Change of Plan

My first year back in school is over and I made it through my second semester with an "A" in my baking class (guess Chef Rudi kinda liked me after all!) and a "B" in Purchasing. And now, I'm changing my major, I am not going to become a pastry chef after all! Goodbye very ugly black slip resistant shoes and tall chefs hat. Hello pen and paper. I'm going to change my major - Creative Writing! Business? Marketing! Hmmm.....more on that later.

Guess what else? I'm seeing someone - a life coach. I know, I did say The Secret is stupid and now here I am paying someone to help guide me on my life path. But it works, or at least I think it is working. Already I've come to the conclusion that someone that cannot even decide what to make for dinner 100% of the work week and up until a few short weeks ago thought folding referred to laundry, probably shouldn't try and become the next Paula Deen. That said, I'm a little surprised by the fact that this baking class led me to such self-discovery. I even got to like my extremely stern teacher. He really is a great teacher, he's just hard, and since most people want to take the easy way out, which is definitely not an option with him, they knock him. I can't, he really is good at what he does, and he cares. Sure, I was almost reduced to tears one class and a few times I had myself a good old-fashioned passive aggressive under my breath swearing/muttering tirade while rolling out my dough, but in the end, I realized, Chef Rudi made me a better person and definitely a better baker, although I'm not sure that's saying much (about my baking, not the better person stuff.) And just so you know, I already decided this before I had my practical baking test, before he judged my tray of baked goods, eyes twinkling, with a "not much to complain about here" as he graded my work. I may as well have won the Nobel Peace Prize I was so excited to hear that come out of his mouth. I've come a long way since being yelled at for stretching the gluten out of my dough or making gloppy tart glaze.

So, back to the better person stuff. You see, when the semester started, I was of the impression that at my age, I could not do certain things. Among them, stay anywhere with a "Holiday" or an "Inn" or a "6" or an "8" in the name, live without a Starbucks first thing in the morning, stand on my feet for a full 5 hours without a break and not go to the ladies room whenever the mood strikes, which with me is about 20 times a day, and as we all know I was incensed at the thought of not having a locker to call my own. But, I found out I am a lot better at buckling down than I thought I would be. Of course I got my locker by saying I had a medical condition, but other than that slight freak out I did what I was supposed to, and I'm proud of myself for that. Sure, when you are 18 or 19 no breaks for 5 hours is not a big deal, it wouldn't have been to me back in the Duran Duran day, but now, that seemed like a jail sentence. And I lived through it, and now I may be a tad less demanding in my every day life. I can roll with it a bit more. I'm not as rigid, demanding.

One thing I have noticed is that a lot of times as we get older, supposedly wiser, more successful and settled, we also get more set in our ways and things that we accepted in our earlier years are beyond comprehension to us now. And it's not just me. Many a morning my sister, 3 years younger than I, will call me and the beginning of the call starts with "I'm old - you're not going to believe what I did" to which I either reply that I, too, have done that very thing or I top it with an "I'm old" story of my own from the previous day.

Remember when you were barely out of your teens? Did we think anything at all of sleeping on the sofa in our best friends college dorm, the one that had springs that poked us in the back all night while the fluorescent lighting buzzed on and off? We slept. We didn't worry about how soundly, or how long, or even how comfortably. If we ordered a cheeseburger and it came with mayo and we hate mayo even more than we hated the fact that even though we asked for it without mayo and the waiter ignored us because he knew the tip wasn't going to be anywhere near the acceptable mark, did we complain to the manager? No, we scraped it off and ate the burger and left our paltry tip, not because the service was bad, but because we didn't know you tip 15% to 20% for good service and about 10 for bad. We thought nothing of running out of toilet paper (nowadays I have to have at least 10 extra rolls in wait), hand soap (today I require at least 5 extra bottles on hand) or toothpaste (minimum stock 2 extra tubes) not to mention water. We didn't run around with bottled water, we drank, gasp, from the tap, and sometimes when we went to that pretentious little French restaurant on Ventura Boulevard we drank Evian, but we certainly didn't have to have a mini Aquafina bottling plant in our extra fridge out in the garage.

Now that I have conquered said hardships and a whole year in school with very good grades I might add, I am ready to do something I have always wanted to, but have been too afraid to try. I, Suellen Meyers, am going to write for a living. I want to write, become a writer, get paid to write, make a living writing. I changed my major and am going to re-take a basic English class from my college days long ago as a refresher, plus, a Critical Thinking class from back in the day as well. From there, I will most likely do creative writing and possibly a fiction class. Which brings me to my blog. I get that my few followers may have dropped off the wayside by now, and really, is license to bake the apt title now? But, I have a new goal for myself. I am going to write every day. I am going to talk about my journey, as well as adults trying to figure out what to do in their second or third or heck, even fourth careers, and adults going back to school. In this economy, lots of us are not working, and reinventing, and I'm right there with ya. But, my year in Pastry served me well, it was a year in which I gained a lot of insight, a stronger backbone, and an 18 year old BFF! When all is said and done, I thank Chef Rudi for helping me relax a bit and realize hard work, even for old dogs, can teach us a few new tricks, or maybe, bring us back to some old ones.