Y’all, what a year. I always feel like I have so much explaining to do when I pop back up on this blog once or twice a year, but I have nothing to really say for myself this time, except that in late February of last year, a big-time Korean Instagrammer stopped by my humble little shop, and very quietly and inconspicuously proceeded to blow up my bakery business. In a good way. By March, business had doubled, and by July, it had quadrupled. It was a rollercoaster ride of a year, and I spent pretty much the whole rest of 2021 just trying to hang on for dear life and keep up with the onslaught of orders and walk-in business that was coming my way. I had very little time for anything else, especially faffing about with photos for fun, and the last thing I wanted to do in my (increasingly limited) free time was bake something.

Business is still good, but with the help of a new, much larger oven, and a baptism-by-fire crash course in baking time management, things feel a lot more stable now. And after a year of feeling mostly like a cupcake-making robot, I feel quite itchy to get my hands dirty with some non work-related baking projects. That having been said, sometimes baking is still the last thing I want to do on my days off, so I feel like it’s necessary to warn you that the focus of this blog will probably be shifting a bit over the coming year. There are other reasons for the shift, which I think I will share more about as time goes on, but suffice it to say that this will hopefully be a very important year for me in terms of thinking about my future and what I want to do going forward.

Keeping a baking blog is harder than I thought it would be. I, for one, would rather die than write 1,000ish words of baking instructions, more or less the same, every single time I post a recipe. I think most bakers have the general ideas down already if they’re looking for recipes, and there’s not much about the ratio of baking powder to baking soda in a recipe, to name just one example, that I can explain better than literally anyone else on the internet. It’s just not the kind of shit I like to write (or read, for that matter). I have a lot of love for food as a part of culture, and ingredients, and the way that I think food represents a very important part of our humanity. But it feels increasingly difficult to sit down and find a way to somehow tie a recipe for orange chocolate cake, for example, to something that’s currently going on in my life or some bigger, overarching theme. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying. But at the stage I’m at in life, currently, and considering the urge I have to move back toward a certain type of writing, I just feel like I need more wiggle room. Thrashing room? We will see.

I don’t really know what’s coming. That’s probably the thing I’m working the hardest on at the moment, in my personal life, is being okay with the unknown and accepting the fact that this year is going to largely be about flying by the seat of my pants and feeling my way through the dark, while trying to keep a sense of wonder and curiosity at the forefront, as opposed to fear.

I am making at least some few small attempts to keep the chaos in check, however, and have set up a few different situations to aid in that. I think this blog will be kept mostly for making — making cakes, making recipes, making other things with my hands, as well as some personal updates. But I also want to get back into more theoretical/cultural writing, especially on topics related to women, gender and feminism, and for that type of shit, you should come find me on Medium. I’ll be posting short-form updates about anything I’m posting anywhere, as well as probably more frequent, less important general goings-on on Instagram. And if you’re interested in a general mishmash of all of my long-form nonsense, you can sign up for my email list at Substack, where I think I will just go ahead and make a chaotic mess of everything, because technically, you’re asking for it.

Now that I’ve sufficiently buried the lead with several paragraphs, I’ll go ahead and at least say this: barring some god-forbidden, unforeseen disaster, this will probably be my last year in Korea. After 14 and a half years, in early 2023, I plan to move home.

So about that orange chocolate cake….