Category Archives: anything but the office

six months later

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I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t immediately start snapping shots of the adorable little flowers that are blooming in the front yards on our street. I squealed when I realized that colorful things were already popping out of the ground – it’s always one of my favorite sights of the year. It means we’re moving forward.

As anyone who doesn’t live under a rock probably knows, much of the country has had stunning spring weather this week. God bless it. It is supposed to be 72 degrees here today, and it’s been in the high 60′s all week long. Kevin and I sat in the park yesterday morning chatting and bickering over coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the deli and I accidentally got a little sunburn on my shoulder and arm! Guess it’s time to break out the sunblock. I am so ready.

This past week has been one of the most interesting and influential weeks I’ve experienced since I quit my job, which was just over six months ago (!). Here’s what happened. I started freelance-baking (sure, that’s a thing) on Sunday morning with a fantastic little catering company in the West Village. Better Being has been around for over 15 years, is owned by two amazing women and run by a wonderful team of talented people, and they’ve carved out an interesting niche for themselves – they cater almost all the big name fashion photo shoots in the city and have been successfully doing so for as long as they’ve been in business. They’ve never even had to advertise – they’re beloved in their community.

They recently decided to open a little take-out lunch shop as an addition to their catering business. The shop, which they’ve built out right in front of their kitchen facility, will offer organic fair trade coffee, delicious paninis and sandwiches, soups made from scratch, hot lunches, salads, and, of course, desserts. And they use some incredibly fresh, high-quality ingredients. Mmm! They had a very soft opening of the new cafe this past Monday, meaning they just opened their doors to friends and family and tried to troubleshoot while learning what to put on the shelves and how to serve the customers before officially announcing anything.

And that’s where I came in. They’ve never exactly had a formal baking department, as a company, and when I met with one of the owners this past Sunday, she explained to me that they were really hoping for someone to take over their bakery and sort of build it from the ground up – to create some signature sweets for the place and to head up the operation. She wanted to know if I was her gal.

It was an unbelievable opportunity, to say the least. I couldn’t believe it had landed in my lap. As I stood in their facility, with an entire separate kitchen dedicated just to the bakery, I imagined the possibilities and was shocked at my good fortune. This could be a great experience, I thought. I’d already told her about my own bakery, in fact it’s what attracted her to me as a prospective employee – she’d been to our website and was impressed. I’d explained to her that if I were to take on the job, I’d also still be running my own bakery and would want her to be comfortable with that. She told me she would be. We agreed to give it a try for a few days. I’d stick around and help out with the soft launch, prepping various sweets and treats for their fashion shoot lunches and for the new cafe, and after a few days, we’d both tell each other how we were feeling and if we wanted to move forward with official employment.

I was excited, but also a little nervous. I knew I could complete almost any recipe you put in front of me, but not having had any formal baking training, I was worried about what I didn’t know that I didn’t know. For a few days at least, I was going to be running this whole bakery! It was all up to me! I crossed my fingers that my skills were up to the task and that I’d be able to learn what I couldn’t already do.

More than any of that, though, I was also worried about whether or not this was the right move for my LIFE, for my bakery, for what I want for my future and the things I can see happening for Fanny & Jane. Lots of bakers and bakery owners have second jobs consulting for other restaurants or cafes. It’s not unusual for someone to own or have created their own restaurant or bakery and to be helping out another one at the same time. In fact, when she asked me for my Red Velvet Cake Bite recipe, I told her I’d be happy to offer them to her as a Fanny & Jane wholesale account, but that those were our signature item and I wasn’t comfortable taking our name off the product. She understood and agreed.

The hours at this gig, although varied, would mostly be mornings (I’d show up sometime between 7am-10am) until early afternoons (we’d finish up sometime between 2pm-5pm) and it seemed like I might have plenty of free time left over to still work on Fanny & Jane stuff too. I knew that I’d know after just a few mornings of showing up for work as Head Baker at a successful NYC restaurant, if it was the right job for me.

Turns out, it wasn’t. And before I explain why, I’ll tell you that discovering I had the ability to recognize that it wasn’t, to make that decision, and to be honest with the owners about it was incredibly reaffirming.

The job itself wasn’t bad at all. The early mornings weren’t ideal, but I got by, and the people at Better Being were fantastic. They were kind, helpful, funny, relaxed, easy to work with and very good at their jobs. The facility itself was great too. It was very clean, very well organized, and ran like a well-oiled machine, despite the addition of the cafe, which had everyone a little on edge as they tried to navigate this brand new aspect of their business. And I absolutely LOVED doing the baking. I made a chocolate sour cream cake, an olive oil cake (that turned out perfectly, if I may brag for a moment), dozens of cookies, biscotti, a range of different fancy cupcakes – a key-lime cupcake with a meringue topping and a lime curd center, a Guinness cupcake with champagne frosting, which was rather complicated to make – I even learned how to use a blow torch, something I’d never done as a baker before. I learned a ton in a few short days and got to know a lovely group of people with whom I would have never otherwise come into contact.

But it wasn’t long before I realized this was not the right fit. I was glad that the owners and I agreed to take it one day at at time before either of us committed formally. Already, after just a few days of working for someone else, I felt stifled, like I wasn’t able to do things creatively that were exciting to me, like there were certain rules I needed to follow and certain tasks I had to perform that weren’t what I wanted to be doing with my skills. And there was a lot of pressure to succeed the first time, every time.

Listen, I know that’s how having a JOB works. And I know that we don’t always get to love everything we do all the time. And, I certainly don’t want to sound ungrateful – a job opportunity is a blessing . But I don’t NEED this job in order to get by right now. And I really don’t want to settle with something like this. I wanted to see if it would be the right fit for me and for my current lifestyle, which happens to include owning and running my own bakery. And it turns out that it wasn’t. I left there every day completely exhausted and feeling almost incapable of spending more time baking for Fanny & Jane. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or do anything once I got home, and what’s worse is that I’d missed whole days of beautiful spring weather, the time of year I’ve been waiting for and daydreaming about since I left my desk job in the fall. Of course, there are days when I don’t get to do exactly what I want because I’m busy with my own work too, but in that situation, I’m my own boss, so if I decide an hour-long walk in the park will be good for productivity, that’s what I do. Understandably, working for someone else doesn’t exactly allow me that. Not to mention, I was missing working all day long on my OWN thing, creating stuff for my success and my future, rather than for someone else’s dream. On paper, this opportunity could have been the perfect fit for me right now, but in practice, it wasn’t what I was looking for.

And rather than be disappointed in myself that I didn’t love it, rather than be disappointed in fact that the experience didn’t match my pre-conceived idea of the experience, I decided to take the cues my body and brain were giving me and to tell the owners, “I’ve loved working here for the last few days, but this isn’t a long term fit.”

They were incredibly understanding and sweet about it and I left there on very good terms. One of the owners kept thanking me for being honest about what I was feeling, and for communicating it to her. The good news is, Fanny & Jane landed a wholesale account of the whole shebang because she loves our Red Velvet Cake Bites and wants to keep them as an item on their shelves. Hooray!

And speaking of Red Velvet, here are some cupcakes I made for their soft launch on Monday. They were pretty delicious, if I may say so.

I cannot tell you how rewarding it was to communicate my true and honest feelings to those people, and to not be ashamed of having those feelings! I was 100% myself at this job from the moment I walked in the door, which is not something I can say about every job I’ve ever had. I was honest with them about who I am and what my skills are, what I’m looking for and what I thought I could contribute. And my skills were certainly stretched. (I had to make something called a Pate A Bombe one day, a term I’d never heard before, which has something to do with how fast and at what temperature you whisk a sugar syrup into an egg mixture. Not that hard to do, but I definitely had to google it to find out.)

More importantly, I was honest with myself. The first moment I started to feel like this wasn’t the right move for the next year of my life, I spoke up. I don’t intend to quit every job I have from now until forever (although I am getting pretty good at giving the speech – har har), but I think I’m learning about myself that being my own boss is right up my alley. I’m also re-learning that I refuse to settle.

I could not stop myself from thinking, while winding down my last few hours at Better Being, You know, I spent a whole year writing a blog about trying to quit my desk job, trying to find the courage and the means to do so. I felt stifled and uncreative there. So I cannot get myself right back into another full time job if it’s not what I want for myself, just because it’s a little bit more aligned with my interests. A little bit more aligned does not a happy career make, necessarily. If I’m not happy right now, if this is not the right fit, I need to get out now. I don’t need to start another blog a year from now about getting up the guts to quit THIS job. (Can you tell I’ve had to give myself a lot of pep talks throughout this experience?)

Don’t get me wrong, the whole thing was fantastic, overall. I loved the people I met and worked with and I’m thrilled to supply F&J sweets to their little shop. I will definitely be going back there for coffee and lunch because every single thing I sampled was absolutely delicious.

And oh my gosh, did I ever feel like I was walkin’ on sunshine, with a huge grin spread across my face, the moment I stepped off the subway to head home on Wednesday afternoon. I’d clocked out for the last time at Better Being, just a few short days after I clocked in. And I was headed back to my fully self-employed lifestyle, to my own bakery, to my own palette and my own creative designs and to being my own boss.

We learn new stuff about ourselves and the world all the time. And this week I learned a boatload of new stuff. The most monumental of which is that I’m right where I belong.

the journey continues…

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My last saved blog draft is from Saturday night and it begins with my complaints about the horrible monsoon we were having. It moves on to note the yummy breakfast sandwich and blueberry meal I made for myself that afternoon. And then the entry stops abruptly because our cable and internet got knocked off and didn’t come back on for three days! I mean, no big deal I can get by, right? RIGHT?

Interestingly, a bunch of surprising stuff started happening that night, and has since continued, and it’s left me entirely out of the house and off the grid anyway. So I’ve barely noticed the technology outage. I’ve been working for someone else for the last few days. Doing what? Some baking! It’s not the gig from my earlier post, it’s something different entirely. The universe answered my job request like a pie to the face. And I’ve been working long hours in a new place doing new stuff and it’s craaazaaay! A little too crazy, maybe.

I’m not gonna write about it specifically yet because I’m not sure what the future holds for this employment situation. There’s a likely chance it’s a very temporary thing, I’m feeling like it might not be the right fit. And the owners and I agreed when I started working on Sunday morning that we would play it very much by ear anyway.

Mostly, I’d like to tell you that it’s been a pretty fantastic learning experience. I’ve had to be there at 7am for the last two days, meaning I have to leave  the house at 6am, meaning I have to get up before that, meaning: scary. Being up early can be tough for me. But I’ve done it. And tomorrow I don’t have to be there until 9. Sleepin in, y’all!

Even though I don’t necessarily see myself continuing this gig for much longer, I’ve certainly been enriched for having had it for even a few days. I’ve discovered things about myself in a rush and a flurry since Sunday morning when I started. The opportunity to work for this place landed in my lap and I stood around staring at my life with my mouth agape while I accepted the chance to see how it might flow.

This whirlwind has taught me a lot about my own bakery, a lot about myself and my work ethic, and more still about what I want out of my life. When I quit my desk job back in October, I was making a declarative statement, in a sense, about what I wanted for my life. But just because I made that choice last year doesn’t mean that I now get to stop defining what I want and need. So this job opportunity has given me another chance to define and redefine what I’m doing here.

This is a shot of some yummy biscotti I made at this gig. I was very proud of these. Sometimes I like biscotti and sometimes I don’t, and I don’t see myself adding any to the F&J menu any time soon. But it was fun to practice the recipe. I’ve gotten to practice making lots of things in the last couple days.

What a wild ride this remains to be.

If anything, this experience has shaken me out of a little winter rut I was in. If I’m being honest, for a few weeks there I was feeling bored, uninspired, confused, worried and unmotivated. That was scary, because those were also feelings I was having when I was working in an office and dreading my weekdays. So why on earth should I be feeling that when I’m happily running my own business and enjoying a flexible schedule? Well, we are not our circumstances and we make our own happiness. That’s why. I’m reminded of that every day.

I’m excited to have woken up, literally and figuratively, over the last couple days and enjoyed a gentle reminder of who I am and what I want.

p.s. CATS

new shoes?

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I miss having money!

The bakery did very well over the holidays so my income didn’t change much at all in the months after I left my job. The bakery is still doing well, but it’s not the holiday season right now, which is always the most lucrative time of year for a bakery. So I’m now trying to make ends meet. And I miss having expendable income! Having a salary was fun. I didn’t care for everything that came with it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to missing it now that it’s gone. I was marveling the other day that there was once a time when I was receiving regular and relatively large sums of money (a paycheck) with complete predictability. That was nice.

Opening a business is a different animal than working at a job that gives you a salary.

I wouldn’t change anything, don’t get me wrong. I’m still loving running Fanny & Jane. I enjoy the baking very much, I enjoy all the aspects of it, really. But I’ve decided to get another job in addition to operating the bakery so that making ends meet is even easier. I wanna have fun with money again! I wanna buy shoes sometimes! Right now, a splurge feels irresponsible. If I had additional income, a splurge might feel deserved. I also wouldn’t feel so guilty about eating dinner out sometimes, or taking a few trips this year.

So, tonight, I went on an interview! The reason it was at night is because it was for a late night shift of – what else – baking! I interviewed and had a trial-run to be a part-time batter maker for another bakery. I had fun! Should they call to offer me the job, I don’t plan to take it because the pay is just not enough, the hours are a little nutty and it involves coming home very very late at night from a kind of sketchy section of Brooklyn, something I’m just not comfortable doing.

So the search for the part time job continues. But having the interview itself was a blast. I got to bake for an hour in a big kitchen, making gigantic batches of cake – batches much larger than we ever make for Fanny & Jane. I loved it and it reaffirmed for me how much I enjoy baking and also how much I enjoy being active while I’m working.

I’ve decided that the key to my getting this job is lifestyle compatibility. How compatible will the job be with my current lifestyle. It’s important to me that I don’t make any rushed choices and end up with a job I dislike, with hours that aren’t good for me, in a neighborhood that’s far away. That’s exactly the job I just came from last fall. So I’m focusing on interviewing for stuff that I can really see myself enjoying, doing well and something that will fit into the life I’m still building. The bakery remains a huge priority, obviously.

So let’s see what comes my way! My interview tonight was an exciting reminder of the possibilities available to me right now. Including the possibility of new pants or a new scarf.

a sunny monday!

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I woke up this morning to see the sun streaming in our front door, and I instantly turned the TV on to check the temp. Mid-fifties and rising! I could not be happier about this.

It was a beautiful weekend here in NYC, sunny and warmer than it’s been in recent weeks, but to wake up on a Monday to bright blue skies and temps even warmer than the weekend – well, that’s my jam right there. I hate to think that I’m so impacted by the weather that I lose a solid two months at the beginning of every year to the doldrums, but that’s just the reality. This spring-like weather makes me ridiculously happy. I feel hopeful, I feel inspired, I am focused on what’s possible rather than on what needs to get done. It’s amazing how that works.

I plan to go for a walk/jog in the park in a few minutes, after I finish this post, finish the Fanny & Jane books (I do the books on Mondays) and throw on some exercise clothes. But when I woke up, I knew I couldn’t wait until I was finished with those tasks to get into the sunshine. So I had breakfast on our stoop.

The sun shines down onto the front of our house for most of the day, which is a lucky thing for a girl who likes to sit on her front stoop. It’s not even 60 degrees out there, but I had breakfast wearing only a tshirt and jeans. It was heavenly!

Fair trade coffee from Trader Joe’s…

And a spinach smoothie with banana, soy milk and flax seed.

And look who joined me for some sunbathing!

Chawser LOVES to hang out on the stoop with us when it’s warm out. We’ll open the door a bit and he’ll venture out at his own pace. We’ve (miraculously) trained him to only stay on the stoop, not to go off onto the driveway or the surrounding gardens. I’m sure if we weren’t out there to regulate him, he’d dart off in whatever direction, but he will sit right next to me for as long as I’ll let him. It was so nice to have a breakfast mate.

My other breakfast mates were two succulents that I have managed to make ill with my incredibly inept green thumb. I was hoping the sun would inspire them back to health. I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to kill these things!

Nothing whatsoever is perfect in my world and I have constant stresses and worries, but this day makes it all seem a little bit simpler. Also? Days like this are why I quit my job. Because I would wake up back then, and head into work, enjoying the heck out of my commute for its amazing views of the city from the Manhattan Bridge, for its ten-minute walk from the subway to the office through a bustling, energizing midtown Manhattan. And then I’d always feel my heart sink a little as I walked into the dark, gloomy office, knowing that I wouldn’t re-emerge for nine hours. And as much as I loved the salary, I always thought, This is not a reasonable trade-off for me. This is not good enough.

Today, even though I have a To Do list ten miles long, a budget to worry about, a bank account I’d love to add a few more zeros to, and an all-around imperfect life, I’m thrilled to get to go for a jog in the spring weather, on MY schedule, when I feel like it. Imperfection is perfect today.

some things i’ve learned about myself since quitting my desk job

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You know how it is. Life changes, you change. You graduate high school, and then you’re suddenly several months into college, marveling at how different you’ve become in such a short period of time. I remember during my freshman year discovering a love for cheap Chinese food, tote bags, and the color yellow, none of which I liked that much before I started college.

And then you graduate college and a few months later, you realize you’ve been working in the Real World for a while now and you’re suddenly an adult! You pay bills and have an apartment and show up for work every day (most of the time). And you begin to reflect on how different your life is now, how you’ve changed. It happens over and over again. And it’s happening to me right now.

Two days ago marked exactly three months since my last day at my desk job. I’ve learned a lot about myself in these three months and, in some ways, I’m a different person than I was when I walked out of that office for the last time in October. I’m reflecting on that today. Please pardon the ego-centric nature of this post. It’s all about me and my life and what I feel and think about how things have changed in my life. A little self-centered perhaps. Then again, most posts on this blog are about me. You’ll skip it if you’re not interested, I trust.

Here are some things I’ve learned about myself, and some ways in which I’ve changed, since quitting my job.

There aren’t as many hours in the day as I thought there were. When I was working full-time at a desk job I would always complain to myself (and usually to anyone else who’d listen) about how much time I felt I was “wasting” by showing every day up to contribute to someone else’s company, someone else’s ambition. I couldn’t help but lament how much more I might be able to get done in the interest of my own goals and plans if I had those hours to myself.

And yes, I do indeed have much more time now than ever before to focus on getting work done for myself, for my goals and for my bakery. But oh boy does the time pass more quickly now. Before I know it, it’s 6pm and the sun’s gone down (damn you, Winter!) and it’s time to find some dinner. I guess time passes verrrry slowly when you’re working at a desk job you don’t like, and, conversely, time passes very quickly when you’re happily doing your own thang.

My true sleep rhythm doesn’t care what I want. I’ve talked before about My Big Sleep Problem. If I let my body do exactly what it chooses to do, I will be awake until 4am each night and wake up at 11am each day. This is not a schedule that is conducive to Being a Productive Part of Our Society. Or maybe it is a perfectly fine schedule, maybe plenty of people get by on that schedule. But I’d personally prefer to sleep and wake at more common times. My body, however, has other plans. I didn’t fall asleep last night until FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. AHHHGGRRHHHH. I’m bound and determined to change this issue, hopefully this week. But should my efforts fail, there may come a time when I just have to accept that this is my natural rhythm. On the flipside, my propensity to keeping these odd hours means I will be well-suited to being a new mom. Or a graveyard shift employee.

Taking regular daytime yoga classes is a wonderful luxury that I am lucky to be able to afford myself. This is not something I did quite as much in late 2009 as I’d hoped I would. Mostly because I was working myself ragged baking yummy sweets for the masses and I barely ate or slept, let alone practiced yoga. But 2010 so far? Oh baby. I’m having a yoga revolution. I have, at minimum, taken a yoga class every other day since January 1. Sometimes more often. And I’m just loving it. I’m finding the cheapest classes in the city – the special deals, the “community” classes – and I’m enjoying the hell out them. It’s brought such a lovely sense of peace and strength into my life to be practicing regularly – I feel alive. And best of all! I went to a free open house class yesterday at Ishta Yoga in Manhattan and discovered at the end of the class that they were having a one day deal where I could buy an UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP FOR ONE MONTH FOR $40. WHAT. That is the cheapest deal that’s ever crossed my path. Month-long memberships are usually hundreds of dollars here in NYC. $40 is an absolute steal. And this place is wonderful, the class I took was great, the energy and vibe of the studio are really nice, and I’m excited to try it out for a month. I *might* just go once each day. AAAHHH! AWESOME BUT CHEAP YOGA! My dream come true.

If I don’t give myself things to do, I will gladly lay around and watch TV. Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you don’t like Oprah as much as I do. Maybe you wouldn’t buy stock in TLC if you had extra money to throw around. Maybe you don’t think “Little Miss Perfect” is the best scary show on television and maybe you don’t care what John Stewart has to say about the state of the world. Maybe you don’t want to see a group of obese people workout for 12 hours a day and drop hundreds of pounds before your very eyes. Maybe we are different.

Before I quit my job, I barely watched any TV. I was never home! And now that Kevin and I are both working from home we actually make it a rule to rarely have the TV on during the day. Even so, I’ve still got to keep full running lists of what needs to get done in my world. Because without that inspiration and direction, Oprah starts at 4pm every single day.

I feel happier and more sane when I’m not rushing around or cramming my days full of every possible activity and task. My new and welcome reality is that I generally feel much more peaceful now than I did before I quit my job. I’m just more relaxed, not as stressed out, not as anxious, more confident and content. It’s nice. I absolutely do not lead a perfect life. All my problems have not been solved. I still don’t always do the dishes when I should, I still have to fight myself to get more veggies into my diet. I still argue with my boyfriend and get annoyed with people and I still hate cleaning the apartment. But that stuff aside, I’m much more content now.

The pace of this town leads many of us, especially when we’re in our early twenties and have just graduated college and are shot as if out of a canon into the real world, to believe that we have to fill every hour of the day with something that’s going to advance our careers OR something that’s going to help us unwind because of how hard we’re trying to advance our careers. People in this town work hard and play hard. And it’s exhausting. Since quitting my job, I’ve given myself permission to live a more gently-paced life. It’s important to me. My internal clock has begun to slow down and I’m no longer exhilarated by the idea of leaving the house at 8am and go-go-going until 1am. I spent almost the entire decade of my twenties living with that pace as my norm. I have a new norm and I like it.

I like to spend time alone. I knew this before, I know it more now. There seems to be no such thing for me as too much alone time. Sure, I like to see my friends and interact with other humans. But hours and hours of quiet time to myself suits me just fine too.

I believe in high-quality self care. I realize that sounds cheesy as hell, especially when I use the term “high-quality.” It’s like I’m talking about administering top-level treatment to myself at a hospital. I just mean that I believe in taking good care of myself. If I’m not going to do that for myself, who’s going to do it for me? Someday I’ll be a mom and have a family and many more priorities and To Do’s and it will be much harder for me to put myself first. So I’m taking advantage of the luxury of this time and space while I can.

I thrive off challenge. The December madness of Fanny & Jane was surreal. It was not a humane time for me, nor for Kevin. There was no sleeping and no eating and the wearing of the same outfit a lot of the time. But it wasn’t horrific by any means. It was hard, but it wasn’t my worst nightmare. It was simply an incredible challenge. And although I will, next time, be better prepared for such a challenge and will not let things get that nutty, I learned, in retrospect, that I work well in those situations. I am good under pressure and my brain loves the difficulty. An interesting thing to learn about oneself, for sure.

When I put my mind to something it will get accomplished. See above.

I love to spend time with my family and hope that we all live closer together someday. I knew this one too before I quit my job. But it was reaffirmed for me over the holidays. Plus, now that I’m living a life more in line with the one I want for myself, I know for sure that my family needs to be part of my day to day world. I’m not sure if that will ever happen in a physical way – that some of us will live in the same place – but I hope it will. My cousins, for instance, are some of my best friends. They are beautiful women and I like them too. Maybe they will move to New York. They protest when I bring it up, but maybe one day they will wake up and all their stuff will be moved to New York and they will have no choice but to come live here. I mean, who knows. Stranger things have happened.

I’m having a great time being a young adult. It’s really great! Sometimes it’s hard to grow up – stuff happens like people you love do hurtful things that make you go, “Huh?” or your dear friends move far away because this is the time of our lives when that stuff happens, or you’re broke or you don’t have health insurance. But for the most part, it’s really pretty great. You get to go to the weddings of your best friends, you get to meet the babies of your high school besties (Hi, Heather and Jeff!), you get to watch people you knew in middle school turn into grown-ups while you turn into one yourself, you get to experience young love and you get to make big life decisions, some of them for the first time ever, and you also get to stay out late and play with your friends and get over your hangovers relatively quickly. As I young adult, you get to have many of the perks of being a kid and many of the perks of being an adult and I am NOT taking it for granted, not for one second. I’m having a great time.

I no longer view my life in terms of “someday.” This is it. Here. Now. It’s surprisingly relaxing to realize that.

If I trust myself, stay hopeful and believe in what’s possible, good things really do come to me. It happens time and again.

I may have a sugar addiction. I’m okay with that. I haven’t done a daily dessert blog in months. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still eating dessert every day. I had, for instance, one of the best cookies of my life last night. And some other cookies today. That’s how it is.

I can get by without spending much money at all. There’s not very much that I need or want besides yoga classes and Chipotle burritos.

I am blessed, beyond measure. I have had so many cool opportunities in my young life, and I’ve had so many second chances. I’ve met so many wonderful people, I’ve been blessed with so many smart, strong, hilarious friends. I am in a loving, supportive relationship with my best friend, I have two adorable cats who bring me joy literally every single day and I live in the greatest city in the world. Oh yeah and I’m living my dream. Nothing’s perfect, but everything is just right.

the coffee shop

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Before I get down to a proper entry today, I have to wish a great, big Happy Birthday to the one and only Michelle Ward, the When I Grow Up Coach! Have a wonderful day today, Michelle! I have a feeling this next year is going to be huge for you.

………

So, my day to day schedule is a bit of a different animal right now than it was at the end of 2009. When I left my job in mid-October last year, I was able to spend a few weeks relaxing, enjoying my free time, and letting each day take me where it would. But my ambitions quickly got the best of me and I ended up diving headfirst into what would ultimately become the Fanny & Jane 2009 Holidaze Craze. During that period, I worked long hours, slept very little and always had a To Do list that was longer than there were minutes in the day for me to tackle it. If you were along for that ride, you know what a boot camp it was.

And now that December is well behind us, vacation has been enjoyed, and we find ourselves right in the thick of January, with its bitter winds and limited daylight, my days look very different than they did a month ago when I was constantly covered in chocolate, flour and anticipation. And figuring out what to do with all this unstructured time has been an interesting challenge. I’m met with a feeling like the one I had in the weeks just after I quit my job, before the bakery got really busy – What day is today? What am I doing with my time? How can I possibly be expected to wake up before 10am?

Of course there’s plenty to do, there always is. I could do laundry, I could clean, I could get a head start on my taxes. I could finally rearrange the light bulb/garbage bag/cleaning supplies cabinet under the sink.

But ugh! Who wants to do any of that!? Rearranging cabinets is the kind of thing I do when we’re already cleaning the house. Or when I can’t find something I need and I end up spilling everything out on the floor and throwing half of it in the trash in a furious fit of There’s Too Much Crap I Never Use In This House We’re Selling Everything And Moving To The Woods Are You Coming Or Not Pack Up The CAAAATS!

And why would I ever want to avoid that kind of frenzy? That stuff gets me up in the morning.

Kevin and I are both working from home now and as lovely as it can be, as happy as I personally am to be, say, sitting at my kitchen table sipping coffee at 11am on a random Thursday, rather than answering a constantly ringing switchboard, it’s a little harder to focus at home on days when there’s nothing urgent to be focusing upon.

I definitely have bakery stuff to work on – lots of it, in fact. I am committing in 2010 to growing and building Fanny & Jane to the best of my ability. I’m going to continue to be a full-time business owner this year and find out where that takes us. And that’s great. So some days I have to spend the entire day baking, which is a lovely way to spend an afternoon and certainly makes one feel productive. But other days, the bakery work is strictly computer work – bank accounts, customer service, invoicing – all the little administrative odds and ends that go into running this biz.

And when the sunlight’s pouring in the front windows and your boyfriend wants to chit chat and your favorite news anchor is just so delightfully dry and clever, it’s hard to sit down and focus on computer work.

So Kevin and I together decided yesterday that we had to get out of the house if we were going to get any work done. We got up, got showered and dressed (a bit later than we’d planned to, but nobody’s perfect) and finally made our way to a comfy coffee shop two subway stops from our apartment. It felt like a mini-commute, as I lugged my mom’s old laptop (thanks mom!) in my bag. We arrived at the coffee shop and instantly found two plush chairs and a table where we could nestle in.

I realize that the custom of someone without a regular 9-5 desk job spending some daylight hours at a coffee shop, borrowing WiFi and sipping something warm, isn’t a new one. But can you believe it’s the first time I personally have done it – perhaps ever? I never had my own laptop until my mom and step dad generously donated their old one to my cause. Plus, until recently, I’ve had a 9-5 desk job for as long as I can remember. So there just hasn’t been an occasion to do work at a coffee shop.

As you can imagine, I was smitten with the experience. It was a blast! And sort of a dream come true.

The sunlight was streaming into the window in my little nook, I enjoyed a bran muffin and a cup of coffee whose flavor I did not care for, but whose fancy mug, I delighted in. And I sat in that corner for several hours, accomplishing task after task. You really come up plenty to do on the ol’ computer when you’ve left yourself no other option. I banged out emails I’ve been meaning to send for weeks, I worked on spreadsheets, I brainstormed, I researched. It was a productive few hours. I’d like to think that I would have gotten that much done had I been at my desk at home, but we all know that’s not true. For one thing, Oprah comes on at 4pm and if I’m home for it, you can bet I’m watching it. (Unless it’s a rerun or one of her concert-shows, for which I do not tend to care.)

So all, in all, that coffee shop experience was a lovely time. And even though I am not able to pack up and head out again this morning, the excitement of getting so much done yesterday has inspired me to wake up early today, make some breakfast and coffee and sit down at my kitchen table, crack open the the laptop and officially get some more work done! I think I’m onto something here. Isn’t it nice when you find a way to trick yourself into being productive?

I wonder if I’m making it sound like I’m remedial when it comes to my time management skills. Let’s just say that I’m a recovering time-waster. As a kid, I could waste time like it was my career path. Now that I’m an adult, I try to keep a leash on that tendency, but my true nature is always there under the surface.

I have a feeling you’re going to be hearing a lot more about my trips to the coffee shop.

Oh, by the way! Stay tuned for a big Fanny & Jane sale this afternoon! If you miss it on Twitter or Facebook, I’ll post something this evening on follow my bliss.

odds and ends

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I’m tired and achy and ready for bed. So here are just a few things I can’t bring myself to piece into paragraphs:

  • I enjoy going to the post office, specifically the huge on 8th Avenue that’s open until late at night.
  • My baking and kitchen skills are constantly improving.
  • I hung out with my friend Geoff’s four-year-old today. Otto and I went to the park and had hot chocolate. He has the sweetest little face and is a delight to be around. Oh and traversing Manhattan with a kid is a totally different scenario than traversing it without one.
  • I ordered a few DVDs off Netflix. I’ll let you know how that goes.
  • Sometimes I’m incredibly overwhelmed at the prospect of growing the bakery. Fanny & Jane is doing well, we’re having fun, but every once in a while, I’m terrified. Meep!
  • I’m daydreaming about a beach vacation.
  • Tomorrow morning Kevin and I are having a meeting at a coffee shop over our laptops. Fun!
  • I’ve been drinking spinach, banana, flax seed and vanilla soy milk shakes each morning. They’re delicious.
  • I’ve taken a yoga class every other day since January 1. I’m proud of this accomplishment.
  • I’ve been trying hard to eat better since returning from vacation. Sometimes I trip up because of cookies.
  • I have been craving movie-watching lately. Have I mentioned?
  • Our little girl cat, Kaia, came out into the living room while someone new was at the house tonight. First time for everything.
  • I’m excited to be able to go for jogs and long walks outside once the weather warms up. Today is was light at 5pm! That’s a start! And it’s supposed to be in the 40s later this week. There’s hope for us yet.
  • It dawned on me the other day that I’m living the dream I set out to achieve when I started this blog. Nothing’s perfect, and I couldn’t have expected this exact lifestyle, but I’m here. And here is pretty good.

good pizza, good life

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I love not having a traditional job anymore!! I just had to tell you that. I went to see a movie around 6:30pm tonight, a time during which, had I still been at the desk job, I would have still been at work.

The first few days of January have always been historically hard for me ever since I became part of the working world. I have always struggled with returning from the warmth and comfort of the holiday break to come back to whichever office job I held at the time. I just felt blue. Lonely, sad, missing my family and my freedom. It would usually last, in some respect, into early Feb. I’m sure part of it has often been due to the cold weather, the lack of sunshine. But it’s also because I felt a general bleakness about the day to day routine I was returning to. That very feeling was part of what made me decide to quit my job and follow my bliss to begin with. I didn’t want to feel bored and totally uninspired ever, not even in winter.

When I said in a post a few days ago that I’d be easing back into a regular routine during these first few weeks of 2010, I meant it. And oh boy, have I eased. I’ve certainly done some work every day, but I’ve also taken some yoga classes, spent time with some friends, and relaxed. And my “day” tends to end around 6pm or so, when I end up making a simple, healthy meal (lots of that going on at our apartment lately – loving it!) and camping out on the couch for the evening. It’s been a pretty spectacular way to start the year. For me personally, it fits. Because my busy season just ended, I don’t currently feel pressured into any insane workload that I might not be mentally ready to tackle, I can take some time each day to be with myself and focus on feeling good – take a yoga class, sit in a sunny patch in the park, and I feel like I’m really taking care of myself. It’s nice.

In other news, because both Kev and I are trying to be frugal and healthy right now, eating out regularly isn’t something we’ll be doing for a while. So as a last hurrah for the time being, I thought I’d regale you with tales of our anniversary dinner at Franny’s pizzeria in Park Slope.

First of all, it was delicious and wonderful and I loved it. We’ve been wanting to go there for a while, especially since it’s relatively close to our apartment, voted one of the best pizzerias in New York and sources all of its ingredients consciously and many from local vendors.

We went there for dinner on the evening of our third anniversary, after spending the afternoon seeing Sherlock Holmes. The ladies who own our house and live on the top two floors gave us a generous gift certificate for the holidays so we figured an anniversary dinner would be the perfect occasion to use it.

It was packed when we arrived but after we enjoyed some lovely glasses of red wine at the bar, we were seated pretty quickly. Let me first say that the service was delightful and attentive – we really noticed that. Even the bar service was great, which is hard to do in a small, busy restaurant where everyone is “grabbing a drink at the bar” while they wait for a table to open up.

Look at the flame inside that pizza oven!!

Once we sat down, we drooled over the small but impressive menu and decided to order the special appetizer, which was brussel sprouts with onion and bacon (omg), another small appetizer which was a crostino (one big piece of toast) with white beans and something else I can’t remember on top. They were both divine and we enjoyed every single flavor. The wine (second glasses for both of us!) complimented the flavors perfectly. We were very happy.

Then the pizzas came out, one for each of us. Just entree-sized portions, but still plenty of food. We shared these.

Picante parmesean with red onion. And buffalo mozzarella with sausage. SO. GOOD. It was heavenly. Together, we ate all of it.

And then we got dessert! Ah!

This photo does not do justice to the perfection of this dessert. This was a panna cotta, something I’d never had before. Our kind and knowledgeable waiter told us that he loved panna cotta, but this is some of the best he’s ever had. It was cool, refreshing, light, delicious, flavorful – amazing. The brown sauce was a balsamic type thing – who knows – but it was also delicious.

This was one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. And I got to share it with this guy, who’s just as sweet and funny as can be.

And who just now absentmindedly scraped his fork like nails on chalkboard on the bottom of his rice bowl while watching TV on the couch next to me. And I’m going to kill him. RELATIONSHIPS!

Har har.

one year

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It was surprisingly warm out for December and I felt so incredibly alive as I ran. I thought about my desk job and why I don’t like it, why I feel trapped there, why I undergo such a spiritual shift every Monday morning between 9 and 10 am. As I ran I thought, I don’t care what else I do. I just can’t sit at that desk anymore.

-from the first entry of follow my bliss – 1-5-09

Today is my blog’s one-year anniversary! Happy anniversary, blog.

Writing follow my bliss over the last twelve months has been a truly wonderful and life-affirming experience. I love to write and having an outlet to do so, having an opportunity to write something almost every day, has been a blessing.

I have also made great friendships that I would not have made without this blog. My friend Elizabeth Blue comes to mind because she was one of the first people ever to reach out to me about follow my bliss, to tell me that she was inspired by my story and that she was undergoing similar shifts in her own life. She started a blog of her own, we’ve become dear friends, and I am so proud of her for the lovely place she’s at in her life right now.

Writing this blog has allowed me to talk to people around the world who share my experience, who do not feel fulfilled by their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of people google the phrase “I want to quit my job” each day. I’m sure it’s nothing new in the world that people have jobs they don’t like and want jobs they don’t have but, still, we are lucky to be able to reach out to each other to affirm that we aren’t alone.

It’s very easy to walk around a job you hate like a zombie, telling yourself that you have to stay there, that your circumstances are different, that you don’t have a choice. And maybe you don’t. Only you really know that.

But I believe that everyone has some kind of a choice – about their whole lives really. And I say, if you don’t like your job don’t stay there. Make a plan and execute that plan. Start a new career, do something you’ve always dreamed of doing, go back to school, make a change. It’s up to you.

Life is too short.

back to work!

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Being home for the holidays was really nice. I actually feel mentally prepared to return to a working lifestyle tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t turn down another week of vacation – I’m sure I could find some way to fill the time – but I’m looking forward to returning to a bit of structure too.

It’s currently Sunday night, and we’ve been home since New Year’s Eve. We’ve done next to nothing during this long weekend back in Brooklyn and I, for one, have enjoyed that very much. Kevin and I have watched movies, gone to the movies, gone out to dinner, met dear friends for brunch and laid around the house. SO. GREAT. And I have a loose plan for tomorrow, a to-do list in place, and a plan to hit up a middle of the day yoga class in the city. A wonderful way to ease out of vacation, if you ask me.

As I said, being home was lovely. It wasn’t perfect. There was some minor family drama, about which I’d never go into detail here because a.) who cares and b.) you don’t blog about family drama, minor or major. I love my family very much and sometimes it’s challenging to all be together in a big group for a bunch of days at once. That’s okay. That’s how families are. Beyond the expected stress that the holidays can bring, I had a carefree trip.

We ate a lot, for one thing. And in keeping with one of my new year’s resolutions, I am not going to get all over my own case about that, because that’s silly. I simply state it as a fact. I think I met my quota of red meat, fast food and lack of nutritional value for a while. And I did so pretty joyfully. This guy didn’t seem to mind either.

I introduced him to some essential midwest cuisine including Culvers, where the cheese curds are world-famous. He liked ‘em.

We did a lot of driving too, which is something we never get to do in New York because we don’t own a car. We drove five hours down to my grandparents house in Quincy, we drove down to the city of Chicago a couple times, and we drove all around Crystal Lake, up and down the roads where I learned to drive, where I dropped high school friends off at their houses before curfew, where I became independent. It was a blast.

I read a lot, got to spend some time with my mom’s cats and my cousin Trisha’s dog, watched a lot of bad TV and basically left the crazy baking weeks that led up to this vacation behind me. There was even a point surprisingly early on in the trip when I actually felt like spending another day baking and packaging and being on my feet all day might not be so bad. Truth be told, there was never a time when I swore off the whole experience entirely. I learned a ton from all the work we did – what I want, what I don’t, when I need to ask for help, how to potentially grow this little business. It’s very exciting!

The lovely thing about making your own schedule is that when it’s not an overwhelmingly busy time you can give yourself a little leeway and take things as they come. Still, I am looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning and putting my vacation goggles away for a little while.