A kitchen taught me what a standard is, and I want that at home

Six years in professional kitchens taught me what a standard actually is, and it is nothing like what people mean by the word at home. It is a line that does not move because you are tired, and somebody who looks, every service, and sends it back. I left that world last year for my health, and the thing I miss is not the work. It is being held to something by a person who was never once satisfied out of kindness.

Twenty seven, Manhattan, I do prep for a catering outfit on weekday mornings and I am asleep by ten most nights.

What I want is that shape in a private life. A woman who leads, a set of duties that are entirely mine, and a standard she sets and does not lower because I have had a hard week. I am very good at doing a thing exactly as I am told and I am poor at deciding what ought to be done, which I mention because people regularly mistake the first for the second.

I have no experience of any of this outside work and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I do have is six years of practice at being corrected without taking it personally, which I gather is the part most people find hardest.

Nothing paid and nothing accepted. Not looking for a woman who wants a cook, though I will certainly cook. Not looking for anything that needs my evenings after nine, since I am useless by then. Not looking to be given an easy time, which is the one thing that would make all of this pointless.