"A hatchling, that is what you are.
A hatchling struggling into the world ...
Do not worry about these things.
Find peace in where and what you are."
-- Christopher Paolini, Eragon
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| Cracked Barbie head with a raw egg 1-15-14 |
"I am not a dime a dozen!"
-- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
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| Barbies in an egg carton 1-15-14 |
Ever notice how the girl's dream job in every romantic comedy is to own a bakery?
Every pretty little girl with an Easy Bake Oven wants and to grow up and bake exquisite pastries all day.
I hate to break it to you, but bakery dreams are a dime a dozen. Achieving them is the fictional stuff of movies. Nobody ever really gets to do that for a living, do they? Only the really lucky ones, right?
Wrong.
My good friend Kelly gets to. And it has nothing to do with luck. She's baked her ass off to get where she's going. She's chased her dream from Ohio, to Rhode Island, back to Ohio, to Chicago, and back to Rhode Island again.
Kelly is a professionally trained pastry chef with the education, experience and moxie to actually be living the dream.
After plenty of years working for other people, in other people's bakeries, taking other people's shit and cleaning up other people's messes, Kelly is currently in the midst of a move from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Atlantic coast, where she'll finally be running her own place. She'll be calling the shots. She'll be the boss. She'll be the head bitch.
Except she isn't bossy or a bitch, at all. Which is what makes her so great.
She's beautifully lovely -- an adorably pretty, nerdy, non-blonde bookworm-in glasses who wears cute dresses as easily as she wears her tattoos (of cakes and cupcakes, of course!) She is the kind of friend who never forgets your birthday, always shows up with treats, and will stand in the Lego aisle in Target feeling up the Lego mini figures bags until she finds a Medusa, because she knows you really, really want the Medusa.
But she's also tough as hell. And brave. And courageous. And she doesn't take anybody's shit.
I've worked in a bakery with Kelly, and she makes it look effortless. But pursuing her dream hasn't been. She's made tough decisions and difficult sacrifices. She's had to leave behind jobs, and cities, and people and friends that she really loves.
As they say, you've gotta crack a few eggs to make meringues ... and cakes, and cookies, and pretty much all of the good things that Kelly makes.
So go get 'em, Kelly! Keep living your dream.
Break an egg! I mean a leg!
