So, now what?

Having just watched the season finale of Top Chef, I must reflect on my position in life. Three things...

I love to cook. I have for a long time. Everything I have learned in cooking have come from myself and my surroundings. Watching Top Chef has caused me to examine my own abilities in the professional kitchen. I am very organized and good at running the line. I am not quite so good at getting the other sushi chefs to adhere to the rules of the restaurant, although I do have my merits in this aspect. I wonder if I could have made it on Top Chef. Innovation is the key here. Am I innovative enough to excite the world-wide palate? I don't know if I know enough about food. Some ingredients, because of lack of funds and lack of time to experiment, escape me. However, I have invested a lot of time into this culinary field, even though I spent the first part of it only working where I could in order to support a family.

My serious passion, however, lies not in food, but in a more artistic media, the comic book, graphic novel, or Manga, and even then, beyond, into animation. I get so passionate about some of these forms of media that I get emotional. I know little to nothing about the processes of executing a final product of these things, yet I feel I must be involved in them before death claims me, and, truly, at 30, I feel time is running out. It takes years to learn some of these things, and I barely have time to finish an art project that is a birthday present for a friend.

Despite these two passions, my family takes a hold of me that I can't ignore, nor would I. I have two interesting, intelligent, passionate, witty, and charming children who, being my spawn, have something of me to give to the world. Should I concentrate all of my efforts into not mine but to their livelihood? Of course I always give them the love and attention they need and more, but for them to be all they can and to realize their dreams, should I give up mine?

These three points fly around a tornado in my brain. I don't know which direction I should turn at this point in my life. So, instead of perusing the myriad of cookbooks on my shelf for a tidbit of culinary factoid, instead of grabbing my sketchbook and drawing furiously until dawn, instead of starting my children's portfolios., I will instill in cyberspace an imprint of my inner struggles, and then retire for the night. Maybe tomorrow, I will......