The Unfinished List

Snow! In Eugene! Snow! Snow! Snow!

 

Today ended up as a legitimate snow day- my first. Class cancelled, school offices closed, don’t-leave-your-home type snow day.

 

I unfortunately am super behind this quarter so I was looking forward to taking the day to catch up, but, as with all great plans, things didn’t turn out quite that way. I did manage to get my feedback in for this morning’s class in on time!

 

All in all, it ended up being quite a relaxing day- walking to and from school in the snow, playing with the cats, and a snow-filled slow walk to find hot chocolate.

 

This quarter has been a mess, but I think I needed the snow day.

I’m an avid baker, and can put together a salad decent enough to sustain life, but casually cooking- as in, throwing in ingredients and olive oil a la Emeril? Nope.

It’s one of the things that’s always been on my list to get better at and I’ve started cooking at least one thing a week- mostly pretty simple dinners that can be prepared in about 30 minutes. Simple, right?

While it’s been decently successfully so far (re: edible with at least a hint of flavor), my biggest cooking lesson this week actually came from baking.

Here’s where I digress. It’s fall, so of course something pumpkin has be made at some point in the next month or so. In particular, pumpkin muffins. I make great pumpkin muffins (I’m allowed to say that because I’m bad at cooking). I was looking for a little pick me up this week and decided to resurrect the famous pumpkin muffins. I had the tins, the pumpkin, the oil, everything was set. It was when I taking the first batch of muffins out of the pan that I realized something was off. They didn’t have the right coloring, and were sticking to the tin. I tried dumping the tin upside down, prying them loose with a butter knife, singing a lullaby (kidding), but it was to no avail: these muffins were staying. I eventually managed to free them in a two-step process of decapitation and careful excavation.

Baffled, I tried again with the next batch. And again the same results.

Four frustrating hours later, I officially had a 33.33% success rate in a field I normally dominated. Confused and tired, I carefully separated out the whole muffin from the muffin parts and put them into containers labeled “Okay Muffins” and “Franken-Muffins”, respectively.

I was overjoyed to be done with the whole thing, but I couldn’t help wondering for hours later what I had done that made this muffin process so different than the 1,000 other times I had made them. Different tins? Old oil? Wrong flour?

And then I did something different. I stopped thinking about what went wrong and realized that I hadn’t really baked in over a year and half, so what made me think the muffins would turn out perfectly? Baking and cooking (and anything else worthwhile) requires practice. So I think I’ll continue to just do that-practice. Franken-muffins and all.

-M

It all began with a few cliche quotes, a lost sense of self, and a perfectly neat list found in an old notebook. After two difficult and life-changing years in one profession, I had quit my job to return home to…? What, I wasn’t sure, but I knew the job wasn’t for me. I had no idea what to do next (still don’t), and felt about as useful as a sock in summer. So, I did what I normally do in life-changing situations: cleaned and purged. I’ll get rid of everything! All this stuff is weighing me down! It’ll be a new start! I’ll know exactly what I want to do when I’m done!

…Yea, it didn’t work out exactly like that. I felt “lighter” but not “grounded” with a purpose.

During that time, I found two things I hadn’t realized I misplaced: a notebook half full of quotes I’d written down and a list of things I’d wanted to accomplish within 5 years. I’m an avid list-maker and can be pretty type A, so at first glance it wasn’t the list itself that gave me pause, but rather that hardly ANY of the things on the list were accomplished, even though I’m now two years past my original deadline. It was at this point that the cliche quotes started running through my mind:

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. -Eleanor Roosevelt

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word. -Margaret Atwood

Be direct, usually one can accomplish more that way. -Fortune Cookie

Really, it was the fortune cookie one that got me the most. I’m ashamed to admit I collect fortunes from cookies.

While some of the items on the list were a little outdated and impractical, most of the things I still want to do. So what was stopping me?

Me.

After weeks of thinking it through, I decided to go ahead and do it. All the things on the (revised) list. I have one year, and I’ll be documenting the progress here.

Check back for updates.

-M