Balance

I am struggling to find balance. To balance what I want and being somebody that other people can have in their lives. Work and school are what they are. I can't change my hours, or the fact that I am at school 30 hours a week and work 40 hours a week. I can't change the fact that those two things are really the only things in my existence right now. They are all consuming.

The boy needs me to try to conform to a schedule where we are awake at the same times. We are home a lot, but one of the two of us is sleeping. I want to wind down with a few beers when I get home. I want to have time to decompress. I don't want to go to bed when I get home.

My friends need me to be available during normal hours, not at midnight. They need me to be able to meet them for cocktails and to catch up during times when it is convenient for them. I want to call them at midnight when I get off work and catch up. I don't want to call them when I am driving from one to the other or on break at school. I want to use those times to decompress. To have some me time before I am thrust into situations where I am required to communicate.

As a blogger, I want to tell you all the stories, but this industry is so fucking terminology centric. Like, I had a funny story the other day about mire poix and I started blogging it, but after I spent a paragraph explaining what mire poix is, the story just didn't seem funny anymore. You all need me to be relate-able, to be someone who tells funny stories about work. Someone who can talk about my life and share with all of you.

I don't know what to do to change this. I don't know how to be this person anymore, but I really really want to be someone who can still have my old life and my new one. I want the best of both worlds.

It's a balance I haven't figured out and I apologize. To all of you, to my friends whether Internet or not. I am trying. I am not giving up this blog, I don't care if I do a terminology list on the side so you all know what I am talking about and can laugh along with me. I will figure this out.

However, something really cool is happening. Tomorrow night my class is preparing the meal for the American Culinary Foundation meeting here in town. I am really excited and completely plan on a post tomorrow full of pictures.

For the record, mire poix is the combination of onions, carrots, and celery (2:1:1) that is the basis for most sauces and stocks in French cooking. The whole point of the story was knowing that you need to cut your mire poix based on the cooking time - small for short, big for long - so you don't end up with mush. In hindsight, the story may not have been that funny. I laughed my fucking ass off, but it may have been a "you had to be there" kind of moment. I really just miss blogging.