Chocolate stained, doodled ambitions

Where do ambitions go when they die?

Was clearing out my room and I found my old diaries and obviously nostalgia got the better of me, like it always does. The amount of recipes I found made my heart ache. (Anyone who knows me would know that  I have this obsession with taking a recipe and tweaking it over and over again until I can deem it "perfect".) With each page of my stained scribblings - notes added for each time I tweaked it - that I flipped, I died a little. The breaking point was chancing upon my recipe for the cooking competition I was in.

Besides the guy I was dating then (I was such a wreck), my secondary school diary was filled with hopes of picking up a Culinary diploma when I graduated and eventually opening my own cafe. That did not happen. My early semesters in poly was filled with all sorts of baking recipes, prominently one for each of my touch teammates for their birthdays. I also had recipes for picnics that I so badly wanted to perfect. But perfection never did happen too.

In fact, none of my chocolate stained, doodled ambitions happened. It died bit by bit with crazy grocery bills, tests, trainings, dates, failed food blogs (ha ha, this one just kills me), those times I second guessed myself and even more, all the times I just fell short.

Dont get me wrong. I still adore cooking. I still think I can cook fairly above average for someone who has never had Culinary as a core, and I (humbly) know I am not the only one who thinks this way. Neither am I wallowing in self pity.

It's just being in Langkawi forced me to think a lot more practically and I reached the point in my life where Im about to graduate, had to deal with living alone for the first time in my life in some foreign country for 6 months, and also basically pick the path that would make or break my future...

... and I'd consciously decided cooking isnt it. For awhile I could ignore it and maybe even forget to remember, but you never really forget things you pour your soul out for. I had such big dreams. Nobody can fully comprehend how much I love being in the kitchen. When I was in Langkawi and I felt alone, I'd think of the top things that make me happy and along the lines of my parents and rugby, was being at Josh's cooking for the boys and that ridiculous adrenaline of attempting to cook alone, too much for too many people for just a single picnic.

As much as Im hurt, I dont quite know if Im disappointed or relieved (that I can now confidentially sort my piorities). I'd still cook but all those hopes of a cafe and pursuing it as a career, just seems... hazy. I know I got alot better from when I first started and I know there's still so much more I can do. But maybe now isnt it. Or maybe I'll never get down to finding time for it. Like how I was always never enough - regardless financially, with time, or just being insecure with how well I can actually cook. ):

No, seriously. Where do ambitions go when they die?