About Me

I have struggled for most of my life with my own identity, fighting the battle of who I want to be and who I really am, wishing to be something I am not and sometimes changing a little bit about myself to come closer to this ideal. Sometimes I try to be who other people want me to be. I was crippled by shyness as a child, which will shock some of you because I am far from shy now. I started to force myself into situations that made me uncomfortable and eventually, I started to come out of my shell. My breath still catches in my throat when I walk into a room full of people I don't know. My first instinct is to look at the ground and stand in the corner. I have to force myself out of that shell every single time I walk into a new situation. It has gotten significantly easier over the years, but that shyness still nags at the back of my mind.

I am proud of this change, of forcing myself to work through my shyness. But, there are other battles in my mind. Other battles of who I am versus who I want to be.

I want to be someone who gets up at 7:00 am and works out and eats breakfast. I am someone who sleeps until the last possible second and is out the door and showered in 15 minutes with a Dr. Pepper for breakfast. If I have nowhere to go, I often sleep until noon.

I want to be someone who is a size 4 and always chooses the salad over the french fries. I am a size 10 and I will choose the french fries every single time.

I want to be someone who aspires to be a great chef. I am someone who just wants to find a well paying job that I love, cooking good food. I don't have the ambition to be great. And I am not willing to make the sacrifices it will take to get there.

I want to be understanding. I am critical. I am hard on people, I expect a lot of them.

I want to be someone who reads great literature and poetry. I just finished this book. And laughed my ass off through the whole thing. I am hoping all of you choose to believe that link takes you to Chaucer and do not actually click on it. Fuck, at least I know who Chaucer is.

I want to be active in politics and animal rights. I sign petitions and donate money and never actually do anything to help.

I want to have cute hair and cute clothes and perfect make up. I can't remember the last time anything other than moisturizer was on my skin. I dress like Simon Cowell and I don't remember the last time I got a hair cut. I have a closet full of shoes, but live in flip flops and non-slip kitchen shoes.

I want to love the outdoors. I hate nature and bugs. I like to look at it from the safety of my temperature controlled living room. The urge will come to be outside and get fresh air, but it is typically ruined by a dive-bombing bug and the urge quickly fades.

I want to not care that everyone in my life is in such a different place than me. Married, having kids, and I am working until 1:00 am and going out drinking. But, I do care. I wish I had figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up 10 years ago.

I am a lot of good things. I am funny, though often in a self deprecating way. I am accepting and open minded. I truly love people and animals, even though I often threaten to kill both in the face. I will stand up for other people and myself. I can laugh at myself. I am honest. I am brave.

When I started this blog, I knew I needed an About Me page. I like reading them on other people's blogs and I think that it is important to tell people who you are. I just never know what to write. On job applications when asked for words to describe myself, I usually put "really bad at thinking of words to describe myself." Seriously. The people at my current job still talk about it.

I have at least 10 drafts of an About Me page written, not one saying what I wanted to say about myself. I have had this blog for two years this month, although my anniversary of it going public is still a few months away. In those two years, my life has been turned upside down and changed so much. I have become a person I did not think I was capable of being. I have added brave to the list of things to describe myself only recently.

I would like to say that I am ever-changing and that is why it is so hard to write an About Me, but that would just be another thing added to the list of things I want to be but am not.

I have always been superstitious when it comes to saying something out loud. It's not true if you don't say it, it can still change if nobody knows. So, maybe there are some things I don't want to put in words yet, some things I still want to be able to change. Or maybe I am still working on accepting that some things cannot change.

Update: By great chef, I mean famous. World renowned. I want to be a great fucking chef, I just don't necessarily want to have a celebrity status or to win awards for it.