It's a Nice Town After All

I begin my first day of sophomore year in high school tomorrow, if we must be specific, though I am not really nervous. Perhaps it is the repetition of having a first day so often that I do not feel the need to go over it in detail in my mind. I will simply show up, record the needed supplies for the next week, and then go back home to fill out the homework that always starts with asking us a little about ourselves. Frankly, it is all getting a little too predictable. The only times that I have ever felt uneasy is when I am starting a new school. That doesn't happen often, since I have a life where most of the people I see, I have known since I first started kindergarten. That is because I have resided in the same house since I was first brought home from the hospital. My dad often remarks of his jealousy over how we have such long-term friends since he and his family moved around quite often, and there were no cell phones back then to keep in touch as easily as we do now.

I do have some expectations for what this year will be like. I know that before we know it, it will be summer again, and it will once again be brought to my attention how fast everything moves. My few expectations that I have regard how people will see me. I want to be seen as an overall happy person. Maybe even a confident person, if I get up the guts to act that way. I can easily be my crazy self that nobody really knows about with my friends. With people I have seen but don't know, it's a completely different story. With them, I just try to get off being liked.

My brother is very popular with the drama society kids. This is mostly because he is one. As I type, he is at a play rehearsal. I have trouble keeping up with his friends. Most of them are highly energetic and talk about a lot of topics at rapid pace. They also keep a lot of inside jokes among each other, so after a while, I lose interest trying to keep up with all the topics that seem unrelated to me, yet makes complete sense to them. One of those 'you had to be there' incidences. Don't get me wrong, I do not dislike them. I very much enjoy their good humor and how down-to-earth they all seem to be. However, I feel that I can never reach a good friendship with them. This is difficult to explain, but I will try. You see, because my brother is such good friends with them and they know him so well, they appear to expect the same type of personality out of me. That is probably because we are of the same age, and to those unfamiliar with twins or triplets or however many there are, we are one and the same. Therefore I cannot have a conversation with a drama kid unless they know me individually without feeling compared to my brother. That is my reason for not being able to have anything to do with them, as much as I like them.

I do have proof to being compared to my brother, and I will quickly say now that this does not include everyone in the drama society, should anyone happen across this and read it.

I do not know at the moment if my profile says anything about this, but I am a percussionist, a.k.a., a drummer. I decided to join a couple friends and do this charity group thing that was hosting a local band night. We came up with a couple songs. I was just accompaniment, so I really only played for one song. After I went up there and performed, after the usual people saying how good they thought I was, which is always heartwarming, I got a couple accounts of people saying something like, "I knew you played drums, but I didn't know you could play!" Basically, they assumed I sucked. Not exactly something you want to hear. So I decided to perform in my school's open mic-night, which we call Cabaret Night. I sang Favorite Things from the film The Sound of Music. My brother also performed his own song, and he played piano to mine. My friend went up to me when she saw me next and said, "So now that we know you can sing and stuff, are you gonna do any musicals?" Since my brother is doing his first play, I feel that some expect me to follow. In my life, I do not expect to follow the same path as either of my brothers. I do not see myself as a musician by profession, though I do greatly enjoy playing music and would consider myself a musician at heart and talent, I'm just uncomfortable with improvisations.

I guess what I'm saying is, I am much more comfortable and happier exploiting my confidence with my trusted friends. Strangers seem to be the ones that judge the most. A good friend of mine who moved here last year once said to me that she liked it here than where she lived previously. She said that the friends here really look out for each other and stay together. In her other town she said it was more like one-on-one. When I think about it, it's true. We really do stay close to one another, even if a great secret is told, we encourage them all the more for it.  I guess it's a nice town to live in after all.

Week Two: Cakes

Last week, I attended yet another week of Culinary Underground classes. This week it was a teenage lesson about cakes. I would say that the week was mostly about how to properly decorate a cake, seeing as we only ever made one type of cake. We learned how to make butter cream frosting, but after that batch was used up, we just used the store-bought stuff, which I found to be a bit heavier on the sugar, which is good if you're into that, like my dad is. When I brought home a cake that was heavily coated in frosting, as well as inserted inside, he was giddy. I'm pretty sure he ended up taking about half the cake, and my brother the other half. I managed to get one wimpy sliver in the rampage. But that's okay, since I am the one with the recipe.

If anything, this week has taught me more than just how to decorate cakes, which it did. It also brought me closer to pinpointing exactly what I would like to do with my life that would best suit my happiness. The most important thing to me is that when I am living on my own paycheck is that I am as happy as I can imagine myself being. I want to wake up every morning not feeling obligated to do my job, but rather excited that I get to be  there again. If it feels like work as much as school feels to me now, then it's not for me. I will not be stifled into sitting at a desk all day. That might be good for some people, but ever since I was little, I have felt that it didn't fit into my lifestyle. I have always thought that I wanted my schedule to be orderly, but with occasional surprises that were fun. I don't mind being in a place where I have to keep running around to get all these different jobs done.

But anyway, we are talking right now specifically about what this past week has taught me about my future. I already have it figured out that I want to be in the culinary business. What I wasn't sure about was where exactly I wanted to go. Did I want to be a cook or a baker? Work in a restaurant or a small deli or bakery?

I now know that although I do have a talent with baking goods and I do enjoy it, I feel I would be much more content with being a chef. The recipes can be so much more random, and I don't have to spend a lot of time hunched over drawing out a design that cannot have any visible imperfections. I do have some artistic skills, so if I managed to get a side job working at a bakery, it definitely would not be a bad thing. I am just stating my career choices. I talked to one of the chefs named Liz, a woman who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu. She told me that my current choice for Johnson & Whales as a school was a good idea. She also told me that if I worked hard at the piping on cakes, I could probably get a good job. Apparently, it's a dying art. Most people nowadays want to use fondant (which is some melted marshmallow and some other stuff made into a play dough like texture) to place over the cake and carve out shapes from there. I find using the piping bags to create a much more elegant appearance. Fondant works best with the types of cakes that they make on that show Ace of Cakes, -- oh, I am being told now that the show I am referring to is cancelled. I wonder why. I really liked it. -- if you making something like that, then ignore what I have said about piping designs.

So bottom line, I wanna be a chef. I have faith that the perfect job is out there for me, and it's gonna be awesome!