the worst part is there's no one else to blame

don't call it a comeback

So, these are definitely not indicative of my best work. Because of my inability to follow recipes and my predilection for tinkering, I wanted to add sour cream into the mix. I also was rushing a bit, so when I removed the cakes from the pan, they lost a bit of their shape. However, they were completely consumed by my team yesterday, so all is well that ends well. And, as I mentioned yesterday, it helped me to clear the barrier to begin experimentation in the kitchen again.

Unfortunately, one of my experiments in the kitchen yesterday went tragically awry. It seemed to be simple enough, but this is a good example of how baking and cooking are two very different beasts. All I was planning to do was stir fry some vegetables, add some mung bean noodles, and throw in a little sauce for taste. The problem here is that I had never used the sauce before. It actually turned out to be this black bean and garlic paste. And it also turned out that I was a little too generous adding it into the mix.

Besides it tasting a bit on the salty side, I thought it was passable though. I was woefully wrong there. I woke up in the middle of the night with that awful salivating feeling that precedes vomit. Sorry, don't mean to get graphic on you here. I did not actually throw up, but that sort of made everything worse, as there was never any relief.

So, work has been nothing but big fun this morning after getting nearly zero R.E.M sleep last night.

Stuff to do with The Goal still continues. I am trying not to let the natural process of The Goal mess with my head, but it's not really working. This is reason #75824729083 that I could never be a successful writer: a writer has to be confident enough to handle a healthy amount of rejection.

Whenever I have spoken to people who get their work published, I am amazed that they manage to do it. You have to submit to so many different places, but you also have to let it go, since you have to keep on writing. The failures are not to be taken personally. You might not be a good match one place, you might have caught the publishers in a busy season, you might have just got lost in the pile. But you have to push all of that out of your head, because you have to keep producing more work.

How on earth do people do that for a living?!? Dudes, I will confess that sometimes, if I go 2-3 posts without any comments, I feel so forlorn that I wonder if I ought to continue blogging. So, the notion of letting the form letter f*** you's roll off the back does not even inhabit my imagination.

Don't worry, The Goal has nothing to do with getting published (and let's take a moment to be grateful for that, or the insanity would be through the roof around here). But I do have to deal with a natural flow of good news and bad news. I guess that is no different than anything in life, but it somehow feels more acute than the normal twists and turns. Maybe so much depends on this that the slightest turn feels like right full-rudder. Either way, much respect to freelancers, yo. I don't know how they do it.

In other news, I know Abhi's going to kill me for writing this, but I have to express my disgust. Last night, when I was driving home, a new John Mayer song was on the radio, and I found myself strangely drawn to it. When I started to listen to the lyrics, I found myself increasingly disgusted. It's one of those I want to buy the world a Coke-type of songs. Except that really, all it seems to demonstrate is how apathetic and passive jacka$$es can be. I can't tell if Mayer was trying to be tongue-in-cheek, and it seems like giving him far too much credit to believe he was commenting on apathy and inaction. Sorry, but a part of me just thinks he really is sitting around waitin' on the world to change. Yeah, that plan seems to have worked out really well for the past decade.