Discovering a love of baking

This past Christmas I decided I was going to bake cookies, make candy and otherwise use a lot of sugar and flour.  I never managed to get the candy to work out.  I tried, but something just wasn't working right.  Perhaps it was hand strength, perhaps it was just a failure of epic proportions, but whatever it was, the candy didn't work out.  The cookies however...that I loved.  Not only that, I really loved making them from scratch.

Baking is a lot of work.  And requires a lot of focus and concentration.   And the product of that baking is yummy goodness that I have a hard time not ingesting in quantities that will make me sick.  However...I really enjoy it.  So much that I checked out a brand new cook book from the library (it contains recipes from a series of mystery books I have read) and decide to try to bake.

I over cooked the pop overs, but they still tasted good.  And either tonight or tomorrow, I will bake the red velvet cookies that make my mouth water to think about.

I want to do it.  The baking.  It's time consuming in a world where I seem to have so little time, but there it is...something I want to create.

I find myself thinking of all the things I really want to do, should I have the time and the money.  And interestingly it is a bunch of things I never really considered being interested in.

With there being so many things that I want to learn, I always assumed that given the time and the money I would be back in school in an instant.  And I think I would still do that.  But I find that what I want to do is learn to cook, to bake well.  Primarily.  I want to grow a vegetable garden.  I want to really learn another language.  I want to read, really read and learn.  I want to spend at least a little time every day outside enjoying the weather whatever it may be.  I want to be silly.

This morning I was reading a lesson on Raja Yoga.  The author wrote that you will have a period of time where everything seems to come easily.  Then, it will stop.  It will be a struggle to feel anything like what you had felt and you will want to give up.  Don't.

I realized that I had been struggling with just that in so many areas of my life.  I had been doing shamanic journey and really feeling good about it...then it just got hard not to be distracted.  Meditation and listening to the still small voice within had been going great...then I couldn't sit still.  I had been active in reading my books and doing the research for my ministry training and then bam...I couldn't do it anymore.  It all just got hard...and for awhile I really did just want to give up.  For awhile maybe I went back to doing what I always do when things get hard...just enough to get by.

I see this and wonder what I am going to do about it.  How am I supposed to break this habit of resignation to mediocrity when something gets hard?  I know what causes it.  I know what stops me from really stepping up and working harder.  Yet it is a bump in the road I just can't seem to get over.

I am determined.  I will get over this hump in the road.

I will make this all work for me.  I want to do something different.  I want to be someone different.

34 years old, and finally I want to change my life for the better.

I don't know that I will ever learn to cook, but I will bake cookies.  I will have a vegetable garden.  I will bike to work so that I have more time after work to do other things besides exercise.  I will read the books on my shelf.  I will figure out how to be the person I want to be.

Perhaps tonight will be the red velvet cookies.