My Nervous Bakedown

Good morning, World.

Just before starting the baking race to the last farmers market for me this year, I admit I’ve been asking myself for months why I have neglected my writing. I’ve given myself a splendid excuse: must concentrate on making nourishing goodies for everyone else.

Oh, but wait. Isn’t that what so many of us have done in crafting our lives? Myself…for everyone else. Offer comfort, care, love, appropriate expressions of love. There it is: having given myself permission (I know now I’d never needed to ask) to lead my life boldly the way I want, I realize I’m still making excuses for not tending to my most fundamental joy.

I notice a conflict here. The baking and the community I’ve found at the farmers market both give me joy, but agreeing to let myself feel there isn’t time for anything else is still an excuse. I’ve been hiding inside a small, but satisfying, world. Yet I know there is a larger space I can enter. I’ve been there.

Who am I, then? If I were a baker, I’d have a bakery downtown, and become famous for my incredible scones, and actually make a living at it. Well, that’s not going to happen. I love baking, but it’s an interesting hobby I shall not leave behind.

Two weeks ago, I had what I cleverly called a “nervous bake-down.” Suddenly, for a day, I was forgetting ingredients, dropping little blueberry handpies on the floor, scattering flour much further than I ever had, and running to the store because I had run out of SUGAR! In my mind, the one that stands aside and watches me, I got a quick and vivid picture of the Muppet Swedish Chef, tossing a salad everywhere, and woke up.

I am most fundamentally, a writer. The simple truth is: writers write! I have not been writing, but the gears have been running constantly, impatiently, waiting only for me to engage. So, today while I bake, I will be paying attention to what is happening “upstairs,” where far too much dust has gathered.

Warning: I may suddenly disappear into the universe where my imagination magically flows onto the page. I’m packed and ready to go. I promise to send postcards from whatever brink I am teetering upon.