Recently I have been thinking about how strange and different life will soon be for me. As the number of days left at work dwindle and the final packages of *essentials* arrive in the mail, I am at once exuberant and doubtful. Part of me (and I’ll admit, it is an overwhelming part) is ready to chuck it all and hightail it out of here, as fast as that big ‘ole plane can fly! Another part of me is reluctant to make such a big step, especially one that has seemed little more than a pipe dream for so many years. Perhaps it is the concerned “You’re leaving?!” expressions from patrons and employees at work, with the connotation that I’m being “let go” or maybe it’s the “Oh, we’ll miss you!”, which whilst sweet and heartwarming is likely not the culprit. Rather, I believe it comes from the well meaning but vaguely belittling “…and leave this all behind!” and “…but you’re so good at baking!”. Oh, and let’s not forget “Oh! You’re going to school? This whole time? For what? My goodness?”. Silly rabbit.

I know I am good at what I do. With no formal training I can whip out lovey little confections and decorate them to the nines.

The problem lies not with the job itself. I think other people who dream of being pastry chefs–not that I really consider myself on that level–and go out and do it are great. Really, anytime you can do something you choose is quite an accomplishment. And therein lies the issue: I didn’t choose this line of work. It was simply one short-term job decision, in a long line of short-term, short-sighted, I-need-to-pay-my-rent, decisions. Yes, I enjoy it. Yes, I consider myself talented at it. But it does not bring me joy, not that pervasive, I don’t care about all this other BS that’s going on around me, I can’t wait to go to work today joy. Most days I’m lucky if I can rise above the prickly annoyance I feel for customers who think fifty cents is too much for a muffin or that $1.50 is an outrageous price for a handmade, from scratch pastry. Demoralizing. Maybe I’ve tricked myself in to believing this feeling actually exists in relation to a job. Maybe I’ll never find it. But I have to try.

When I would tell people that I am studying abroad or even for what I am studying abroad (psychology/neuroscience) I get the most shocked expressions. At first I felt extremely insulted, as if these people through their slacked jaws and bulging eyes were judging me unfit for my chosen area of study. I would forcefully haul back the indignation and anger that would spring up out the highly sensitive reaches of my inherently defensive mind. 

Then I realized just how defensive I had become…to everything. It was like I was constantly building this arsenal of defensive comebacks just in case someone had an errant comment on why I was in the bathroom or why I dare deign to actually sit down and eat lunch or why I didn’t leap across the counter, floury hands and butter stained knuckles, to help them with that fifty cent muffin. Choice is paramount to my life. And choice of career a very basic need–no, requirement to my life. I am the type of person who cannot separate what I do with who I am. It is not something I like about myself, or my mode of thinking, but I cannot unravel the two. So it follows that if I cannot take pride in or derive more than merely a modicum of pleasure from what I do, then it won’t matter how talented I am it, how easily it comes to me, how quickly I pick it up, or how much I excel at it, regardless of the amount of external praise. I guess what I’m saying is that my defensiveness is merely a result of feeling not in control of my life, my career, my decisions, my choices. And helplessness is an ugly bedfellow.

Life is about Choice. You make the choices that define your life. If you feel like flotsam and jetsam simply being tossed across the sea, then perhaps you must examine your choices or look to where you failed to choose, only to be swept away with the waves always threatening to drown you. If I drown now, and I very well might, at least I’ll go down knowing that I made a Choice, one that is focused on life in its long, winding, glorious beauty and in which I have set the short-sighted ones aside for paths undiscovered, far from the only roads I’ve ever known.

Location: Lancaster, PA