This space has my mind reeling. I feel like I need 10 different sections to get out everything I am consistently thinking about. But streamlining is good and maybe I’ll keep mulling over how many people I need to make angry with my personal opinions at a later date.

An update on my progress with baking. If you read my previous post, you will know my husband and I made a huge decision for me to stay home with the kids. We are aiming to homeschool, and since we have a 3-year-old and an almost 5-year-old, this is going to be a pre-K trial year, learning how to navigate something I have never done before. The pressure is intense, but the community I have been a part of has so much knowledge and is so kind, reminding me of grace.

I have started baking bagels for the Local Storehouse on a consistent basis since I left my corporate job. I wanted to jump in head first and put myself back out there to the public but I felt the stirring in my bones to just sit and breathe for a while. Enjoy this moment of a “break” before diving back in.

As a heads-up, I am extremely concerned about burnout when it comes to baking. When I was on maternity leave in the summer of 2024, I decided to start my in-home micro bakery. The overhead is minimal when you are just using your own oven. The packaging and ingredients were affordable since I was still making my corporate income, and I thought this was it. I can really do it all. I can have babies, work a more than full-time job as a manager, grow a garden, keep a home, AND start my in-home bakery. And I did. That summer, I did all of that, and when maternity leave was over, I continued it. A year ago, almost to the day, I posted my last “orders open” post. I managed to get through two full months after my maternity leave ended, of “doing it all”.

But what did that leave me with? Getting back on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication, a low self-worth mentality because failure was inevitable with my expectations, a consistent longing and discontentment for something that I couldn’t have instantly, envy, the feeling of constantly letting my family down and literally anyone I had to say no too… you get it. It wasn’t great.

This is why jumping back in is scary.

Here is a list of things I am learning to hopefully avoid some burnout when moving back into this space:

1. If I am truly interested in being unique and gaining confidence in my own work-do not look to social media. This is a tool to help me build clients and communicate. Not to compare my new business with someone who has been doing it for years. Also I never know the whole story.
   • I fail at this a lot right now.
2. Since I fail a lot at that, I am using my computer a lot more right now to do business rather than my phone. This really works for me. I do not doom scroll when I use it. I’m being productive.
   • I’ve been okay at this, but I always go back to my phone…
3. My expectations of what this business should be need to go out the window. It is good to have short-term and long-term goals with the reality check that life is always moving. This is an imperfect world. If this needs to take a backseat, it will. If I need to do more to financially support my family, I will. Take everything day by day and order by order.
4. My kids will always come first. I am home to be in their life. They are mirroring me so I have been checking myself a lot lately with how I treat myself. If I am working myself to death, there is a good chance that my kids will think that is acceptable and I wouldn’t want that for them. We take a lot of breaks to be outside and just be present in the beauty God has blessed us with.
   • Being present when we go outside is particularly challenging because of technology and the need to capture every moment. My phone is in my hand or pocket constantly, and my kids notice this. If it isn’t, they are starting to tell me, “I’ll go get your phone, mama!” This was a direct fear of mine, so retraining myself and my children will be my challenge.
5. Forcing myself to read my Bible and participate in a study AND be consistently reading a fiction book. The Bible and studying it, now that I am making more time for it, have been filling my cup immensely, but this is usually the first thing that gets pushed to the side. I’m continuing to work on that. The fiction book really feeds my need to step out of the craziness of this world. I am constantly listening to political podcasts, along with “conspiracies”. I need to get out of that. If I cannot control it and it isn’t directly affecting my home front or my community, then this is not the season for me to go into battle with the world on issues out of my control. My battle is in the home with my kids and in my community. Some of this overlaps. The world and the home. So navigating that as a family and in my church is where this stays for me.
   • If no one has subscribed to The Pour Over, it’s usually a 5-minute read once a week about the goings on in the world. It’s bi-partisan (truly) and has blurbs that bring it back to how we can take these moments as Christians. This has helped a lot, so I can stay in the know but also not over-indulge in hours of catching up on podcasts. Let me know if you want a referral, and I can send it over. (Zero cost and no, this is not sponsored)

Okay- this is a long blog so if you made it this far, you are a precious one.

Final updates- I am doing a pop-up porch bakery on September 11. This is my first back-to-the-public bake. It’s exciting and nerve-racking because it’s a big week in and of itself, but I have been giving myself a lot of grace to not overfill my calendar and giving a lot of grace when I feel like I can’t get all of the “things” done I want to. Setting priorities straight may mean maybe the floors do not get mopped this week or I can’t clean up the garden like I want. You get it.

I’ll let you know how this week goes, and thank you for reading!