a year in

I recently read a blog post about prioritizing positive energy in one's life. I concurred wholeheartedly because that's what led me on this whole life path. I was at an energy-sucking job, so to take my life back I decided to invest completely in an activity that had a proven record of focusing and exciting me (cooking).

Sadly, this third semester hasn't involved much of that. As my degree will be in Culinary Arts & Hospitality Management, this semester is focused on the hospitality side of things, which for now means that I am serving people in the cafeteria. More specifically, I am ladling out the soups I used to make as a second semester student.

Gone are the tight-fitting white commis caps and checkered pants. They were never very fashionable, not like the baseball caps and black pants I now outfit myself in every day, but funny how I long to be wearing them again, and again straining myself to carry hotel pans and stockpots and sweating next to the steam kettle.

It's not that I'm not cooking at all. I'm taking two advanced classes - Advanced Baking & Pastry, and Garde Manger (cold foods). So far in Garde Manger we've only been watching Chef do demos, which is nice and all - but it wasn't until I ducked out of class to sheet some puff pastry dough for Advanced Baking did I feel some of that - the intense task absorption that to me is an oasis of calm.

I have to find more of that, or else I'm going to lose it. Purpose, life. What I spent the last year holding on to.