mmm... Gooey

Envisioning my future usually leads to confusion and indecision. My desire to become a self employed millionaire billionaire takes my dreams down twisting paths that boarder on the state of insanity. This allure of self-employment is the freedom to mold a job to my every whim and receive payment. Rather than be pressured into pointless tasks, I would like the choice/power to move in a different direction. Of course a sinecure would be nice since starting a business is no small feat. The first task is to think of a business that will work. I have plenty of ideas but the feasibility isn't there yet (except for a honey business). One idea that I'm inclined to share is a restaurant. There are plenty of restaurants out there, but many lack creativity, and taste. So here would be a few items on my menu:

Lunch/Dinner:
Chicken fried burger stuffed with gravy (I made this a few months ago, and it was awesome - patent pending)
Gravy nuggets
Gourmet Corndogs
Fried PB&J
Pizza made mozzarella di bufala (might need three types of ovens)

Breakfast:
Carne Asada Eggs Benedict with Asparagus (topped with chopped cilantro)
Monte Cristo (why don't more places offer this?)

Desserts:
Profiterole
Creme (skip that brulee nonsense)
Twice Fried Donut

My restaurant would need a farm/ranch just to grow the required foods up to my standards. Which would include a hot house for year round ripe tomatoes, and a herd of water buffaloes. I haven't thought of a name yet. The best suggestion so far is Tyler's Gravy Train.

Growing

Stubbornness comes with age. Getting older for me, means not settling anymore. Below are two exhibits to showcase this point.

Exhibit A
Not settling is the reason I feel the need to go back to school. I refuse the let myself slide "backwards". I spent the better part of a quarter century expanding my mind through education. Through non-use, that knowledge is slipping away. My job challenges me with problems that take experience rather than book smarts to solve. While I recognize the value of this, I still crave to use that intellectual side. This is my endless fight to avoid entering into the daily grind of work/family that envelops people. Grinding is for garbage disposals, not THE Tiller.

Going back to school means more than fighting off the slow process of my brain matter shrinking due to the aging process. It means finally becoming highly knowledgeable (a master if you will) in one subject. Mechanical engineering is a broad subject, and so is the required knowledge based to do any worth while engineering job in the current civilized setting. However, that feeling of knowing something throughly is what I'm after. Simply put, I feel that I don't know anything yet.

Exhibit B
Over the last three years I have lost between thirty and forty pounds. Most people tend to gain weight with age, but that is not a trend I intend to follow. I wasn't physically active for three to fours years in college, and I wasn't the most energetic teenage either. I turned things around in 2007 and haven't looked back. People don't recognize me and usually surprised that I am "thin". Of course growing my hair out like a hippie helped as well. Gone is that pudgy face bald kid people barely knew in high school. Now I'm, the slightly thinner guy that people barely know now.

My life has become quite ironic over the last couple of years. I have discovered how passionate I am about food. Maybe these strong feelings were simply buried for years by the mounds of delicious home cooked meals and desserts from my mother. Then only discovered when taken away in the name of health (see above). At any rate, trying new restaurants, cooking good hardy meals, and the never ending quest for the perfect pizza are important parts of my life. So naturally, the people that I've met since becoming "thin" are amazed when I go off about wrapping steak with bacon and deep frying gravy (patent pending). When they ask me how I stay so "thin"? I give them the answer, moderation. Of course running helps too.

In summary, I always do things at my own pace, and aging is no different.