Monday, October 18, 2010

An Introduction.

I'm debating with myself whether or not I should right this now, as it nears two in the morning, but my I realize my stubborn side won't let me sleep if I don't dive in to this new little venture of mine. So, who am I? And why am I here?

I promise, I'm not having an existential crisis--or, well, I suppose that if I am, it's nothing new.

So, okay. Who am I, dear reader? My name's Erica, and am a college student attending a small liberal arts college in the South. I'm majoring in Religion, and I am hoping to accrue minors in Gender Studies and English, but from what they tell me, minors don't really matter all that much, so I shouldn't stress about it. At this point, I'm wondering how I can cease to tell you my entire life story--or even just my academic life, which would be a doozy of a conversation, too.

Anyway! So! Though I am at college, I work part-time at a local cake shop. I started off as a second-shift baker, but my cake decorating skills prevailed, and now I do the vast majority of the special fondant work we put on cakes.

As a child, I loved cooking and baking, and I was very much interested in the intersection between food service, hospitality, and design. While other children wanted to be veterinarians or astronauts, I thought I'd like to be a waitress, or maybe a chef. I would draw menus of our family dinners for everyone at the table, and I loved planning food and table arrangements for my birthday parties. Though my family lived on a dead-end road in the country, far from any passing traffic, I painted a cardboard box and made myself and bologna sandwich stand with cold off-brand sodas fora sale, too, and got grumpy when my own mother wouldn't pay my asking price.

The entrepreneurial streak didn't end there. I've always been kind of artsy, I guess, and I really enjoy working with my hands, whether or not the finished product is mostly butter and sugar. So, in middle school, I roped my little sister in to making soap with me. I sold some to a supportive (perhaps pitying?) science teacher of mine and gave some as gifts to others for Christmas, but it never really grabbed hold of me--or I was too young to really do anything about it myself.

Nowadays, I'm 20 years old and facing a quite uncertain future.

I haven't been feeling like myself for nearly two years now, and at the beginning of this summer, I was finally diagnosed with depression. I am anxious, and I am oftentimes unable to make a decision, even at the cost of setting myself up for failure. I was always an excellent student and writer, but in recent years this has proven to be less true. I need to stoke a new fire in me and become more confident in my personal value and to feel as though I am able to make real progress towards achieving my goals. Journaling is one way to help in this--but oftentimes, when I journal, I weirdly feel very self-conscious. Typing is faster and more accessible to me a lot of time, and a regular font is not as distracting as my erratic handwriting. I keep a personal blog of sorts--it's more of a mishmash of stuff I find than a lot of deep thought. I was thinking about starting a more purposeful blog, but I wasn't sure what it should be about. Today, after ranting to my counselor about some happenings at my work, she suggested that I start a log of all the lessons I'm learning there. She's perfectly right.

My goal is to open my own creative business (a bakery or otherwise.) And in the meantime, I hope to learn more about myself, and improve myself, and grow in my writing. Are those too lofty of goals?

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