The Road Ahead

foreword: i've been remissed from writing lately so i apologize if things flow.. awkwardly.

I've been stuck in a rut lately; the logical side of me tells me to keep doing what i'm doing, that my paycheck is grand, regardless of the hours and the bull, because my upbringing keeps on telling me to be thankful and that the fact that anyone pays me any attention at all is a miracle in itself.

However, i keep finding myself unhappy where i'm at. at some point, i lost the will to pursue. i always wanted to strive to be better, to be successful, but the desire to actually go through with it, to leave my comfort zone -- to just dive into whatever may be -- was lost somewhere in just how comfortable i am. this is true in any industry; mine just happens to be culinary, where tv has taught us all to be cut throat and vulgar.

The last couple of weeks, i've been fortunate enough to reconnect with old friends and reminisce about the past. usually for me that's a bad thing, but lately, it's been turning into a good thing. i recapped the entirety of my restaurant career today in a remarkable five minutes (it was a timeline of something around three to four years) and was forced to face the reality of the position that i am currently in, based upon the the history i'd left behind. it showed me that there's a need for me to move on.

The wonderful thing about looking back on your youth is being able to look back at the dreams you once had, but the more rewarding thing is being able to see how innocently determined we were, at all the possibilies we saw before we had to shoulder the burden of the world of responsibiliy and practicality.. i realize now that practicality doesn't necessarily lead to success. for some i'm sure it does, but if i want to look back and see success, i have to be impractical. i have to be impractical, because i have goals set before me that i set because when i have children and i'm trying to tell them to achieve, i don't want to tell them to learn from the mistakes that i made in youth -- i want to be able to look back and tell them that their father achieved so much with so little, and became the person he is because of it.

looking back, i see how far i've perservered through animosity because of the desire to kick ass at what i do. sitting where i am now, i see relative success, but a general feeling of bending over and letting the world take over. i had to look back to see what i've overcome in order to see that there's still so much more to overcome in the future.

Strive to struggle a little, people, because when you're down and looking back, how much you've overcome shows you how much more there is to do.

I'm putting my two weeks in on wednesday.