The Calling

March 19, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Several years ago, back in New Jersey, I walked into the casino bakery in a sour mood, knowing it would pass in a few hours.

The sour mood wasn’t uncommon- the casino job wasn’t the most rewarding gig in the world, and I griped a lot to Emily and my housemates. This time, however, the fact I was going to a job I wasn’t enjoying was secondary- there was other, external issues weighing on my my mind and, perhaps appropriately, I have forgotten what was so terrible about those days five years later.

What I do remember was coming in, putting my tools up, and chatting briefly with Karen.
“It’s so twisted… I almost find myself looking forward to going to work. Here everything makes sense even if it sucks, and I have control over it.”
Karen nodded sagely and said, “You’ll realize that as you move along in your career, Matt. Your family and friends love you, they support you, and they absolutely care about you succeeding- but they will never understand this life.”

When you realize that you want to bend your time, energy, and life around something- in or out of the usual rat-race, regardless of whether other people understand why- that’s a precious moment of self-knowledge that you shouldn’t ignore.

You’ve found your Calling.

A grayscale photo of a black womans hand in a sweater holding aloft a plaster bust of a serene woman's face. — Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

Continue reading →

5 Simple Steps to Do the Thing

January 16, 2021January 15, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I have been thinking about what to write in this blog post since I left work yesterday afternoon. In the time between then and now, I was preparing myself to sit down and write.
I also went for a long hike around Mt. Tabor, enjoyed a game night with my housemates, baked a pie, had a bit too much whiskey, slept in, ate breakfast, went for a run, meditated, showered, gamed a bit, and fixed myself a cup of tea.

All of it has been in service to writing this, because if you want to write about Life and Food and Joy and Good Things, a big part of it is getting those things in your life. The bigger part is actually sitting down and writing the thing. Far from being the sole difficulty of creatives, dreamers and nutcases like me, you can find difficulty in Doing the Thing in just about any human pursuit. I think it’s something to do with being sentient robots made of meat and untanned leather, stuck on a speck of dirt rocketing through the void.

So let’s go through my Five Simple Steps to Do The Thing together!

Continue reading →

Less Tasks, More Missions

August 22, 2020 / The Black Hat Baker / 2 Comments

Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!

I’m a big believer in the power of routine. It encourages good habits when you have a daily mindset of “A, followed by B, followed by C…” In my case, my mornings consist of:

Wake up.
Eat breakfast- a bowl of cereal, some protein and a cup of vegetable juice on work days, a more involved breakfast on weekends (say, a loaded omelette.)
Meditation practice, minimum 15 minutes.
Shower, dress, depart for work.

I go through the steps, everything I want to get done gets done, and I’m on my way.

Routines are, however, by their nature a structure. Structures are, by custom, rigid and also encourage rigid thinking. Every now and then, it’s good to “shake it up” and learn to “go with the flow” again.

Continue reading →

Having Talent is No Excuse

April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

The worlds of food and classical music don’t always intersect- beyond the artistry and passion of their respective devotees, that is. When my wife (a piano teacher) and I discuss our work with each other, one of us is usually on “home turf.” I’m a professional baker and she loves to cook, or she’s expounding on an obscure piece of music and I know a couple big names. That’s marriage for you, though- we don’t “complete” each other, but we do find ways to be complete together.

In that sense, we often discuss ideas like discipline, teaching methods, leadership (in the context of our workplaces,) and the artistic aspects of what we’ve built our lives around.

And one thing that we agree on wholeheartedly is that talent doesn’t mean a damn thing.

Continue reading →

The Curse of the Blank Page- How to be Creative on Demand

February 8, 2020February 7, 2020 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good morning, friends and neighbors!

In the last few months, I’ve developed a new tradition. After my therapy appointments, I wander down the street to my old cafe. There, my friend Madeline is usually on the espresso machine. She makes me my favorite coffee drink (a cafe con miel, essentially a latte with honey and cinnamon syrup,) then I sit down to write… something.

Usually it’s the start of that weeks blog entry, as now, or continuing work on the next book. Recently I’ve also started posting more casual, narrative foodwriting through Medium.

Regardless, it’s a block of time each week that I have set aside to be creative. Routine and Practice are vital if you want to make anything worth making.

“What I’m gonna write about today” though… that’s always a bit dodgy. As you can see, sometimes I just start with “whatever is right in front of me.”