Alison Roman

At no point was I like, “Oh fuck, am I doing the wrong thing?” Or, “Oh shit! I should consider a backup plan, or I should go back to school, or I should figure out a new path.” I always knew that, at least career-wise, I was where I was supposed to be.

I’m definitely a pretty insecure person, but in the past few years, I’ve learned to accept and manage anxiety; that’s a big part of pretending that you’re confident. I’m still completely riddled with self-doubt, but I never really had a doubt that this was what I was supposed to be doing. Never, not at any point in my career. Not when I was cooking in restaurants for $7 an hour, or when I moved to New York with no job, or left my job to go freelance, or any of the moves that I made. I mean, I didn’t know that this would be the rest of my life until it start ed actually becoming my life, if that makes sense. When I started cooking in restaurants, I didn’t have a plan beyond “I want to get a job in a restaurant.” And when I moved to New York, I didn’t have a plan beyond “I want to live in New York.” I really didn’t start setting longer, more life-oriented goals until about two years ago . . . and I’m 33. I can’t explain it, but that’s how it worked out for me.

I’ve been freelance for about four years now. It was definitely much harder at the beginning. It really took a toll on me—and my friendships—because I became really needy. The people in my life were spending all day with other people and would be drained or done, and I was like, “Hey guys! Want to hang out? Want to hang out?” I’ve actually thought about this a lot lately and I think the reason I cook for other people is because I’m alone so much.

But I’m also the kind of person who needs my own time. It’s really important for my creative process. With cooking, it’s very easy for me; I don’t mind doing that alone and I trust myself implicitly. Where it becomes challenging is the big picture process: I’m running my own business and I’m doing it pretty much by myself. So I’ll think, Is this a good idea? Should I say yes to that? Should I pursue this?

I only have myself to ask and myself to answer. The writing process is impossible to feel good about doing alone. You write this whole book, 360 pages of text, recipes, ideas, and thoughts, and the only person reading it is your editor. You tell yourself, I think it’s good and my editor thinks it’s good. But we’re just two people—and I’m one of them. And then you realize that the book is going to come out to the whole world and you’re like, “Oh, fuck. What if it sucks?” You really have to trust yourself, but it’s just so hard. There’s not that same comfort you have when you’re working at an office or a magazine, with a team of people whose job it is to set up the photo shoots and weigh in on the text and think creatively. It’s just you. That’s why I do it, though. I think it’s cool. Even when things aren’t perfect, I feel proud of the fact that it’s me. Even though it has flaws, even though I feel like I could have done better or done something differently, it’s me. It’s a snapshot of where I was at that time in my life. I just have to try to be okay with that.

A lot of people say they do what I do, but I don’t think that many people are really doing it. Everybody is like, “I write cookbooks and I develop recipes, too!” And I’m like, yeah, but you have a team of people. Or they claim they’re doing it even though they’re not and they can say that because they’re famous. I cook all the food in my cookbooks, for all the photo shoots, and for my New York Timescolumn. I’m in charge of all the decisions, including the creative ones, and even though that’s oftentimes a lot more interesting than developing a recipe, it’s exhausting.

I think of myself as a service-driven person. I’m doing service journalism. I’m making recipes not for my own ego or for my own health, but because I really care about you cooking at home more. I want to teach you because cooking changes the dynamic of your home life, your personal life, your friendships, and your relationships. It changes your life if you make it a regular practice. I want to help people and the best way to do this is not by offering them the most complicated or intricate or fancy way to do something. It’s by doing it in the most reasonable and efficient and beautiful way.

I’m still figuring out what it means to have the lines be blurred between a business self and a personal self. People feel entitled to your life when you are on the internet. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 followers or 500,000 followers. If you’re putting something on the internet and you’re a person they’re interested in, they will ask you any question they want. There’s zero shame about it and they will harass you until you respond. Sometimes I wonder, Should I be more helpful? Should I be more present? Should I be more available to people?Then other times I’m just like, I can’t be more available to anybody because I can’t even be available to myself or my friends or the people that I care about. That’s what’s really tricky: the fine line between answering cooking questions from strangers on Instagram and then also answering the question of “Where should I eat when I’m in New York?” like I’m a concierge.