Recently someone frowned upon me for writing novels under my Instagrams. I guess it was meant as a joke, but it made me realise something: I hadn’t written anything for the blog for the whole year because I felt I had nothing to say. But my Instagram recently tells a different story. I have the words in me and I want to yell them out.

There has been so much going on around me and especially inside me lately. It feels like some personal changes – some made willingly and some were forced on me – accelerated my personal transition and made me understand certain behaviours. Some of my core beliefs were shaken up, I faced some setbacks, worked through a lot of emotional pain and I have found new ways to deal with my fears. I have grown stronger, physically and mentally. And I still lose track of what I wanted to say in only one paragraph…

Return to the core

Have you ever felt like you don’t know the person in the mirror any more? I recently re-read what I wrote 2 years ago (thanks for reminding me H.) and those words I wrote still speak to me. It reminded me of why I started this blog in the first place: Sure I always dreamed about becoming famous over night, but I started this blog to express myself, to embrace all the different sides I have and to have some sort of “output” that means something to me. I could have just started to write a journal, but I really wanted to inspire others, so I put it out there. That hasn’t changed. I have been through a lot and if I can only inspire or comfort one person with my words, it’s a win.

Finding out what I am doing this for wasn’t the hardest part, but sitting down to write was. I discovered that I am depending on external validation much more than I like to admit. So I was writing to provoke an action, to get comments, likes and define my own worth by what I am worth to others. That’s not a very healthy way to go…. It’s not like you can just snap out of it, I wish it was that easy. But acknowledging the fact helped me to move past it. I can write my heart out, whether someone likes it or not, because I do this for myself in the first place. This is kinda contradictory to what experts on blogging tell you (“know your audience and write for them”), but I feel better to write out what’s in my heart.

Can I have a comeback?

As they say “Britney survived 2007 so you can handle today”, I think I can have my Comeback. I might need longer than I expected, I might take some wrong turns and maybe I won’t succeed in the end, but what’s important is to keep going one step at a time. There’s no point in me stressing myself out and putting unnecessary pressure on myself. I have freed myself from a lot of external pressure and expectations, why replace them with ones you make up yourself? It’s pointless.

It’s time to stop asking if the world needs the quadzilionst cheesecake recipe and time to ask myself if I am ready to share my favourite cheesecake recipe with the world. I felt that if I worked on my photography skills, made a content plan and forced myself to write it’d all come back to me. As a matter of fact I was only hiding behind these things. It is time to take back the power, embrace my strength and the change I went through. Nobody ever told me they liked my blog for the photos, but I inspired others with my recipes and that’s exactly what I want to do this for.

You can and you will grow

I have learned to deal with failure in a new way and I have surprised myself with my abilities. Recently I have made a cake for a dear friend. He asked if I could whip up something for his farewell party at his old job. Funny thing is that since I decided to quit my job, my baking motivation returned, so I said yes. I pitched my cake idea and he liked it, so I yielded for a Vanilla-Tonkabean-Cake with a hidden message saying K BYE made out of Mexican Chocolate Chili Cake, covered with chocolate and decorated with a basic 80ies style Pacman design.

It sounded a lil extra but overall very straight forward. Saturday night I prepared the spicy chocolate cake so that I could cut out the letters the next day. Sunday afternoon I sliced the cake to strips and tried to cut out letters using cookie cutters. Let’s just say it didn’t work and resulted in a crumbly mess… I usually would have lost it there already, but I took a breather, thought about it for a second and decided to chill the cake for an hour, hoping it would make it less crumbly when cutting. In the meantime I measured out the ingredients for the vanilla tonkabean cake and thought to myself that it might not be enough dough to fill the pan, but against better judgement didn’t up the measures. 

An hour later I tried the cookie cutters again on the chilled cake, but that didn’t really work either. I decided to try and carve the letters out of the cake strips I had precut and that worked okayish enough. So I placed the letter-strips in the pan, tried to cover them with the batter I had prepared and thought to myself “oh crap” when I noticed it wasn’t quite enough… This is the point where I usually start to pick on myself because I saw this coming. Instead I brushed the thoughts off and made some more batter quickly to get the cake into the oven. I baked the cake, did the skewer test, removed it from the oven after 40 minutes and let it cool over night. 

Come the next morning, I wanted to get the cake out of the pan before I go to work. When I flipped the cake out of the pan, I noticed that it wasn’t baked in the center AT ALL. This usually would have been the ultimate point to throw a fit and cry. But nope… I was disappointed, but I evaluated my options and checked in with my friend if we could push the pickup if necessary. 

I spent all day thinking about burying my ambition and just fixing the basic cake with simple decoration after work. But throughout the day I realised that this isn’t in my blood. I don’t give up. I try my best, sometimes I fail and have to get back to square 1, start over or improvise something, but I don’t give up before even trying.

If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again

So on my way home from work I collected more ingredients from the store, I cut out another set of letters from the leftover Mexican chili cake, made more vanilla tonkabean cake batter to cover, baked and made sure it was baked through all the way this time. It worked like a charm the second time round and I had the cake finished and decorated without the expected nightshift. 

Sometimes it’s important that you trust in your own abilities and don’t let setbacks pull you down. This all might sound totally normal to others, but believe me when I say only a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with this experience the way I did. It’s never too late to make a change or to work on yourself or to accept yourself for who you are. 

I had a hard time finding out what really is important to me and in the past 3 months I have learned so much about myself that it feels like the person I see in the mirror now, that’s ME. Nowhere near perfect, somewhat flawed but also pretty awesome, fierce and the person I want to be. 

Like a small boat on the ocean, sending big waves into motion

It’s always good to stay open-minded. I had lost this ability, but it came back to me. So many fleeting encounters lately that affected me and my thinking, caused an epiphany here and there and that I had finally found my better self.  So hello there, this is me 🙂 

Next up is a new chapter in my professional life, let’s see what that does to me and this blog… For the first time in forever I am not scared at all.