the bain of most women's existance

In light of all the sensitivity that surrounds diets in general, I will say this about them:

Diets are what you eat the rest of your life. Meaning: You should provide enough room for the special occasions in your life where maybe you aren't served your regular yogurt and granola but Duck Confit with a wine sauce and lots of butter to finish it off(!)
Your diet should be something you enjoy, not what you dread to wake up to each morning and chase around your plate all day. I get so sad when I hear people at my work saying they need to go on diets when to most people a diet means eating those ridiculous cardboard rice cakes and salads for the next week and a half then going out and getting a burger, fries, and milk shake because they've been being "good" all week. I just went off on a tangent in my head and honestly I have a big bone to pick with the way diets have been manipulated in our culture to be a temporary money making schemes for big corporations fooling people into thinking they will achieve their goals in "just SIX HOURS!"....

I will try to do a couple posts this week and talk more about diets and my own personal diet (although I can't say I will come through on this promise as I am starting my LVN program soon). I recently became a "strict" vegetarian and figured I'd expound on that a little and what vegetarian means to me.

Pondering the Future with a Ball of String

It's almost 11 o'clock now, my finals only a day away and I sit here with far too much on my mind to be able to focus on anything constructive. The internet is being no help at all and I find myself whisked away on whatever catches my world web eye. At this point, I feel like the helpless cat who can't help but pay attention to the piece of string being drawn across the floor knowing full well there is a full bowl of food waiting for me in the kitchen.

As the deadline for my finals approaches, I sit, thinking about my future. I know, one of the most cliche things a college kid could ever ponder but I can't help and think about how my life might turn out. I see my friends, some off at university, learning, honing their craft, gaining life experience; while other friends sit in their parent's home, jobless, relatively goalless, completely comfortable and without care. I feel an immense terror at the thought of never achieving anything of importance. Then my mind, as it often does, interrupts and questions what is "importance" and who defines it and on and on. (Though it may reside in my head, my brain does not answer to me by any means.) I know how I define importance but what separates me from those who sit and do nothing from those who take action?