Ask any of my friends or family members… I am obsessed with ice-cream… definitely to an unhealthy degree. lol.
The best: chocolate chip cookie- dough… but of course when life is going really badly and I need to feel better… Ben and Jerry’s Half-baked is always there for me and my sadness…and well if you have looked at my blog recently you probably can come to the conclusion that Ben and Jerry’s Half-baked and I have been BFFs. lol

Seriously… I think all occasions should call for ice-cream… whether really happy occasions or really sad…
But sometimes… ice cream and I have to go on ‘breaks’… Ice cream always knows that I love it… but sometimes all the saddness and the Ben and Jerry’s starts adding on the pounds… and well this passion of mine becomes unhealthy… right now ice cream and I are on a bit on a hiatus because of the cold… while ice cream may help my heart and fill my stomach it can take the bone chilling cold from outside and make it become an internal feeling… and we all know I hate the cold… sometimes I just get tired of ice-cream… although I LOVE it… sometimes you can have TOO MUCH of a good thing… I always return back to it though… I can never go that long from it…
So what this all boils down to though is that I am passionate about ice-cream. 🙂
Even though this passion is often unhealthy and it can often burn me out… I always find myself returning to it…
LOL… so why this long ode to ice cream? Well I believe that in order to be happy in life… one needs to be passionate about what they do… and as we all know… I’m questioning my current life path… am I passionate about it?
Academia (for me) is very unhealthy… in fact the field work for academia is what caused my OCD to become severe.. it also makes me a constant perfectionist that I don’t know how to not be that makes me constantly freaked out about work and have absolutely nothing of a social life… academia makes me feel lonely… because I don’t have many friends b/c I’m constantly trying to be a perfectionist about it… and also I don’t get enough sleep because I’m always trying to stay up to do work that I haven’t done because I just don’t have the passion or want to do it.
But maybe it is just because I am burnt out? After all I am passionate about ice cream… but I can have too much and I need to take a break… well… I’ve taken breaks… winter break… summer break… many weekends… and am I really ever craving for the semester to start again or to get to my work? Not really… I may be craving to not be bored any more… but that is kind of just like craving for food in general compared to ice-cream… I never crave to jump into research full steam ahead! or into the reading I need to do… in fact I always dread it…
but I am passionate about certain ASPECTS of my field… I love how the research that I do helps others… and that I am educating students so that they broaden their minds and see how beautiful the world really is.
so should I risk being unhappy in all other aspects of my academia just for this one portion??
You know what else I absolutely love? The Potato… I love potatoes… they are seriously the best food in the entire world… I am completely and utterly passionate about eating potatoes…

EXCEPT… I refuse to eat potato salad… I HATE potato salad… yes I love the potato… but I don’t like the mixture of it with mayonnaise, onion, pepper, egg, and celery… individually all of those are pretty good… but somehow mixed together and with potatoes… it really makes me want to vomit… therefore I am only passionate about one part of it… but all together I hate it and therefore I don’t eat it.

Can I apply this to academia? If I only like one aspect of it (and it isn’t even the main component of it like the potato is in potato salad) is it worth wanting to feel like I want to vomit all the time?
I think the answer should be no… at least that seems most logical to me…
Can’t I find other things in which that one aspect is a part of that I love more? I love various potato casseroles, MASHED POTATOES ARE AMAZING, baked potatoes are amazing, chips, and fries, soup with potato, potato pancakes, really potato in anything (EXCEPT wrapped in dough.. but that might just be because I culturally grew up eating perogies and have a mental block against them lol).
So therefore can’t I look for a different career path in which I can help people and empower them that doesn’t have to be in this field of academia?
But I’m good at making potato salad… but I still hate eating it… I’m good at academia… and I still hate being a part of it… making potato salad though for others and them enjoying it is really nice… but in this one case.. I think it is ok to be selfish… this is MY LIFE after all… if I can only cook one thing in the world for others to enjoy and for me to eat… why make potato salad just for others if I don’t want to eat it? How about finding something better that uses potatoes… and you know what?… I may not be good at making it for others at first… and they may dislike it… but I will eventually learn and get better at it… and enjoy the food I am finally making…
but can I really correlate food to career paths? But shouldn’t passion be passion? It should be all the same?