Dear Blog,

pimiento de padron peppers – so good but gone now

I am going through a blogging identity crisis. Scratch that, call it a real-life identity crisis. I have this job that I like. It’s only part-time but I was just bumped up from 2.5 to 3 days a week. This week I also start a temporary job in the same museum that will bring me to 5 full days of work per week! This is going to sound lame, but this will be my first ever full-time employment. I haven’t done anything five days a week since college (even then, each days classes were different).

Starting a full-time job gives me mixed feelings. On one hand, I feel so, so lucky to finally be employed after almost a year of searching and several years of vagrant ocean wandering. However, I tend to feel pretty overwhelmed by life without working 9-5. I know it’s my perfectionist, controlling tendencies that make time management a high-anxiety issue for me. If I could just chill out and go with the flow for a while then things would likely get easier.

I made this delicious carrot-apple cake for my birthday and never posted it!

What does all this have to do with the blog? Well, I have mixed feelings about blogging right now too. This blog is one of many sources of stress in my life right now. I feel guilty for not posting and frustrated that MuffinEgg is falling into neglect after failing to become as “successful” as I hoped it would. Those thought start me wondering about the point of writing a blog. Do I do this for me? Am I just looking for attention (not that there’s really anything wrong with that)? What am I really gaining from the cook>photograph>write (oh yeah, and eat) process nowadays?

The answers? blogging just isn’t as fulfilling as it once was. Yes, I like attention. I wish it didn’t matter but I think I’d enjoy the validation of more readership and involvement in the blogging community. Most importantly, I’m not getting much out of writing this blog right now.

Yuck. I sound like a self-help book. I’ll get to the point: I’m at a crossroads with two choices that I can see. 1) Quit; 2) Change things. I’m choosing option #2. Yay!

Remember when I used to bake bread? I miss my soudough starter : (

So as not to overwhelm anyone who might read this and keep things simple for myself, I’ll leave it at that for now. I have a whole slough of exciting ideas for the new-and-improved MuffinEgg but I’ll save those for another post. Here’s a fun and philosophical bit of dialogue I overheard today.

Someone’s response to the question “How you been?”:  “I would say living the dream, but, I’d be lying.”