Baking Up My Brand New Life

Well, I did it.

I.
Did.
It.

I just wrapped up Week #2 of My Brand New Life and am still pinching myself every single day.

What is this life, you ask? Well ... just like my first 53 years, I'm figuring it out as I go but instead of just imagining and totally seat-of-pants-ing, I've made the first real step toward intentionally designing the life I want to live for the next 53 years. More or less.

I left my agency job. The work I've done to pay the bills for the past 20+ years. The job with the "traditional" benefits (healthcare, 401K, paid time off). I teetered at the edge of the scary-exciting great unknown and decided to leap.

To work at a bakery for a fraction of the pay - but with the time and brain space to build the freelance writing etc. business I'd tossed around in my head. I don't have it all figured out. The pieces are still coming together. It's a little scary but oddly, I'm not as scared as I should be.

When I announced the decision I'd made, my greatest life project - the loin fruit (Amazing Lizz) gifted me with a pound of Baddass Women Blend coffee from my favorite roaster.

I've had so much support from every corner. It's like everyone said, "finally." It was only I who had to get out of the way and make room for the possibility ... of possibility.

I am excited and overjoyed to jump out of bed every day. Even at 3:25 a.m. on the days I report at 4:30. Four days a week, my five-minute walking commute takes me to the cutest, teensy-tiny bakery, where I put on my baking hat (literally) and apron du jour, wash my hands and start slicing apples. Then I roll out dough and assemble dozens of galettes and spend the next few hours mixing, measuring, slicing, dicing, shaping, egg-washing, baking, cleaning and otherwise preparing to open up to our first customers at 7:30 a.m. W-F and 8 a.m. on Saturday.

Bread, pastries, scones, muffins and granola! 

Every day is fresh-baked fun. 

Even the coffee is from a local roaster. 

I'm learning many new skills. Like just the right number of galette folds. And how to properly roll brioche buns. Even replacing a mop head (on day #3 the cleaning guy called in sick). I welcome"all other duties as assigned" seriously and joyfully. I love interacting with the customers -- seeing their eyes open wide when they walk in our cozy shop. They invariably stop and inhale and close their eyes before stepping all of the way in. I totally get it. I've done it too from the first time I walked in last year when The Bread Guy opened its doors. I'm hoping to combine my lifelong love of transforming flour, sugar, butter and yeast into tasty and memorable creations with my also (nearly) lifelong storytelling experience and talent to help a young business owner build his dream.

And I embrace Mondays. You know that feeling of dread so many have on Sundays knowing they either crammed in too much weekending or didn't do enough and then the rat race or hamster wheel or whatever starts again bright and early? I've lost that feeling. I don't miss it at all. On Sundays and Mondays and Tuesdays, I sleep in (aka any time after 4 a.m. is "sleeping in"). The past few weeks, I've spent much of my "spare time" volunteering with a local soup kitchen and homeless shelter and doing some necessary paperwork and errands. Pieces are coming together bit by bit.

I sleep sooo soundly at night. My body is tired from the physical labor. And at least for now, all the tabs are not open at 2 a.m. or any other time. It's a beautiful thing.

It seems like all the planets aligned to make this life change possible.

I still doesn't seem real but it is. It so is.