Embrace the Chaos

I see from the date on my last post that I’ve been out of touch for quite a while (yet again).  In my defense, I did manage to get Book 4 of The Traveler finished and through editing!  Yay me!  The plan (as it exists at this time) is to do the cover reveal in May and the book release in June.  In Book 4 Harry goes through so many changes it’s just amazing.  I hope you’ll enjoy reading about his travels as much as I did writing about them.

Let’s see, what else – oh, yeah:  I’ve been doing a lot of displacement activity the past few weeks.  You know, where you need to do something, anything, other than focusing on the absolute chaos that may be happening around you.  In my case, rather than compulsively (some may even say obsessively) watching my retirement funds evaporate before my very eyes, I’ve been watching cooking and baking videos.  Now, my inclination is to blame the AI Overlord of Information Across the Universe of All Devices for continually manipulating my feeds, but I really think this one is on me.

I think this particular displacement activity started innocently enough back when I was reading recipes, but as these things tend to do, over time it escalated.  It turns out that obsessively reading recipes appears to be a gateway activity to obsessively watching cooking and baking videos.  Before I knew it, I was watching these videos literally night and day; you wouldn’t believe how many are out there for your viewing consumption.  I might also mention that the videos I’ve been watching aren’t of famous chefs like Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse but are what I like to think of as home-grown.  These are folks making videos in their own home kitchens, cooking family-oriented meals and desserts using a wide variety of packaged and frozen ingredients.

It started with the dump cakes that used boxed cake and pudding mixes, which I have to say were not a success at my house.  From there, my interest was piqued by the extensive use of crockpots and tater tots, along with massive amounts of cream of chicken soup.  There is also the “one pan” phenomenon, which, while admittedly convenient, many times just isn’t that appetizing.  I did try a crockpot chicken and dumplings that got pretty good reviews.

But wait, there’s more!  Last November I wrote about artistic creations using woodworking lathes (“Resistance is Futile”), but I’m here to tell you that those videos have nothing on the Japanese baking videos.  The woodworking videos are mesmerizing, but the Japanese baking videos go well beyond mesmerizing, right into Zen meditation.  It’s like watching the Japanese tea ceremony, but instead they’re baking a cake.  I aspire to be that graceful and tidy when baking.

I do know that at some point I have to return to reality and stop all these displacement activities.  But first, I’m going to go watch the next episode of Grimm.  I’m just about through the second season and there are four more to go, so I should be good for a few more days of mental displacement.