You Can’t Bake A Cake Out Of People

You Can’t Make Cake Out Of People

At ye current ripe olde age of 29, I’ve overcome some false beliefs I used to hinge my life on.

Don’t worry. We don’t have time to go over all of them, and I doubt you have the necessary PhDs to listen to my neuroticism without exploding into red mist.

But I’ll give you one of them.

You can’t bake a cake out of people.

Chill out- here’s what I mean:

I used to believe my life was good or bad based on whether I was with the right romantic partner. (Ah, hell, Jeff’s getting vulnerable again, yes, I’m a romantic, GTF over it.) “What if I can’t trust them?”  “If I doubt us and want to leave sometimes, what does that mean?”

How I was doing was answered by “Do I have the 100% right person?”

Wild stuff for current Jeff to believe.

But younger me? Dat boy was dumber than a bag of hammers.

I tied my emotional well-being to the snapshot of my perfect conditions being met- instead of what I was doing with my life

Instead of where I was going.

Instead of what I was building.

The funny part- I painted that belief onto every partner I had since high school, the good, the bad, and the “particularly wealthy” ones.

What crap.

Imagine a crap cake: just a base layer of mud, then add some dog doo-doo, then like wheat-grass shots, and finally, cover the thing in icing and top it with a cherry.

Looks great from the outside, but on the inside is an absolute anus of a monstrosity of a cake.

It’s fine to look at, but you can’t enjoy it.

My life was a cake, and I had been making it with ingredients beyond my own esteem and control. Then and ONLY THEN, would I add the icing on top of me being happy.

That’s kind of like saying you can finally be happy after you weigh or lift a certain amount, or can finish a workout without being sore. Said another way: I choose to be miserable until I achieve this thing that can’t possibly arrive before my Ambien-induced Amazon Prime shopping spree.

Conditions do not equal a good life.

Snapshots of your stats do not equal a good life.

So, what’s your cake made of? Should you make it great, even without the icing? Or the other way around?

Today, I like to think, I’m baking my own great cake of a life. AND, I can invite a great partner, friend group, hobby, or fitness level to be the icing on my already great cake.

That’s how my workouts are still dope, even when I don’t perform well.

I didn’t do poorly- I’m baking a great cake of a life, and a great performance, partner, promotion at work, etc would have just been the cherry on top.

There will always be more cherries.