Merry Christmas to one and all!

My dad got me a cook book from Ten Thousand Villages, so now I have one to call my own, and thus no excuse to not cook and bake as much as I'd like to. I want to be able to cook for a few reasons. I like to feel the pride of having made my own nutritious meal, something beyond mac and cheese. I'd rather not die of malnutrition or heart disease, thank you. It may get to a point where I have to fend for myself, so I think the More With Less Mennonite cook book is a good place to start on my road to culinary self-reliance. And besides, the ladies like a guy who can cook. I don't know why I'm so afraid of it. It's fairly straightforward as long as you follow the recipe. I guess it's a question of motivation.

Actually, it's something I've noticed pervades all aspects of my life. My love life, my writing, my acting, my spirituality. In all things, I've been living in my head. It's funny, it feels like only in the past month or so I've realized what it means to work. What it feels like to be growing. If I feel an immediate unwillingness to do something because I'm not in the mood for it or whatever excuse I have at the time, that usually means I ought to do it, and I never regret it. This is something I've touched on many times, because it's plagued me for so long. I feel a strong pull toward some power underlying the universe, quite possibly God, but I can never act on it. I'm too afraid to commit, so that feeling that draws me to the dark centre of the universe is still shapeless. I think I'm too clever, analytical, skeptical, to let myself surrender completely to a higher power. I'm worried about committing to someone, falling in love with someone for fear that they might actually *god forbid* know me. Or that if they were to know me, then they won't like what they see, and by then it'll be too late to get out unscathed. I think so low of myself that I don't feel deserving of the grace of someone's love. And is my opinion so low of the other person to doubt that they love me if indeed they do? For all my faults? I'm never the first to volunteer in my acting class, and only after class is over do I wish I did go first and took that risk and if need be, stumbled. Any idea I scribble down becomes detestable, and I lose faith in it so easily. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to do what's good for me, even if it means failure. I lack faith. I need the faith of a trapeze artist in freefall, or else this will never change.

Seriously now, I have a cookbook, and I will be writing every day of the New Year. In all seriousness. Now is the perfect opportunity, I'm working out a plan, and there's no time left for excuses.

P.S.
My dad also got me Tales From The Perilous Realm by Tolkien. I really appreciate him for this, as I've been looking for it for a year now and couldn't find it anywhere.