that I'm in the minority on this one.

A decade or so ago, I worked an event billed as a "battle of the burgers" and we all cooked up our creations on the patio outside Tribune Tower.  When I filled out the paperwork, I wrote in my burger name as something like "4oz. beef, Merkt's cheddar, jalapenos, spicy mayo, and Nueske bacon".  

The marketing/production people emailed me back that it sounded good, but I needed to come up with a fun-sounding title for my burger.   

 I hated that idea.  That was back when I still placed some value on not "being a sell out", whatever that meant.  This was a corporate event produced by a corporate event production company with big corporate brand name sponsors and I had somehow convinced myself that a cutesy name for my burger creation ran was the exact opposite of the DIY independent restaurant punk-rock ethos I had convinced myself I was embodying.  Can't even blame it on youthful idealism, I was in my 40's. 

Anyway, an old friend of mine and I got together one night and got really high and decided to come up with the stupidest-sounding name we could.  Long story short (too late!), our burger was named the best out of 32 restaurants there.  Thee Spicy Sconnie was the big winner!

I won an all-expenses paid trip to Miami Beach for the Food and Wine Festival where I got to meet Anthony Bourdain.  Which I think kind of brings the whole wannabe-punk-rock-anti-establishment pot-smoking poser-surburban-non-coporate-sellout story full circle.   

Now I use the cutesy names for menu items because I know people like them.  This was a good compromise for me to make because ultimately, clinging to the whole "that's not how I do it" thing seems kind of pointless.  If it enhances people's experience and they enjoy it, then what's the difference?  I guess I'm mellowing with age. 

Then there was the whole question about having a paper menu for folks to look at vs. having a big menu on the wall vs. using an app- or phone-based system where folks order digitally on a device.   I learned quickly how strong feelings were about this.  

The menu isn't just a means to an end, it's a part of the experience.    And, again, I started out being too rigid and one-dimensional in my approach and eventually, backed off.

When I first installed the order-off-your-phone ordering system in 2022, I loved how it allowed me to make changes on the fly which were then reflected immediately on what customers were seeing.  No old paper menus with outdated pricing floating around out there creating false expectations.  Items we're out of that day are never seen by customers in the first place, rather than having them ask and be disappointed when they're told we don't have that today, sorry.  

So I went all-in on the phone-based menu.  No paper menus.  No menu on the wall. Either use your phone or I can show you the menu on an iPad and take your order verbally. 

For some, the digital order-on-your phone experience was a positive, but for many, they hated it.  Many would struggle with the tech, having never used a QR code before.  At least a couple people a day would refuse to even try, and then when I offered to take their order the old way would angrily storm out.   They missed the old way and if they couldn't do it that way, the experience just wasn't the same for them.  Or they hated the technology.   Maybe both.

So I'm learning to evolve and I'm pondering how to do it better for the next incarnation.  I want to be flexible about it, but I also want to stay true to my instincts about what the right way to do it is.   I also need to be pragmatic and set it up in a way where it works for all the various approaches.  The technology is wonderful, it saves a ton of time, allows customers access to more information, results in fewer errors, and helps us run faster and more efficiently.  But I don't want lose the warmth, the humanity, the old-school vibe that I think is such an important aspect of the experience.

I think I've come up with something that will work...  I'll detail it more in a subsequent post as this one has become quite long. 

Read More 0 comments | Posted by Eddie Lakin

Yesterday I had a meeting with Chef D'Andre Carter of beloved Evanston institution Soul & Smoke.  I've been planning some pop-ups to try to maintain engagement with our local community while I'm looking for a new location so I paid them a visit and he gave me a tour of the kitchen so I could plan the logistics around producing an Edzo's pop-up there.

Now, barbecue guys always love their gear and chef Carter is no exception.  I admired his charcoal broiler cooker box with roll-out cast-iron broiler drawers, something I'd never seen before, and planned to use it to cook the burgers for the planned pop up.   Fun!  New toys to play with.

Chef D'Andre Carter and wife/partner Heather Bublick have a huge old building that they operate Soul & Smoke out of and they're in the process of a massive build out that will create a whole new beautiful restaurant, event space, indoor-outdoor patio with 20-foot high garage doors, open kitchen, full bar, it's going to be amazing.

I also caught a glimpse of the huge dark red smokers in the new kitchen being built out, hulking in the background with their many tons of double-insulated cast iron fireboxes designed to create perfect constant indirect low and slow heat.  Nice.

So as we were chatting in the dining room, and I was asking them about their plans for the space, I admired the smokers.  "Those are Bewleys, right?"

 "Yeah," Chef replied, visibly shocked.  "You know about Bewley?  What?!"

Yep.  Fellow food nerd here.    Instant chef street cred.  Part of the job.  Knowing the things.

 I went down that particular rabbit hole many years ago after a barbecue dinner and pitmaster class at Jared Leonard's now-defunct Barbecue Supply Co. on Western where he schooled us all on why Bewley BBQ pits are the gold standard of smoking meats.  Then I sat up all night on the internet googling and clickety clicking until I found other places who used the same smoker, reading about why the thousands of pounds of heavy iron used for Bewely smokers creates the perfect atmosphere for unlocking all the magic that comes out of a large, slow-cooked piece of meat with lots of connective tissue that needs to get broken down so it becomes that amazing, meltingly tender sticky fall-apart barbecue we all go out of our way to enjoy.

So we bonded over that for a minute and I felt like I impressed an accomplished barbecue pitmaster by knowing a little about what he does.  That's the kind of thing that feels satisfying to me.   

At 55, I've come to appreciate the massive amounts of seemingly useless information I've accumulated in my head.  I've always placed a high value on knowing stuff.  When I was a kid, it was sports stats.  Baseball.  I was obsessed.  I would pore over box scores in the newspaper every day, making notations, noting trends.  I even went so far as to create what I now realize were early rudimentary versions of spreadsheets that I hand-wrote to track the stats of my favorite players and teams.   

Once I chose to go to culinary school, food became the focus of my endless quest to know all the things.  So when I tasted something new and amazing or a certain chef's cooking really blew me away, I would go down all the rabbit holes to try and learn everything I could about it.  

In the primitive-internet 90's, a group of us young ambitious chefs would straggle in to the upstairs cafe in the Borders bookstore on Michigan Avenue nearly every morning to drink our coffee, eat croissants, and read the glossy fifty dollar chef cookbooks we drooled over but couldn't afford to buy on our line cook $8/hr. paychecks.  

For a couple hours before our shifts started at Nomi, Tru, or Bistro 110, we would fantasize about eating or working at Gotham Bar and Grill, Stars, or The Inn at Little Washington, excitedly showing each other photos of plates, thinking through ideas about various cuisines or food cultures we wanted to explore, and debating whether "fusion cooking" was sacrilegious cultural appropriation or an inevitable outgrowth of our current global marketplace and modern connected world.

I flipped though hundreds of books and read thousands of recipes, trying to figure out what made cajun cooking different from creole and whether my roux for gumbo should be made with butter or oil.  I wanted to know "the right way" to do everything and the deeper I delved, the more it became apparent that there is no one right way to do anything.  That just made the quest for knowledge even more appealing to me.

So seeing that look of "oh, ok, this dude knows some stuff" on Chef Carter's face yesterday was one of those satisfying squaring-the-circle moments for me.  It felt like my 30+ years of obsessing over this endless quest to know all the things about food and cooking prepared me for that little moment I could've never known I was preparing myself for.

My Aunt Wilma had an expression she'd say when one of us kids was tooting our own horn a little too much, maybe acting conceited or arrogant-- "don't tell everyone how wonderful you are.  Just BE wonderful and then let people notice. Because, trust me, they will."

 More info about Edzo's pop-ups around Evanston coming soon!  Hopefully something toward the end of this month.

Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Eddie Lakin

I've gotten this question more than a few times when involved in discussions or debates (mostly about politics) over the last 15 years that I've run the ol' burger shop.

 And, I mean, what can I say?  I am a burger-flipper.   No point in trying to deny that or elevate myself above my stature.  Better to maybe change the mindset about what it means to be a burger-flipper.  

I've always thought of myself as being pretty smart.  I did well in school mostly without really trying and goofing off a lot, yet I still got good grades through HS and college.  I was always a little shocked when people would tell me how I was smart because I just felt normal.  At some points in school, I tried to downplay being in AP classes or to hide getting a good grade from other kids because I worried they would think I wasn't cool.  Silly, right?

I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after HS, from '87-'91.  I graduated with a Political Science degree. My intention going into school was to study politics, which I was always interested in, as a precursor to going to law school, but at some point I lost interest in pursuing a career as an attorney.

Since I was enjoying my time at school and liked what I was studying, though, and since I didn't really know what I wanted to do, changing course halfway through didn't make a lot of sense, so I decided to finish up my four years, graduate, and then figure it out.

I worked a few restaurant jobs along the way and eventually, I ended up going to culinary school nights and weekends while working a day job and that's how I ended up here.  

Flipping burgers.   Managing burger flippers flipping burgers, at least.

The irony, of course, of a guy with a BS in Political Science flipping burgers for a living is multi-faceted.  Is it a indictment of the failed liberal arts college educational system?  Maybe.  I've never held a job that I needed my degree to get or do.  But I also wouldn't be the same person that I am if I hadn't gotten my degree.  Most of my fiercely-held personal values come from what I studied during that time and all the thinking I did around everything I was reading;  Voltaire, Vonnegut, Locke, Rousseau, Robbins, Kerouac, Kundera, Kesey, Plato, Socrates.  I was grappling with the big abstract issues like human nature and the meaning of life.

Those formative years when I was doing all that Big Thinking informs every decision I make today and every process or policy involved in making the restaurant run day to day.  How I treat people, the choices I make of what items to purchase, which vendors to use, how much time and labor cost I choose to spend on one task or another...all of those things contain thousands of tiny decisions made or options taken every day that draw from the institutional belief systems I internally wrote for myself back then.

That's a big part of why I love what I do so much.  Because I have the opportunity to live my personal values and principles out through my work.  It's a blessing--a luxury, even--that I do not take for granted.  

The hackneyed cliche of citing "burger flippers" as the go-to example of minimum wage mindless drone entry-level workers and being a job that anyone with a working pulse can get and do isn't going away.   I've made my peace with hearing it tossed out.  And, sure, it's an easy 'dis in a debate about politics when things get heated with someone who knows what I do for a living.    

 I'll take it.  Burger-flipper and lifetime seeker of knowledge extraordinaire here!   Still grappling with and trying to understand the Big Questions of Life.  I may not ever figure it all out, but at least I'll eat good while I'm trying!

Read More 3 comments | Posted by Eddie Lakin

originally written 12/21/2024

The last week of business was wild in a lot of different ways.  So many customers who came through were long time regulars who showed up for that last experience before we closed up shop.  At some point, I started just assuming that everyone who showed up was there for that reason.  

"Hello," I said to one group, "glad you guys could make it in one last time.  What's that one menu item you'll miss the most?"

Only to be met by blank stares.  "Can we see a menu?  Do you have soup?  We've never been here before."

D'oh!  Nothing like a little dose of reality to knock me back to earth.  Not everyone knows your whole career and life story, self-centered guy.  Lesson learned.  Another shot of karmic humility administered and received.

At one point, a guy came through, Ron.  ordered a bunch of food, and then asked to use a coupon he had gotten through a text message marketing service I tried toward the end as a desperate attempt to try to stoke a bit more business.  I kind of assumed he didn't know we were closing up, given the context, but then he made a point of telling me that he wanted to make sure he used the coupon before we closed, so he didn't miss his chance to cash in on it.

It felt pretty tone-deaf to me.  Then again, I'm self-centered guy as noted above.  And for Ron, this was more about his opportunity to save $5 than it was the end of the 15-year run of my eponymous restaurant.  So, sure.  Going out on a positive note.  Taking the high road.  Coupon applied, sir!  Thanks for your business. 

The best, though, was a guy named Joe.  

Joe and his friends came through, each ordering separately.  We talked about the restaurant closing, their past visits, how it felt like the end of an era.  Joe waited and ordered last.  When he was about to order, his face got all scrunched up like he was getting upset.  He clearly needed to say something.

"I'm sorry!" he blurted, "I used to come here like twice a week and then Covid hit and now I work from home and I haven't been back here since.  I feel like it's all my fault that you guys are closing!"

His friends were silent.  They looked at him, then at me, waiting for my response.  I looked down at the POS screen, absorbing Joe's confession,  trying to figure out what to say.   I took a deep breath and allowed a long sigh to come out slowly.

Looking up, keeping my face serious I said "so YOU'RE the one!  You destroyed the economy, you and everyone like you!  Damn you to hell!"

I was kidding, of course.  But also, kind of not.  We did, I believe, close due to the whole working-from-home phenomenon that has changed the economic landscape in so many areas that depended on office worker business.   I kept expecting people to finally one day come back to the offices and stream off the el and the metra every morning the the way they used to, but it may never happen.

Obviously, it's not Joe's fault.  Or the fault of any one person.  So, Joe, you're off the hook.  I don't blame you.  All the customers who now can't get their garlic fries or char burger anymore don't blame you either.

....not entirely, at least.

So of course when I rang up Joe for his double cheeseburger, fries, and Oreo shake I made a big show of it and announced, "that'll be $322,032.43 please!"

Read More 0 comments | Posted by Eddie Lakin

 I've had a lot of mixed feelings about the idea of starting a GoFundMe to help me make the transition from running Edzo's for the past 15 years to whatever may come next.

Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Eddie Lakin

A squirrelly little grill cook named Rico who I worked with on the hot line of a steakhouse quietly told me once, in the midst of a busy service when we had 30+ steaks on the grill, different cuts, all started at different times and needing to be cooked to different degrees of doneness, with more tickets constantly streaming out of the printer..."I love being in the shit!  That's when time stops and I can really just exist!"

That stayed with me.  It was a memorable moment for me.  Because my life in restaurants has always been about navigating this strange dichotomy between control and chaos.   At the time, I thought he was crazy...maybe on drugs or something.   But I came to understand what he meant.

 Working the line on a busy Saturday teaches you a lot of things;  communication skills, efficiency, economy of movement, how to prioritize... and how to keep your mind calm and still when things feel crazy and everyone else is freaking out.

And that's a skill that I think has served me well in life generally, in addition to in restaurant kitchens.  

All my life I have been able to exist in the unknown, chaotic spaces without freaking out.  The idea is, like in the kitchen, when shit is flying all around you, just keep your head down, don't lose focus, and work through it.  Trust the process.  Ignore the noise.  You'll get there eventually, even if you're not sure where 'there' is right then.

When my first marriage ended I decided to take a leap and go to Europe without much more than a backpack and some chef's whites.  I only had "concepts of a plan", but I ended up living in Barcelona for a year, finding a great job I loved working for a chef I consider a mentor, and living in an apartment owned by the folks who ran the restaurant I was working at only a block away.  It ended up better than I could've ever planned or imagined and I never would've done it at all if I had gotten hung up on having the right paperwork, the proper work visa, or feeling the need to ensure everything was all set up for me before committing to going.

So now, finding myself at another turning point in my life, not knowing what I'm going to do next, how I'm going to pay my bills beyond the few months my personal savings will provide, I feel surprisingly ok about it all.   

Of course, I still have moments of anxiety.  I'm making lists like a madman (immediate, short term, long term), and I might actually be spending more hours per day doing career stuff now than I was when I was running the restaurant, so it's not like it feels like I'm on vacation or anything.  

It's just that I'm not freaking out.  I'm not panicking.  I'm sitting in the shit.  Existing.  The sound of the ticket machine rattling barely registers, the expediter is screaming at me for the mid-rare ribeyes on 52, I have to pee, and I just realized I'm gonna need to run back to dry storage and refill my salt dredge when I'm already way behind.  But I'm still calm.  I've been here before.

Focus.  Do what I know how to do.  Calmly, but with purpose and a sense of urgency.  Head down.  Be my authentic self.  Use the skills and talents I know I have.  Do the work.  Be diligent.  Prepare but also be flexible.  The path will reveal itself.  Things will happen the way they're supposed to. 

Thanks, Rico.  I'll always remember you fondly for showing me how to exist in the shit and enjoy it. 

Read More 2 comments | Posted by Eddie Lakin

originally written 12/16/2024

During the last week of business, everyone came out to pay their respects, have one last double with garlic fries, one last chocolate shake, and one last interaction with me.

On the first day, I left the online ordering open and allowed the new system to function so folks could order for themselves from the table, but it got to be too much and with our little staff, we quickly became overloaded.  So on the second day, I took it all back full circle, shut down all the online ordering, and everyone came through me, manually punching in their orders just like we did it on day 1.

It was so great to see all the familiar faces, so many regulars and friends who have been coming for over a decade now, and the outpouring of support and recognition really helped with how I'm feeling about the whole thing.

But that one question everyone asked..."so what's next?"  

And....I don't have an answer.  My non-answer became my answer as I navigated the hundreds of conversations.  "I honestly don't know," I'd say, "I've been so focused on trying to keep this place going".

 And that's true.  I just never entertained the idea that it would go under and I would need a plan B, and making a plan B somehow felt like giving up and admitting defeat. So I just never did.

My mind has gone 100 different directions since this all became real.  I've been so focused on the logistics of the shut down, moving stuff out, saying goodbyes, tying up loose ends, but my mind flashes onto sudden realizations now when I'm not expecting it.  So many possibilities.  I should relocate Edzo's somewhere on the North Shore to maintain the brand identity and good will I've built over 15 years.  I should capitalize on the social media reach with over 8,000 followers.  Maybe I'll do something something completely unrelated to restaurants!  Maybe I'll move to Portugal.  

I'm trying to allow all those flashes of ideas to hang in the air and consider them.  Part of me wants to run in completely the opposite direction of what I've been doing for the last decade and a half. Honestly, though, I'm scared that I won't be able to earn a living doing anything else.  I'm 55.  This is all I've done since my early 20's.  I'm freaking GOOD at it.  How can I change fields now, so late in my life?

So, for now, I've decided not to decide.

The good thing is, some of the good will and brand identity I've built over the years seems to be opening some doors.  I've been contacted by a bunch of people from a bunch of different suburbs about opening there.  That's very validating and feels promising, so I'll follow up with all of them and hopefully there's a situation that will make sense for all involved.  

Part of me, though, feels a newfound sense of freedom and relief as the days pass and I don't have to operate the restaurant.  15 years is a long time and I keep having these moments where I suddenly feel that "oh shit" feeling like I forgot something important--missed an employee's text, neglected to place a bread order--lurch for my computer or phone, and then realize...oh yeah, that's not a thing anymore.

I think I had forgotten how much I LIVED the existence of running Edzo's....being Edzo.  I did it for so long that I no longer remembered how it felt to just be Eddie Lakin, person, with a job.  Sure, your job is a part of your self-identity-formation in most cases, but when you own and operate your own business, it encompasses you entirely because you're never not doing it.  And when you're the everyday face of the restaurant, the brand for whom the eponymous restaurant is named, it's even more so.

 So to lose that is a little scary.  

Surprisingly, though, it doesn't feel scary at all.  I mean, sure, the financial part feels scary as in how am I going to make money to pay my bills stressful scary.  That's there, but I've been deep in that for a few years now.  The rest, though, feels more and more like a relief each time a new aspect of it dawns on me.  

I've been amazed at how much headspace has opened up for me and I'm finding that I'm taking care of other arenas of my life better.  I deep cleaned my bathroom.  I've been unpacking stuff that's been in boxes since I moved.... in 2017.  I've caught up on some reading (as in books!) and made a dent in my Netflix watch list instead of just putting on SVU at 9pm and falling asleep in 10 minutes.

I suppose that's all "self-care" and it's a good thing that I'm allowing myself some time for that after all of this.

So that's "what's next", I guess.  A period of rest, reassessment, gathering, sorting and thinking.  I'm going to honor the processes and allow myself the time to let it all unfold.  The layers of business-ownership peeling away, falling to the wayside, new ideas and fantasies that pop into my head (I want to learn glass-blowing!), old ideas that I made a note to pursue someday and shelved over the years...all of it.  I want to go down all the rabbit holes I didn't have time to go down during the last 15 years. 

I can't know what's next until I arrive in the new headspace that going through all these processes will bring about, so I'm not going to feel compelled to make a plan or a timeline right now.   When I get to the right fork in the road at the right moment, I will know.

Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Eddie Lakin