An Introduction of Keep Bakes
“The grass is greener where you water it.” -Neil Barringham
Turning 22 isn’t that exciting. I should know, I just turned 22 about a month ago in August. Turning 21 was so much more exciting with the new opportunities of being able to legally drink. 22 is just another number a reminder that life isn’t supposed to be so grand at all but about the little things.
I promise this blog isn’t going to be a discussion about life. Well, maybe a conversation, I don’t really know yet. My name is Deanna, just turned 22, and I’ve just graduated college with a degree in journalism about 4 months ago. A year ago I expected to be on my way to starting my career but instead, I’ve had to find work to pay bills and am completely unsure and unprepared for what to do next.
You have to understand, reader, this isn’t like me, no not at all. I’m not the “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of girl. I need structure. A firm plan. And then a backup plan. Then a plan C in case the backup plan doesn’t work. And of course, there is the absolute emergency plan. Preferably this is all written out in a planner or binder of some sort, with color-coded tabs and cute sticky notes. Am I creating a good picture here? I’m obsessive, in general, but also with knowing where my life is headed and what I should be doing next.
But graduating college has thrown me into this unknown space where I feel as if I’m floating untethered and am caught off balance. There is no stability, no particular direction or path to take. It’s as if I am stuck in a wide-open field, I could go anywhere but can’t figure out how. So that’s where this blog comes in. I’m in the field getting cold and hungry of standing here and I’ve decided to pick a direction and go a- marching toward it. I have no expectations or a firm idea of what I want to accomplish with this blog but I am simply doing it anyway.
Why blog, and why blog about baking? Well dear reader, (if there is anyone reading), that is where my obsessiveness comes in again. See I have many hobbies all which I take seriously and push myself to be better than what I am currently capable of. It’s like a terrible competition where I can never win. Anyway, I've been baking with my grandmother, my mom, my cousins, my friends, alone since I was very small. Partly because I have a sweet tooth but also because I love the whole baking process. The mixing, measuring, the science, the smells, the decorating, yeah all of it.
But I put baking as a hobby on hold while I was in college, for my education, but now that I’ve graduated I’ve felt the urge to bake again; not just as something to do but as a creative outlet of expression. I’m by no means a professional, and I will type this again to purely put emphasis on this statement, I am in no way shape or form comparable to a professional baker. But I like to pretend to be. It’s fun for me to strive for the perfection of complicated bakes such as baklava or creme brulee. Hopefully, these posts will be somewhat informative, but I don’t intend to be writing a how-to guide on baking fill-in-the-blank, but I do hope that I can provide some sort of inspiration.
My other favorite things to do is writing, which is obvious by what I have my degree in, and to take photos. This introduction post isn’t a good example but I love the photography process just as much as I love the baking process. When you combine writing, photography, and baking, viola! You got yourself a baking blog. My only hope is that this blog will inspire me and others to create.
One last thing before I end this post. I like quotes, I feel as if they are little words of wisdom that are concise to a sentence or two. I’ll be including a quote in every post that I make, and I usually won’t address them directly, except here, on this post. Neil Barringham is a community worker who said the quote written above: “the grass is greener where you water it.” Simple yet it plays on the old cliche that the grass is greener on the other side. This latter old quote is about as pessimistic as it gets. It suggests that no matter how hard you work there is always going to be a place that is better, or there is always a certain status of happiness that people can never reach.
But by changing the tone and suggesting that how green the grass can be is all dependent on YOU, and how much you take care of it, puts the control back into our own hands. It is something that brings me joy when I think about it and has become my mantra over the last few years after I heard it for the first time. So in my parting, I will say this. Keep in mind that everything is out of control, but take comfort in the little things that you can. Like taking a step in a direction in that vast and never-ending field, or starting a blog based on a hobby. It’s the small pleasures in life that create meaning. I hope you find meaning on this blog.
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Next post, an actual bake, oh my! Linzer Torte Cookies.