On the future and other mindless things

For a while last semester, I got the crazy idea in my head that my true calling in life was to be a chef. I had spent a great deal of time at home in South Carolina over winter break, and during the course of my two week stay, I talked more about school and my future than I had in the past 2 months combined. When tufw announced the closing, I had my one solid day of complete panic and tears and the whole emotional breakdown, what am I going to do with my life, freak out. But that was it. After that one day, I shut that part of my mind down, i turned it off, flipped the switch, moved on, walked away. I told everyone that I just wasn't ready to talk about it yet, and so I didn't make plans for the future. Instead, I assumed that life would work itself out in the end, just like it always does. So when I got to South Carolina and endured the endless discussions, going around and around and around in circles, having the same pointless conversations with everyone that I encountered, I finally came to the conclusion that I HAD to find a degree that would get me out of school and done with this part of my life in 2 years or less.
The obvious choice was culinary arts. Of course.
If you were thinking something more like dog groomer, I'm sorry to disappoint.

During the brief period of time when I decided that my life was lacking in the cooking and eating department, I cooked a grand total of one time. A whopping one dinner was prepared, thought over, consumed, and then, for a lack of better words, revisited.
I made dinner, the best dinner (though, now I can't look back on it without feeling ill), a dinner that required so much time and effort that I spent the whole day making it. I ate dinner and drank a beer along with it, and the next day I came down with the stomach virus, and I will never be able to drink beer from a green glass again. The very sight of grits makes me queasy, and I haven't touched salmon since. It was not a very good time. But it was an excellent deterrent. I learned from this experience that cooking was NOT on the menu - laugh if you will - for my future. Professional cooking, that is.

Now, as the year draws to a close, the window of time is growing smaller, the light at the end more dim, I feel like I may have finally settled on something. Maybe, for once in my life, I have come to terms with my life, maybe I've finally evaluated the things that are important to me in a way that will satisfy my heart cry. Maybe, just maybe, this is where I'm supposed to be; heading down the road I'm supposed to be on. I believed for the longest time that I'd be heading south. South where? South anywhere, wherever the wind blew, just south. But now...somewhere else is calling my name, something else is drawing my attention away from the past year in youth ministry. Maybe now I can finally settle into school, into my passion, into my future and my career. Photography? San Fransisco? Missions? It calls to me.