Looking like the end

 So it looks like the end of an era is coming swiftly to a close. Since I was 16, I knew that I could always return to cooking and the food industry if a job didn't pan out. I did it time and time again, and always enjoyed it. Cooking and food are two of the major passions in my life, and something I not only do well, but love doing it.

 However, my years of doing stupid things like free soloing rock climbing and motorcycles have caught up with me. My body no longer heals like it did when I was younger. A bad twist of the torso before the holidays has laid me up with a hip sprain for weeks, and it will be another month or more before I will be able to walk again without major pain. Weight is also an issue, I was always solid, coming from German and Italian peasant stock on my mother's side of the family. (I have a tintype of my grandmother and her sister as teens, and they are square bodied, I look just like them.) As age and menopause have advanced, weight is now an issue, where it really wasn't so much when I was younger, I had enough muscle mass to compensate for it.

 Anyone who's cooked knows that it is a profession that you spend all of your time on your feet. I have finally moved past denial that I am still in good enough shape to run a bakery. Maybe if I weren't doing it alone, it might have been better. But I am alone, and now I am no longer able to stand for the amount on time I need to. So with a heavy heart, I will be saying goodbye to my pastry chef career. I will still be able to take the occasional order from friends, but I can not do the long hours that it takes any more.

 So what now? I'm pretty limited on what I can do because of the mobility issues, so I suppose I will have to 'fall back' on my college education. I'm thinking about writing. While it is something I've always done, I never really looked into writing professionally. In the pre-Internet days, you had to be rich, well connected, or very very lucky/good to make it as a writer. These days, people are getting book deals and t.v. shows just from their blogging. My neice was just approached by her first agent after she was on a talking head show discussing gun control, which she got asked to be on because of her blogging.

 Something that has always facinated me was anthopology (Which is what I studied in college.), and how food is involved with every aspect of a culture. Every culture celebrates milestone and special events with some sort of food or feasting. Might as well finally put my education to some good use.