Making or Breaking Baking…
Banana Bread and some other random bits of life
My brain can’t follow recipes or measurements. It is ironic since I see myself as someone who thrives on structure, routine, very detailed instructions, discipline, ace project management, and engaging strategy in my consulting work. Still, I also have a pathological demand for avoidance or a persistent drive for autonomy inside Autistic me. Devon Price’s article on Medium is still one of the best I have ever read on these concepts within the autism spectrum. I am of a similar atypical mind and concur it does rule at times! Yet again, the all-or-nothing nature of my Autism causes me to transition regularly along my spectrum to the polar opposites of discipline to deviation.
Yesterday, I awoke with a need to embrace the uncertainty within the world by finding a safe space to sit with it in my head and seeking a recipe for resonant resistance and reassurance. That looked like putting on the comfiest baggy clothes ever and free-flow bake while listening to Bono narrate his book Surrender on Audible (you don’t have to love him to like his perspective and deep thought, it is, in my opinion, a humbling listen).
My process for baking will be to scan a handful of recipes, ignore the measurements, take what I need and leave what I don’t from the ingredient list. And so today, it was banana bread because I can’t throw out browning bananas or tolerate food waste. I don’t know why my brain chooses not to see the measurements. Still, I am guessing that, ironically, it may be related to math-inflicted trauma from school by how it was taught, or it may be mild elements of what I consider to have always had in my life being Dyscalculia, or it might be just as I similarly struggle with some aspects of grammar, namely sentence structure and flow with punctuation marks and my perceived interruption to my flow but not the actual writing itself the metric measurements also can interrupt the flow of information visually into my brain. I only see visual ingredients and the result of their combination. Or it could be absolutely none of that and just my way of seeing and human being.
And so I began combining elements into my free-flowing baking vision, breaking through the banana bread plethora of recipes on the internet into visual pieces to find my kind of trust and peace within the day. My recipe for resonant resistance and reassurance contained flour, baking powder, dates, walnuts, pecans, chia seeds, maple syrup, buttermilk, bananas, and cinnamon. Still, I couldn’t tell you what proportions or steps this required. However, I came to this understanding within myself after sorting through the abundance of banana bread recipes online; putting my faith in my ability to bake naturally was my attempt to sit with uncertainty inside my agency and see the results.
Strange, yet insightful intellectually in my neurodivergent headspace. In my persistent drive for autonomy, I am willing to access and accept the uncertainty. This could be horrible, but if it turns out okay, that reinforces certainty. I know it is odd to some people how my brain always has to do this level of processing, which is why so many have, in their haste, little patience for me — their loss.
Regrettably, not everything in the world in which we currently live is peaceful, and we must work to bring about our peace. To find peace, my brain is constantly searching for ways to access uncertainty and acknowledge that sometimes, it’s okay to let go of unnecessary things and focus only on what you need to to find your definition of peace, even if that is taking pieces of this and that to create a vision. Piecemeal to develop a sense of peace found in baking today for me.
In that space, there’s a resolution that if you have faith and confidence in yourself, everything will work out. And they usually do, at least with my haphazard baking. Yes, the world is far more complicated than that, but let’s wait and see.
Voila…it tastes divine.
Some random things this Halloween
- I went to Starbucks, and they had no ingredients ironically left to make me a Pumpkin spice latte…blasphemy.
- I bought these books in my local bookshop today to go with the other 50 or more I am reading and still need to finish.
3. I got myself a new owl notebook.
Subtack articles that moved me recently
Creative Fuel with Anna Brones
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer’s World with Thom Hartmann
A Farmer in a Hunter’s World: The Origins of Agriculture
Peak Notions with Laura Kennedy
Compulsion, Addiction and Agency
Who had the most kids in history? Or humanity’s near-extinction and why it matters for us all.
So, as it is Halloween, here is what I think of that…
When I was younger, I never dressed up for Halloween, and I never went door-to-door trick-or-treating. I don’t regret not doing that. I have always had an absence of FOMO. I also couldn’t fathom why my parents would let me knock on strangers’ doors for sweets, even if they were close by.
Logic.
Even as a young child and teenager, I never understood why everyone acted like someone or something they weren’t. I did question the children who dressed up, which naturally led to my exclusion due to my then-unknown deviations from what were the mass’ norms.’
The bittersweet irony as I grew up was that I ended up being chronically burned out from dressing up as someone I wasn’t (neurotypical) for the majority of my adult life. I am therefore resolved to spend the remainder of my adult life as I progress towards my 5Os unmasked as the middle-aged woman I am — pedantic, dark, intense, sardonic, deeply emphatic, but now with far more compassionate boundaries. You can be anyone you want to be for Halloween and forever, but I encourage you to stay loyal to who you truly are.
- I filed my taxes and giggled cathartically at a reminder of one of my favourite scenes from Black Books ever. Dylan Moran is one of my all-time favourite comedians. I haven’t missed any of his shows in Dublin over the last few years.
- I got my hair done. (Despite beauty conditioning, I don’t regret being that superficial and indifferent in this context.)
- Oh, and I won a contract to project manage a creative, exciting project within the Autistic community, which now needs my deeper focus and attention with a deadline before the year-end in addition to my group facilitation work. I will, therefore, sign out of the inboxes now with long-form articles until 2024. Still, I will likely show up in notes or chat over on Substack and enjoy the deep reads from others in my spare time. You can also find some of my random postings here on LinkedIn.
As always, a reminder that I do this as part of my life’s work and do not have any notions about making a full-time career or living from this publication. Still, I do value my work as many others do also, and therefore, I would kindly ask if you find my writing of value and have any spare financial means to consider one of the following options:
Pledge your support for my publication on Substack
Make a donation to AsIAm Irelands National Autism Charity.
Please support me on Ko-fi, from where I will donate a portion of these earnings to various charities I support at year-end via my annual company donations.
Thank you for reading and for all the continued support and feedback.
