What do you do when your restaurant takes the joy out of cooking?
Hey, I am an apprentice to become a chef and I am doing my second year of three to get my degree. I always enjoyed cooking, not even for the end product, but just the steps, consistency and how you can make a lot from barley anything. I work at a rather high end hotel and it was nice in the beginning. I learned a lot and I had fun, but now after two years it is just... exhausting to be there. I still like cooking, but just not in the restaurant. Its just dull now. Repetitive recipes, no one really teaches anything anymore. I am there to learn and I want to learn. I ask about stuff and get told I'm asking too much. It just kills the drive. But now its starting to affect my home life. I expected the job to be exhausting and time consuming (I like the company of books well enough so I had no real problem with my social life), but even on my days off I just dont want to put in the effort into cooking. Or recipes really. I used to love writing them down like an addict, I could do that for hours. Now I barley manage to motivate myself to do that once or twice a month. I loved to challenge myself to cook, hell even now I do that when I see something special ingredient I haven't used before, but its not as often. It's making me sad frankly. Has anyone else dealt with this? Just trying to learn, getting your drive killed and it creeping into your personal life?