As usual, this morning I woke up, stepped on the scale, and vowed to start losing weight again. And as usual, work intervened, and found me diving for the green olives and red wine when I got home (after eating bean soup and a banana for lunch and becoming ravenously cranky as a result), and plotting one of my favorite comfort food dinners of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the obligatory vegetables, green beans with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (hint, not a match for chicken and potatoes - but I've nailed my gravy recipe).
We got up early, the first snooze of my alarm early, and got to work at 6:00 a.m. What an ungawdly hour (even though I went to bed at 7:00 last night to compensate). I worked late, even, and still left work undone. Not important work. Busy work, really, interviewing people who we won't hire. I wonder how some people can be so un-self-aware. But then again, I'm being cynical. I've worked in HR for too long. I don't know how I will handle the next 2 1/2 years finishing my PhD. I started this semester (okay, two weeks ago) so excited, and now, even that has fizzled. I have a paper due on Wednesday, a two-page paper, but analyzing, synthesizing, not exactly just writing my position and moving on. I wonder, once again, why is it that I'm getting my PhD. The Master's, okay, since I was an undergrad, that was a dream, and I thought it would open doors for me, that came and went, the doors are more closed now than ever - since I am not relocating now.
What I really want to do, if I had no debt, no obligations, is to go to culinary school. I am not sure I want to be a professional chef or caterer, but I really want to teach people how to cook. I want to design curriculum and incite passion in others - and spend the day playing with my food! How will I do this? I have grown accustomed to not worrying about money (after 10 years of living near poverty, I can't go back to this state), buying what I want when I want it, having a large walk-in closet the size of most Manhattan apartments overflowing with clothes and shoes, travel, vacations, restaurants, wine. So I have to find a way to support myself while going to culinary school, somehow in my one-track mind, getting a PhD and teaching at a university would allow this, or getting the letters and writing a book. Any combination that doesn't include wasting my brain on scheduling and re-scheduling interviews, conducting interviews, or scheduling consultants who we pay to tell us what I can - and charge us even more to do what I can and love to do, or answering stupid questions (yeah, there is such a thing as stupid questions - I get multiple stupid questions a day asked of me) will be a step in the right direction.
For now, I have to live out my fantasies in the evening, an hour or so at a time in my own kitchen, going to bed and meditating that I live a more fulfilling professional life, that's what I've got. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment