🧈 Fried butter burgers

Fried butter burgers. That’s what was on the menu last night. There’s more to the story though. 

I cook to feed my creative juices and breathe when I have the time. This wasn’t always the case. There was a period of my life I would buy a six pack of beer on my way home from my corporate job. Such an incredibly weird and detached time, yet I also simultaneously learned and gained so much great experience from those years more than a decade ago. 

After work and my drive home to the farm from Lincoln, I could finish the six pack off while making supper until I was in a numb buzz. That buzz made my buzzing around unnaturally last longer, so I could finish my tasks. Lots of farm kids are rewarded for doing tasks well during the formative years, not given the time and space to grow into who they are divinely designed to truly be. 

That early conditioning was spilling into my adult professional life. I seriously needed to grow a backbone and figure out who I was really meant to be and what gifts I was supposed to share with the world. I needed to learn to afford myself, time. 

While I knew how to be productive on one hand, I had a ways to go when it came to simply being myself. Way back then, I had the bottle-induced buzz I needed to maintain the unhealthy OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) energy and farm-raised/nose-to-the-grindstone endurance  to wipe down the kitchen cupboards with Clorox wipes, clean the shower, clean out my email in box, make a written paper list for the next day, sweep/vacuum the garage, fold towels, sort Bobby pins from hair scrunchies, dust under the plants, straighten pictures, pick up Barbies and sort their little clothes from little plastic shoes, and the list goes on. You know, crazy task stuff most people probably wouldn’t burn the midnight oil doing them sober. At least not like a trusty soldier showing up to do them nearly 24/7, seven days a week. 

It’s the crazy stuff you do when you want to shut down the buried feelings deep inside and maintain, “Type-A, I totally want everyone to think I’ve got this covered control.”

I remember when I was working at DuPont Pioneer, a fellow employee stopped me during a sales event we were having in some other big city. I don’t remember where even because it was all computers, hotels, and alarm clocks at that point. Everyone was going to socialize before dinner that evening and I was doing emails like a gerbil on speed. 

But then Matt said this magical phrase as he came up behind me, trying to get my attention away from the glowing screen, “I have never seen dedication like it.”

I took Matt’s words as the ultimate compliment. He said them hoping I would take a break. He truly cared. I truly didn’t know how to care about myself. 

Much later, I stopped this. Not cold turkey. I just gradually stopped. I eventually started my own business. My own “art.” I had no idea where it was going. I was honestly scared and excited too. I was feeling my way around freedom and time. I was feeling. Finally. No more daily drinking binges. No more bottoms of bottles of bad beer and cheap wine. 

I don’t oppose a drink, even a series at the right time and place. When it calls me, I guess it can be a sort of expression of art to have the right high-end cocktail. But, in my case, the daily doses of fermented drink just blocked my more important art. Blocked my open-ended capacity to think through the right next steps for me. Blocked what I really wanted unlocked. Blocked what I wanted to stop numbing out: the joy of the simple things, doing laundry, making a meal, decorating for the seasons, walking around barefoot, rocking out to tunes, reading great books, penning poetry, and hearing what my children have to say. Being present in me, this moment. 

Today my form of artistic expression is called “writing awake.” It’s trying to level up the solutions I dream of applying and seeing come to fruition  in the real world. Dreams dropping like my unique form of strategic stardust seeds where I think they need to be planted, instead of dreams drowning in the basement of a frosted mug or wine glass. 

Dreams that also need helpers. Yes, my “Little Red Hen” days are over. I am enlisting a circle of artists to help. The joy is knowing some of them don’t even realize how much art they have to give … yet. 

I also have a new go-to hobby, instead of a bottle to reach for. It’s refining and honestly just enjoying the preparation of my “farm food” as the kids call it. They appreciate it, but they get tired of it too. I get it. But it’s beginning to serve the purpose I want it to, I hope. Maybe it’s a dinner idea for a tired mama. Maybe it’s inspiration to head home a day early for a worn out dad on the road. Maybe it reminds you of the warm glow of grandma when the kitchen was hers and you were just there getting fed the essence of love in every bite. The essence of her undivided attention that was better than even the best meal. 

It’s not all gone in the world. That healthy glow. We all have a capacity for it. For those reaching for the bottom of the bottle to find your last light, look, I get it. I know. You’re good. Look in the mirror. You’re here today. You made it. Make one better decision today, for yourself. One day at a time towards better. Be gentle. Breathe. 

That’s all I want my readers to know is even if you have done really bad things, especially the really bad thing of undervaluing yourself in any way, you’re still good. You’re still great in fact. You’re still so deserving. 

So, I made butter burgers with fried onions made with the grease from the hamburger and a healthy shot or two of brown sugar. I enjoyed them nestled next to peas and cottage cheese. I listened to the quiet in the farmhouse, all the way. 

Whatever you’re reaching for to numb the pain today, tonight, or tomorrow morning, I have been there. Sometimes I get weak and still go there. But never like I used to. She’s not even the same person anymore. I said goodbye and meant it. 

Mostly after 48 years, I am just finding my inner art light and sharing it. If it’s not your sort of art, I understand. But look, it’s me. So that’s the art it’s going to be. 

I see the glow in you. I have discovered one of my talents may be the undivided attention I can naturally give the emotional details in others. I want to really hear what you have to say. That talent was formed by bad conditioning trying to read minds when I was growing up. Now it’s no longer my burden to bear some of that abuse, but instead transform it into the hope energy I can exponentially express. 

I want to help you find a place for your story that suits you. I want to afford you the glowing freedom of your precious time, back. 

Think of the place, just one place, one moment even, that made you feel an authentic warm glow. Recreate that experience in your world, one minuscule step at a time. 

Take. That. Little. Glow. Step. Afford others their little, or big, glow steps too. We each need freedom to take those steps.  

That’s how our lights are going to shine on long after we’re gone. 

So here’s the truth. I see you and all that you can do, whatever point you’re at on the path, your light shines. It totally does, and it should shine all the way, shine in the art form that is the one and only, you.  

Copyright© 2025 All Rights Reserved, Kerry Hoffschneider