don’t let your ideas rot

on baking, timing, and the act of creation + a special announcement!

Still Life with Lemons, Oranges & a Pomegranate by Jacob van Hulsdonck, 1620

One thing I love about baking is that with a few not-particularly-compelling ingredients, you can create something beautiful. Baking is much more about the intangibles that go into it—the method, patience, love, care—than the (fairly generic) tangibles—flour, sugar, water, yeast.

I’ve always found it especially satisfying to use my hands to create something, perhaps because I spend so much of my creative time in my own mind, becoming aware of myself, then digging for the right words to describe what I see in that inwards mirror. Baking is a nice complement to this, because it forces me outside of myself: the thing I am creating has absolutely nothing to do with me. It doesn’t even really require me to think or be creative at all, unlike most other art where you are trying to make something novel or unique. You are given clear instructions on how to make a beautiful thing and the test then is: can you be obedient? can you be patient? can you pay attention to detail? can you trust the process? can you not rush the creation? can you have the humility to follow someone else’s instructions completely?

It’s a good test for a mind like mine that resists being told what to do, always questioning if I can find a better way. With baking, that part of me is (pleasantly) muted. I enjoy being enticed by the beautiful thing and obediently following the manual to make it myself.

practice and wisdom

Like with all things, you eventually build an intuition around what is right or wrong, better or worse. But that gut feeling is well-earned. You have no idea what dough is supposed to feel like or what a “lightly floured surface” really means when you start. You are doing a lot of following with a little bit of (often misguided) guessing. And then, you learn to do it better. You start to notice when things turn out one way or another, and your gut gets wiser. You begin to trust yourself more. You start to see opportunities for expression and individuality in what you’re making that you couldn’t even notice when you were hyper-concerned about following the recipe perfectly. But it is through first mastering the basics that you get to express your individuality. If you test your own ideas before you’ve learned what works and what does not, you are likely to end up with a pretty strange result. Because you do not understand the process yet! You are not familiar with the canvas you are working on. That familiarity—and the wisdom that accompanies it—comes with practice.

balance & polarity

I like that there is an explicit balance worked into the baking process. You need to work and wait. Sprint and rest. Express and unwind. Much like any creative endeavour, trying to spend the whole day “working the dough” is just going to leave you with a tough, overworked product that doesn’t have the light, flaky airiness of something that was *allowed* to just be, to rise to its full potential with periods of not-doing, periods of simply lying there and growing from within.

the invisible ingredient

The best baked goods have an ingredient that you cannot write on the recipe or purchase in the store. It’s an ingredient you train *outside* the kitchen, away from the dough. That ingredient is patience. Patience to let the dough rise, rest, and expand. The ability to cover up your partially complete product and walk away without over-working or obsessively checking on it. The ability to take your mind away from the creation, to do less when your mind wants you to do MORE. I’ve enjoyed how baking increasingly complex recipes mirrors the elements of a healthy process of creation:

• the inspiration to start

• a little bit of foresight

• planning (getting ingredients, clearing your day to be with the dough, etc)

• taking care of ‘pre-recipe steps’ like making a pre-ferment or a bread-‘starter’ for the dough a day or so before

• ensuring to begin *and* complete the process on the right day. If you miss this precious window, the recipe won’t work!

you only get one chance

So much of my writing practice is simply about writing when the urge to write strikes. If I miss that window or assume it will stick around and wait for me to be ‘ready’ (always a poor assumption), I lose the potential energy of that idea forever. It’s not that I’ll never be able to write again, or perhaps even never write an idea *like that* again (it could reformulate itself into some other idea), but I do lose the opportunity to make that 1/1 creation. Inspiration is perishable. It is an urgent call to action, much like when a ripe bread-starter is yeasty, bubbly and begging to be turned into dough. If you let it sit for too long, it dies. Like dough, ideas need your attention when they are rising. They need you to act when the timing is right.

Like with baking, you build intuition around the creative process. You watch your half-completed ideas rot in folders no one ever sees, and you start to realize that you usually only have one shot at making something (when the inspiration appears). You start to get familiar with the pang of guilt and frustration at what “could have been” if you just wrote the piece, made the thing, acted on the creative impulse when it coursed through you. You begin to wonder why you think you will ‘feel ready’ when you almost never do. And eventually you realize that the only way out is through: that there is no way to make a thing without, well, making it.

the muse doesn’t stick around

I wrote recently about unblocking your mind to clear space in your inner world for the whisper of the muse—the flash of inspiration that tickles us when an idea appears before us. And clearing that space certainly is the first step. But, like with baking, while cleaning your kitchen and stepping into it are necessary steps to make a pastry—they are certainly not sufficient steps. You still need to do the work. When the muse shows up, you need to spend all of the time with her that she gives you. There is no asking her to come back later (she won’t) or hoping that she will hang out as you scroll on Twitter or take care of some other low-friction task (trust me, she won’t). You are not “the boss” of when the muse whispers to you. You are there to serve her.

Just as you are there to nurse the dough in the window it requires to get the result you want. You can’t do steps 1-8 of a recipe, then decide you’re tired, leave it for 2 days and come back to do steps 8-10 hoping for the same result. This sounds so ridiculous you wouldn’t even try it! Because you know it wouldn’t work. And yet this is how many of us approach creativity. We hope that if we stop in the middle because we just don’t feel like pushing through that last bit of resistance, we will feel more inclined the next day. But this is rarely true.

I like what Rick Rubin says about this: he compares having an idea to seeing a cloud formation in the sky. It only stays the way it appeared to you for one moment: when you first look at it. You need to act then. You can’t save it for later, assuming you’ll be able to stare up into the sky (or in this case, your imagination) and hope the same cloud formation has remained there, floating stagnantly as you moved on with your life. This is again so absurd we would never expect it. And yet, we find ourselves making this mistake with creativity constantly, failing to learn the lesson the muse is always trying to teach us: act when inspiration strikes!

We wouldn’t try this wait-until-later-maneuver while baking because you would be forced to look at your dough rotting. You would be forced to come face to face with your own avoidance and neglect. But ideas, unlike dough, are not physical. They only become tangible when you bring them through the membrane of your imagination and into the world by actualizing the inspiration into something real.

you only get credit for what exists

No one will give you credit for the ideas you almost made. No one cares about what you thought about doing—they only care about what you’ve actually done. And, hey, forget “they”—you should only care about what you’ve actually done. Ideas don’t count. Action does. You need to make what you conceive of if you want to move forward in any meaningful way. All of those messages you thought about sending to your friends, all of the essays you loosely intended to write, all of the calls you meant to make your parents, or the projects at work you thought about pitching—none of that matters. Because none of it exists. None of it is real. It was all just passing cloud formations in your mind. None of it was made manifest through you, through the vessel that you are, the channel that you can be. You let something pull your attention away from the idea that revealed itself to you. You let the world pull you away from your magic.

I cannot tell you how many essays I have meant to write. What exists here is a shred of what could if I simply lived this advice in its full sanctity. But it is really hard to do! And even though I do it sometimes, there are many times I fail to rise up to this truth. Because being an open channel is challenging in a world of abundance with a million distractions convincing you not to work on what is within. It takes a strong sense of focus and groundedness to stay true to your priorities, to your creations. But cultivating that focus is oh-so-worth-it. I have learned the hard way that if you want the satisfaction of creation, you need to follow the process to completion—just as you wouldn’t stop nursing a mound of dough until it reaches its final form as a crusty, delicious loaf of bread that you can serve to your loved ones.

but what about what i learned?!

Can you repackage incomplete projects as learning? As a process that serves the ones that do reach completion? Sure, you can repackage anything as anything (and, sometimes, things really aren’t meant to be completed). But there is a difference between ‘I abandoned this because I didn’t like the end product it was heading towards’ and ‘I meant to get back to this but I never did.’ I know most of the projects I abandon fall into category 2, even though that stings to admit. But, as Dostoevsky says, it is important to tell ourselves the truth:

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”

act now

In short: make the thing when the moment is ripe, because now is all you can control. You should never count on the muse sticking around longer than the moment she appears in. Face what you have been avoiding, because it is near-impossible to nurse new opportunities in your life when you have a wake of untended to ideas and tasks trailing behind you. There is all of this stuff in the pantry of your mind going stale, taking up space, waiting to be used. An entire museum of (literally!) half-baked ideas mirroring your own inaction back to you that will continue to clutter your mind until you acknowledge, dispose of, or complete them. And in the end, no one can clean up that shelf except you—because no one knows what is there except you.

a manifesto for creation

Bow your head to the process of creation. Have patience, but act with urgency. Give your full attention to the idea alive in you right now. While it takes a bit of work to get it right, there is nothing like the first bite of a creation that spent days at the centre of your focus—whether it is a shiny croissant or a project baked to completion. Pay attention to what is bidding for your attention, ripening on the shelf of your psyche, waiting to become manifest. Give it your full attention now. Don’t wait. There is no “ready.” There are only the ideas clear to you now, and your willingness to act on them. As I wrote in on being ready: having the idea is all the proof you need that you are ready to make it. So, go ahead: pick something off the shelf of your mind and get cooking!

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Announcement: I am leading a course on conquering avoidance

If you struggle with avoidance—much of what this whole essay cautions against!—then I have an announcement for you. I will be offering a group course combining social accountability with practical tools and teachings to help you become aware of what you are avoiding and work through it alongside others. You can come in with either (1) clarity around what you are avoiding with the intention to complete it or (2) curiosity to discover what you are avoiding with an openness to face it. If this sounds interesting to you: shoot me a DM on Substack or Twitter that says ‘conquer avoidance’ and I’ll keep you posted. And if you prefer email, send an email to isabel@mindmine.school with ‘conquer avoidance’ as the subject line.

Some ways that avoidance shows up: struggling to start/complete projects, resisting hard conversations/hoping they will just go away, finding ways around telling the truth, recoiling away from your resistance, putting off what you feel called to do, rewriting that task on your to-do list the third week (month?) in a row :).

Reminder—avoidance has a cost:

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related essays you might enjoy: find novelty through commitment, becoming is a process of reduction, on slowness, taste and living well, unblock your mind, on being ready, avoidance & expression, forward momentum

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1-1 coaching for mental clarity, self-knowledge, and awareness:

I help people understand themselves, explore their inner world, and deepen into their sense of self through 1-1 work that aligns head and heart. If my writing resonates and you feel called to embark on an inwards journey of your own and want guidance along the way, send an email to isabel@mindmine.school or shoot me a DM on Twitter to explore working together 1-1.