There’s no baking post this week because I’ve been unwell and have been using every extra minute I can claw onto to rest. I am so bored

of resting now. When I’m ill I feel so lame and weak, like a sickly Mediaeval child waiting for the Quack to come round and tell me I’m dying of an awful plague. I don’t feel like myself at all and not just in a physical sense but also because I haven’t done anything or seen anyone in a while I feel like my personality is gone. I haven’t been laughing with my friends, or heard the update on my sister’s work gossip. I have barely left the house and I miss walking around and thinking random little thoughts that rise up and then disappear like blowing a bubble and watching it pop. My social life and my thoughts have been pretty much non-existent and so too, there goes my personality.

Rotting in bed has made me feel emotionally fragile. I’ve been exclusively watching movie commentaries on YouTube as well as Disney and Pixar movies where I know no one can die and there is a heavy emphasis on hope and family. I have watched The Incredibles Two, Big Hero Six, Mulan, Soul, CoCo (twice), and the other day I watched Zootopia before bed only to wake up in the morning, sniffing and spluttering to watch a thirty-seven minute YouTube video of someone else’s commentary on Zootopia. I know that this has to stop because I can feel myself becoming the type of person who comments on films in a way that I know is irritating as I am saying it but I can’t stop myself from saying it anyway. I was feeling a bit better the other day and went to my friend’s house for a chilled evening and we watched the new Wes Anderson short film on NetFlix. Almost from the moment he pressed play I found myself saying things like ‘that’s a nice shot’, or ‘I love how symmetrical and wide the camera angle is’, or ‘do you see how they must have done that all in one take’ or worst of all ‘ooo so macabre’. When I was saying these things I was getting a kind of rush, loving the idea that he would think I’m some kind of movie scholar and was being wowed by all the niche things I know. Really I know nothing and I’m sure my comments were proving that rather than anything else. I was giving them the old razzle dazzle, the little ‘look how smart I am’ show, and I don’t know why. On reflection maybe the recovery isolation made me strange and a bit lost. When I see my friends and do my routines they have a grounding effect. I hadn’t done any of those grounding things in a while so I was all afloat, and with all the movies and commentaries I had been watching I latched on to that kind of personality for a moment. But it was weird and I’m cringing at myself now. I think from now on I will leave the movie commentaries up to YouTubers and watch films in silence; I always enjoyed stuffing handfuls of warm popcorn into my mouth more anyways.

I decided not to bake this week because it feels criminal to feed people germy cake, and because I don’t want to force myself kicking and screaming to do something which is meant to be for my own enjoyment and ruin the whole experience. Baking has also become a grounding activity for me, as is writing. Baking is a good time for me to check in on myself, to ask myself if I have watched Zootopia too many times and how many times is a sign of something desperately wrong, to give myself a stern talking to telling myself to stop saying ‘nice shot’ at every Oscar award winning movie, TV show episode, or Tesco advert that I see, to not try and razzle dazzle my friends who aren’t impressed by my random facts that definitely do not prove how clever I am, and to just feel like myself. Next week I will bake and I have been collecting a lot of recipes that I am excited to make — watch this space!

Goodbye for now.