Still at the stove
I knew French onion soup takes a long time. I just didn’t expect to still be standing at the stove at this hour.
There’s a thing food bloggers do where they understate the caramelising time. Five minutes, they say. Or ten at most. Tom Scocca wrote about this in Slate back in 2012 — really, it’s closer to 45 minutes, sometimes more. The bloggers know that if they told you upfront, you’d just grab the canned version. So they round down, you get burned, and the soup never tastes as it should.
The passive income crowd does the same thing. Build a funnel, post some content, watch it compound. What they don’t mention is the slow years before any of that. And here’s the thing about trying to rush caramelised onions — the faster you try, the worse it gets. You end up with burned bits and wasted time. The people who get it right are the ones who accepted early that this was going to take as long as it takes.
And it’s not just the length. There’s also the part where you think you’ve ruined it — the moment the pan looks wrong, the smell shifts, and you’re not sure whether to scrape it or start over. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. That’s just the middle of the process.
My business has been slow lately. The tech budget cuts that started somewhere upstream eventually reached a contractor like me. On the hard days, I start scrolling LinkedIn Jobs. The idea of a regular salary is genuinely appealing. The regularity of it. One less uncertainty sitting on your chest.
But then I also remember the meeting with a fellow association council member many years ago. At some point, he mentioned his daughters and then went quiet. His expression shifted. I’ve spent enough time around people to read a room — and in that meeting, he’d spent two hours talking over everyone, steering every decision back to himself, never once asking what anyone else thought. If that was how he moved through the world, I could understand the distance.
I’ve seen versions of this more times than I can count. I missed the birth of my third kid because of a work commitment. I still think about it. You can’t get that one back.
But here’s what leaving corporate actually bought me.
My oldest talks to me about his gym routine like I’m his training partner. My second told me last week she wants to work at Baskin-Robbins so she can try all 72 flavours. (I did not tell her that’s not how employment works.) My youngest tells me everything, often well past the point where I need to know.
My third is quiet. Maybe he’s still processing the birth thing. But we make a good escape room team, and I’ll take it.
None of that happened by accident. I engineered it. Left corporate specifically so I could be around for the weekday pickups, the random Tuesday conversations, the time that only exists if your schedule is actually yours.
Everyone’s reason is different. Mine happens to be time with my kids. Yours might be something else entirely — the work itself, the freedom, the thing you’re trying to build. But you had a reason when you started. Something specific enough that you were willing to take the harder path to protect it.
The article I mentioned earlier ends with this: the best time to caramelise onions is yesterday. You should have started before you needed them.
Most of us didn’t. We’re already behind schedule, already wondering if we should just order in.
But the canned version was always available. You chose the two hours for a reason.
Just don’t forget what it was.