A Possible New Path...

I went through many different career path changes in the past few years. I had many different ideas about what I could do with the rest of my life, but most of the time I realized that I'd get sick of it after a while. The one goal I settled on is not doing well in the job market. I'd love to be a children's librarian, but my cousin Megan does this already and told me it's not worth my time and money. I've heard a lot of bad things about the job market of public libraries. I don't want to spend half of my life unemployed and struggling to find a job I will like.

I've been thinking a lot lately. My ultimate goal is to become a novelist, but I know I cannot rely on this alone. I love books. I love reading. I love all forms of fiction. Unfortunately, there just aren't too many jobs out there that rely solely on these. A new idea has recently come to me, but I'm still not 100% sure if I am willing to do this. If I want literature to always be a huge part of my life, I can get my doctorate in some form of literature and spend my life being a professor, teaching the literature I enjoy most, and writing lots of papers about it.

I didn't take college as seriously as I should have. If I put my heart and soul into it, I could have gotten As in all my literature classes. Either way, I got my degree in something I truly enjoy. Getting a doctorate will be a LOT of work on my part. I will have to dedicate myself to this and be okay with being overworked and overly-tired in the future. If I do go through with it though, I'll never have to push my love for literature aside for work and will always be doing something related to one of the most important parts of my life.

Not gonna lie, it would be cool to be (I think) the first in my family to have a doctorate. Dr. Aug has an interesting ring to it. Feel free to post your thoughts and opinions. Hopefully soon I'll decide if this is what I truly want to do.

The Rainbow Cookie Cake...

I love rainbow cookies, and my friend JT loves them as well. They are more easily found in the NYC area of New York. I was extremely disappointed to discover they were nearly impossible to find in the Buffalo area. You could easily find a dozen at the nearest Stop and Shop on Long Island, but you'll never spot them in the Wegmans or Tops up here in Western NY. I was very upset and told my Western NY friends of this deliciously almondy, moist cake-like cookies that did not exist in this area.

When I met a friend who loved them as much as I did, we made it our goal to find these cookies. JT was the one to finally find them in a small bakery about 20 minutes from where I live. We were in rainbow cookie heaven.

I read several cooking blogs, and came across a recipe for Rainbow Cookie cake (Always Order Dessert). At the time of discovery, I was unable to make it cause I lacked the right tools and recipes: 3 9" cake pans, a box grater, and the key ingredient almond paste. Lucky for me, I got the pans for Christmas, I bought the box grater for $4, and JT found a bakery near his job that sells almond paste by the pound. We set a date and made the cake.

Though I looked confident as I gathered all the ingredients and assembled the cake and JT did the dirty work, I was nervous about how the cake would come out. My few epic failures have come from baking, not cooking. I would have been devastated if I couldn't handle this cake. The process wasn't difficult, but I was still afraid to waste all the deliciousness in front of me. We put the cake in the oven and waited for the results...

I'm very messy when it comes to using flour.

After the cake was done baking, everything looked cook. The almond smell that consumed my apartment was heavenly. The cakes themselves did not get stuck inside the pans. All was going well.

Once we finsihed icing this bad boy we were ready to dig in. It was torture waiting for the cake to cool so we could frost it and dig in. I've frosted a cake before when it was still warm. Did not work out well at all. The final product looked gorgeous and luckily enough, it tasted just as good as it looked. The cake was a little dry, but that was our fault since we ate dinner and watched a bunch of The Big Bang Theory in the middle of preparing the cake. We should have just eaten first. I'll definitely be making this cake again in the future. JT wanted to do this every other week...but we'd sweel up real quickly is we ate that much cake.

Another New Year...

Happy New Year!!

A new year has come once again and everyone celebrated its arrival. Everyone sets new goals for the new year and hope that they will follow through until the end. I know a lot of times people fall through with their plans unfortunately, but life has a bad habit of taking over.

I was never one to set New Year's resolutions. If I ever had any, it was because of some project we would have after the new years began in grade school. They were the typical "be a better person" or "do better in school". Yadda Yadda. This year I want to be different though. This is the year my real life begins. I have graduated from college and now start a new phase of life. This new phase started a little before the new year, but this year I want to make a difference in my own life. I have a lot of plans

Now, I'm writing this post on the 8th and not the 1st. I think If I started too early I would have cursed myself into not following through with anything. My friend told me not to start anything on the first. It's superstition, but I can be paranoid. Here are my resolutions:

I want to finally begin writing and have a short story published by the end of this year.

I know I want to be a novelist, but I have been lacking in the whole writing process. Can't become a writer without actually writing. I'm being quite lenient. I only want to start getting my name out there. One story published isn't that big of a deal if I want to become known, but it's a start. I already have some ideas for writing projects and I will be beginning them shortly. I plan on actually using my story and poem notebooks that I purchased over a year ago.

I want a to get a decent job.

My current job is not terrible, but it's mentally exhausting. Retail is difficult and since you need to deal with every type of person; the good and the bad. I did just get a promotion, but I definitely do not come home feeling accomplished everyday. I want a job I feel decent about at the end of the day. I know I still need to go through grad school, and if I had the stamina to possibly get my doctorate. I will not be beginning my career yet, but I will not simply be doing retail by the end of the year.

I want to figure out myself/my life...somewhat.

I decided that I wanted to become a children's librarian a while ago, but I need to change that if I do not want to struggle with jobs in the future. I need to figure out what I will be happy doing with the rest of my life. As much as I'd simply like to write fiction for the rest of my life, it's not a good idea to rely solely on that as income. I need something else, and once I decide that I can figure out what to get my Masters in and that possible doctorate. I also want to figure myself out, clearly not all in a year now. I want to see what makes me happy and what will keep me happy in the future. I can't figure this out all in one year. The rest of my life would be quite dull if I figured everything out at the age of 23.

I want to make sure I read every other day.

I love to read, but I haven't been doing it much lately. I have a kindle with a bunch of books on it that I need to read. Reading will also keep my imagination fueled for my own writing.

Let's get the typical resolution out of the way...I want to get into decent shape.

I'm not overweight or anything, but if I start perfecting my body now I will keep it that way in the future. I don't want to completely give up on myself after I start reproducing. I want to eat better and find out what kind of work out regiments I like the best. Part of me wants to start running, but I've always hated running. It would definitely be a challenge though. I also want to teach myself to cook a few vegetarian meals. Not eating meat all the time would be a plus. I also want to learn how to get as many fruits and veggies in my life that I can. I'll learn which ones I like...and maybe how to cook the ones I don't like so that I can enjoy them. The more the merrier.

I want to experiment more with my cooking.

I've already fallen into the habit of making the same things over and over again and I haven't even been cooking for myself for a year. I want to make sure I try new things and teach myself everything I can on my own about cooking and baking. Two near-future dishes will be rainbow cookie cake and beef stew :)

One more thing...I want to actually update this blog and get more followers.

I started this blog to get myself writing on a regular basis and I've been failing miserably lately. I plan to turn that around though.

Well, there you have it. My first year of taking resolutions seriously. Keep reading to find out how well I stick to them throughout the year of 2011.