Looking Back

There’s so much I could say. It’s my last week in my 20’s. Of course, we all have that moment when we approach a new decade and age in life where we look back, at least I do. I honestly cannot believe, or even comprehend, all that took place in this last decade of my life. To think that when I turned 20, I was in college, just discovering myself, wondering what the next ten years had in store for me. My god, what a blur it is. This period of my life brought so much good and so much bad, and looking back, I’m realizing just how much I learned, excelled, fell, failed, and everything in between. This birthday comes after an extremely difficult few months. Do I love how I feel right now? No. I’ve caused a lot of hurt to someone and I’ve been dealing with that, not in the best ways. I own my mistakes and fully realize what I should have done differently in the past. Acting out of pain and emotion rarely gets your anywhere positive, and I’ve also learned that recently. Am I hurt as well? Definitely. Is that hard to believe or even listen to for some? Of course. There are some who see me as terrible, selfish, and dishonest. Truth is, when there is a period of your life, whether it be a job, a relationship, whatever, that brings out the bad sides of you, sides you didn’t even know were there, you have to accept that maybe you didn’t do things right, you didn’t speak up, you didn’t treat others fairly. For me, there is a lot of guilt. There is regret. There is frustration, but for once, there is also clarity. There is clarity in the sense that I know what I’ve done wrong, and I know what to fix in the future. Some things can’t be fixed, but the things that can be fixed are learning lessons for the rest of your life. When things or people bring out bad sides of you, that is a lesson in itself. That is something to look at and figure out. Do I regret some of the things I’ve done and said? Absolutely. Have I shown that? No. I shut down when things are bad. I don’t talk about my thoughts and feelings. I’ve always kept to myself. Sometimes that’s fine, but in other cases, it’s the last thing I should do. After this last few months, I know that now more than ever. I cannot act like everything is fine and just let myself stay in my own world and think that it won’t affect others, especially those close to me. I’ve always hated confrontation and avoided it at all costs, even if it’s necessary to move past whatever issue there is. That has recently caused a lot of hurt, and I realize that. I hate that I’ve allowed that and allowed myself to continue doing it. Sitting here in my new apartment on my own is weird, because I haven’t lived alone in a long time. The circumstances have made it difficult. I know time heals, but in the moment, time drags. All I can say is that eventually you just have to move on. I will never apologize for trying to move on with my life, continuing on and being happy on my own. All of this will be remembered and acted upon in this next part of life, which I feel has a lot in store for me. When you’ve hurt people, it doesn’t sit well, with me at least. A lot of the time, I do not show that side. I feel that continuously beating yourself up only causes more pain and more mistakes. No one needs or deserves that. I can’t change the past, but I can let it influence the future and make me a better person for myself and others. Life isn’t just about me. It’s about everyone else in my life as well, and I need to be better at allowing others in and showing them that I truly care. I’m one of the most stubborn individuals I know of, and it’s easy to be self-centered in this life I’ve created for myself.

To those that know, I’m sorry. My promise to myself and those close to me is that I am trying to excel in every possible way, professionally and personally.

Life is just too short. 

No More Hiding

I feel like every time you wind up somewhere unexpected, it just turns the past into a blur, and you find yourself better off, as hard as it may be to accept. If I know anything about myself, it’s that when I get comfortable, I coast. I kind of put my life on autopilot and expect things to just keep going on their own. Clearly, that’s not a good thing to do, for myself or anyone else in my life. It makes it easy to avoid problems and brush them off like they’re nothing. It makes it easy to overlook people and expect them to just be there the whole time.

The last year, as I’ve navigated this self-employed life for the first time ever, I’ve faced a lot of decisions and trains of thoughts. Things are scary, volatile, and sometimes very unpredictable. Those things can bring out the absolute worst in a person. When I look back at the last year, I’m proud of where I’ve gotten professionally, but I also am very not proud of some of the things I’ve done and said. My life became AJ’s world, only about me. Yes, my field and my ambitions require me to be self-centered in a way to where I really have to have my best interest in mind, because I have bills to pay and goals to meet, and if I stop or slow down, that’s risking my progress. I want very big things in life. Things that are very difficult and time consuming to achieve. The process of getting there is long, complex, and is filled with decisions. Some decisions are easy, some are not. Some decisions require help from others, and some are decisions only I can make.

In that process of making decisions and drawing my road map, I was faced with issues at home that I wanted to ignore. There were things I didn’t like that I didn’t express or speak up about, purely because I was afraid to. I was afraid of the outcome, afraid of the consequences, afraid of it in general. I became someone simply chasing an image, or a life with all the “correct” pieces, like a nice home, a relationship, good income, etc. All those things started to slowly just mesh together into one thing I was clinging onto for the sake of having them, making my attention and devotion to them basically nonexistent. It changed me, and not in all good ways. I did and said things that were out of character. I became a version of myself I do not like. Unfortunately, that being combined with bottled up thoughts and feelings that I wasn’t expressing led to poor decisions. Those decisions affected my personal life very heavily and have resulted in where I am today. Professionally and financially, I’m better off than I’ve ever been, but the emotional and personal cost is huge. I will never blame my problems on work. My problems are my problems and it’s up to me to figure out how to be a better person going forward.

Regardless of being in the wrong, I will say that punishing myself and harping on things repeatedly for an extended amount of time is unhealthy, and that goes for anyone. That’s not how problems are solved. That’s how they become even worse. I understand that I may appear fine, but inside, I am thinking about things. I feel guilt, regret, sadness, all of it. I’m putting on a happy face for the sake of trying to carry on with my life. I am taking proper time to address things to myself, but that doesn’t mean I just want to talk about it, and that doesn’t mean I can simply flip a switch and solve all my problems. It just isn’t that simple.

The truth is that what I want in life is going to occupy all of my time and emotions. It doesn’t create a situation to where I have any capacity to support someone more than just myself. That goes emotionally and financially. I do have to be able to talk about my thoughts and feelings, because no issue will ever be solved if I don’t. I can’t ever expect to be able to fix everything for myself without anyone else’s input. Clearly, when you’re given opportunities to speak your mind and you don’t, you get nowhere. I’ve learned that the hard way. What did that do? It led me to make things even worse as a result of resentment, resentment caused by bottled up thoughts and feelings that were never expressed, because I was scared to express them out of fear of the consequences of them. While the specific circumstances are complex, the process is simple.

Things really only have to be difficult if you make them difficult. So, don’t.

Finding Myself

After quite a mental breakdown the last few weeks, I feel clear for once. Honestly, as well as last year went, I don’t know that I was ever really clear on what I was trying to accomplish. Everything started with my YouTube channel in college, and I had a dream of having a successful, widely followed channel. Over the years as I’ve kept that dream alive and worked towards it, as I’ve grown and matured, as my mind has changed, I think I’m back to where I was in the beginning in terms of what I want. Last year, I tried everything all at once, so it’s no wonder that nothing really grew. The amount of time and work it takes to make any one of the 5 things I was attempting last year is a full-time job, so imagine trying to tackle 5 full time jobs at once. You’re probably thinking it isn’t possible, and that’s because it isn’t. I slacked in so many areas.

The last several weeks, I’ve invested a lot of time and money into much needed social media education and analysis. There are so many small things I haven’t been doing that matter, and had I taken the proper time to do this research before, I probably would’ve grown a lot faster. My other issue is that I lack patience. I can sit here and beat myself up about what I didn’t like about last year, but the fact is that I worked so hard last year and accomplished a lot. It was only one year. I don’t recall ever reading about anyone ultra-successful who pulled it off in a single year. It’s not enough anymore to hope for a single video to go viral and have that pave the entire path to your success. That’s too common now. A single viral video will obviously help you gain a larger audience, but it’s a very temporary spotlight. People will forget. What needs to be worked on is a long-term identity and brand that people remember because it’s in front of their faces every day and because they love it.

So, after trying the farmers markets, the dessert mixes, the cake orders, and social media, I’m back at what started all of this, and that is my videos and pictures. For a while, as I tried to grow my identity with food online, I felt like I was no longer allowed to post anything personal. The truth is that back when my page was a mix of my own photos plus my food content, it was doing significantly better. I think I got sick of people not liking my food content as much as they liked the other stuff, so I stopped doing the other stuff. I only wanted to be known for one thing, so that’s all I did. I boxed myself in and told myself that’s all I would do until I gained a following just focused on food. Well, a year later, it’s going well, but of course there are things I wish were better. This goes back to the impatience though. I can’t realistically expect to gain a huge audience in one year. I can certainly start to grow one, but upon reading other food bloggers or any bloggers’ info, it took them years to build their audience. So, I think as I poured all my time into this quality food content last year, I was disappointed that it wasn’t growing quickly, because I’ve been doing social media for years and felt like I’ve been doing this as long as the others. If I didn’t establish a niche and really target that in the previous years, which I didn’t, then why would me suddenly switching everything make a difference? Spoiler alert: it didn’t make a difference. I was impatient and indecisive. Two things that you just have to figure out how to overcome in this business. Things take time.

Because I spent so much of last year only focusing on what I wished to happen instead of what was happening in my present, I started autopiloting. Nothing felt like reality. It felt like I was just mentally coasting and hoping for the best. I told myself I was doing everything possible, but I wasn’t. I was doing bits and pieces of different things, thinking that each thing would just grow on its own after I established it. That’s why this year I stopped doing everything except content and cakes: the two things I love and am best at. Focusing on just these two things and establishing one end goal will make my progress not only quicker, but way more effective. I would like to keep growing my channel, while incorporating some personal content in. People like it. I think it not only boosts my page’s visibility overall since it has more traffic, but it puts an identity to these food videos I love producing. It ties it all together. So, this year, I will not box myself in. I will post what feels like me. I’m taking everything I’ve learned about the business, about myself, and about food, over the last 7 years of this journey, and am applying it all. No more autopiloting. No more bits and pieces. 

It's going to be a daily mental battle for me until I figure out how to get past this mindset. I’ll be honest with what crosses my mind almost every day. I’ll scroll social media, see these food bloggers or other creators getting crazy views and interactions on their content, and I immediately get discouraged because my content looks just as good, I’m doing exactly what they are in terms of captions, hashtags, time of day posting, and so forth, but my content just repeatedly feels like flops. Here’s what’s different. Those people either did exactly this for a long time, not just a year, and grew over time, and over time, the growth was quicker and quicker because the momentum picks up after enough time. Some of them also didn’t have the financial struggles, so they had the money to invest in the research, software, and even teams of people to make an ultra-successful channel happen even faster. The fact of the matter is that while they all have their own circumstances, I know one thing: I make damn good content. I do truly believe in myself and what I’m capable of. I simply haven’t been doing it to this extent for long enough. I am now giving 110% percent to ensure that what I produce is of the best quality and reflects me. I’m putting in the research, the planning, the captions, the hashtags, the calendar, and time of day to post, everything. I’m literally doing everything now. I wasn’t doing everything before. I wasn’t doing everything before, because I was trying to do too many other things at once, and I burnt myself out. It’s only been a year since I’ve tackled this as a full-time gig. That’s nothing. This year is a beautiful blank canvas because I know that I am only focusing on my content now, and now that I’ve done my research, made the necessary investments, and figured out a plan, we go right back to what I said before: patience. My lack of patience has really been a weakness of mine for pretty much my whole life, but this is one instance where I have no choice. This will not happen in a year. It may not happen in two years. If I continue with this amount of effort and knowledge though, it will happen. I can’t wake up every day and wonder when, I just have to trust that someday it will. I want it badly enough to do anything for it.

So, will I look at that other successful page and get discouraged that mine isn’t there yet (keyword “yet”)? Maybe, but I will do my best to stop that. I will train my mind to not think like that, because it will only delay my own process. Comparing yourself to others is a very dangerous thing to do. It can totally offset your whole journey. That can’t happen. I’ve given up everything for this, and I’m not even worried. I know deep down that it’s going to work, I just had to find my footing. This really all boils down to one simple concept: believing in yourself. If you truly believe that you can make your big picture a reality, then take that and run with it. Make it happen.

The Dreaded Plateau

Plateau is a very loaded statement when it comes to someone like me. For instance, I am a content creator and a business owner, so a plateau means a lot. It means a slowdown in sales and needing to find a way to increase them. It means needing to brainstorm and market new products. It means low social media interactions and needing to find a way to improve them. It means needing to improve content. It means needing so many improvements, and a lot of them will take time, money, and a lot of effort. This is a point where a lot of people give up, and I can see why. The last couple days, I’ve felt very defeated and even depressed. Sure, on the outside, things look great for me. That doesn’t mean things are going well. My mixes are barely selling, my content feels like it’s going nowhere online even though I am pouring so much time, planning, and energy into it. That, plus a lot of people just don’t have extra money and can’t shop right now, which I understand. That factor definitely makes it tough for us small business owners, because without sales, we can’t continue. That’s when I am fortunate to have my social media partnerships to fall back on, but then you see why my low social media interactions make that a problem. If my interactions are low, I don’t get more partnerships, then I’m completely busted.

Last night was rough. I barely slept and felt sad when I went to bed. I feel like I have it so well though, so feeling sad about anything is wrong because there are so many legitimate problems in the world today, and so many people who have it so much worse. It almost makes me want to just erase all of this. The fact of the matter is that I have spent several years of my life trying to make my big dreams and goals happen, and while there have been many successes along the way, things are still just so stagnant and difficult. I’m having a very hard time growing past this point, which is telling me to bring someone else in and help me. I can’t keep doing this by myself, because while I think I have great ideas, that doesn’t mean they’ll work, or that doesn’t mean I know how to execute them as effectively as possible. I think first and foremost, I need a social media partner, someone who is a true expert at navigating and performing well on the apps, so I can finally learn how to grow past this point. After that, it will be someone to help with marketing, so that I can come up with some new, unique products that people actually want, and I’ll have help getting them out there. It may be time to put the dessert mixes to bed and see what else I can come up with.

I have a lot of improvements to make across the board. I need to totally redo my website and get an SEO expert to help it rank on the search engines, I need to improve the quality and appearance of my videos, I need to find a way to help them perform better on social media, and I need to come up with new products that will actually sell. It’s a lot. All of it costs money too. That’s why I don’t get, and that’s what discourages me. I see a lot of baking bloggers whose content pops off so fast on social media and they get crazy interaction and traffic, and I’ve reached out to many to do some research to see what I can do and who I can hire to help, but some of them do it on their own and others have entire teams. I can’t compare myself to anyone else though. I guarantee that every single one of them came across challenges, but what they did is they got help. They weren’t like me, they didn’t try to figure it all out on their own, which in result has made this whole process not only way more difficult but also take way longer. The fact of the matter is that I need help. Lots of it. I can’t do this alone anymore. All it’s doing is draining me of my personality, emotions, and motivation. I’ve become such a serious, irritable person this year because my mind is always preoccupied on how I can improve things, so they finally take off, because from the outside, people are saying that I’ve taken off, but I haven’t. I’m far from it, which also gets me down. It makes me feel fake. I lie to them and say things are going amazingly, and sure, I do have a couple great things going on, but in the grand scheme of things, there are so many things that are just flopping, and that’s starting to take away from the good. This whole year, I’ve dealt with these struggles but said very little about them, because I didn’t want them to get me down and take away from any accomplishments that I made, and I made many this year. I’m partnered with The Fresh Market, which has quickly become my most proud accomplishment. I was on the news. I was in AJC. I made a second cookbook; I say made and not published because I’ve seen the consequences of going with a small publisher. I have to buy my own book. I got 5 free copies. That’s it. Any more copies I want, I have to purchase. It’s only available on their website, nowhere else. Sure, the book is beautiful and I’m proud of it, and I’m grateful to that publisher for giving me the chance to create a book with them, but I still have dreams of someday getting a deal with a major publisher to sell a book everywhere, all the retailers, and so forth.

I set out on this journey almost 7 years ago, and I had a dream. That dream hasn’t gone away. With a new year approaching, it’s time to make some big changes. I’m a little defeated right now, but that’s never stopped me before. What matters more than anything right now is that I’ve made some amazing accomplishments. I have so many golden opportunities, and they will take a lot of work and effort, and help from other people, but I have invested everything in this. This is my career now. I literally have nowhere else to go, so why not give it my all?

Pushing Forward

It totally blows my mind that it’s mid-November. Every year, I always go into reflection mode and look back at the year to see how I’ve grown. Every year, I always say the same thing: that I grew more this year than any year before. This was my first year on my own, in fact this month I celebrated one year since leaving my job with Delta, which also throws me a bit. To think that I fought and provided for myself this year, earned my own money, found my own opportunities, is crazy but amazing.

This entire year was an absolute whirlwind of accomplishments, disappointments, growth, some steps backward, and many steps forward. I experimented this year in a lot of areas to see where I could grow and what my business could become. The social media part of my business has existed for years, but this year it was time to transform it into something physical so I could connect with the community and have more to offer. Now that I look back on the year, next year I am making a lot of changes that I wouldn’t even know were necessary had it not been for all my testing of the waters this year in so many areas.  

This year I managed to appear on TV news again, as well as publish another cookbook, and recently have an article in AJC, which was a business milestone for me. All of those accomplishments had one thing in common: they focused on my recipes and content, which is what started this whole journey years ago. Next year, I plan to focus solely on content, dessert mixes, and continue cake orders since I’ve seen so much improvement in my skill and a huge increase in interest in that area from myself and my clients. The experimenting with farmers markets and wholesale baked goods was fun but I honestly felt they weren’t for me. Next year I want to invest more time and effort into my content so I can grow on Instagram again, since this year is was a constant decline in followers.

Instagram has been very discouraging for me because a lot of my following exists from the days before the baking content, and those people have no interest in what I actually enjoy, they just saw me as an object, and now that object is no longer there, so they’re leaving. I can’t expect to change a page like mine and keep everyone around. There is going to be a major shift in followers, and I’ll probably lose about 10,000 more over the course of the next several months as I push forward and invest more in the areas I want to grow in. I plan to get fully back into full-length YouTube videos and grow there, I plan to make my Instagram content really stand out and grow there, I plan and find social media help so I can maximize my usage of all the apps and really grow an audience, and I plan to push that audience towards my mixes and market those so I can generate enough interest in them to get them on store shelves. I finally, after all these years, have a plan and an idea of a direction to move in. It took a lot to get here, and I’ve accomplished so much, but it’s really time to be serious and make this happen, because it will not simply happen for me.

This year was amazing, and next year, it will be even better. It’s going to be tough, but I already know that. I said those same words to myself a year ago when I left my job to do all this. I refuse to sit here any longer and wish for things to happen. I’m going to make them happen if it takes everything I have. I’ve fought so hard already; I have plenty more in me.

The Next Chapter

You know, when you experience another country, whether it be for the first time or for the fifth, it can really change you. It can change your outlook on life when you see how another culture lives and operates. I’ve always been particularly fond of Italy for a number of reasons, ranging from the breathtaking geography to the incredible selections available for unbelievably cheap prices at grocery stores. I will admit I am a little depressed coming back to the United States after my recent trip to Italy. Someday, I think I really would prefer to live there. When I walk into a grocery store and can get the freshest, most amazing ingredients for so cheap, it makes me really dislike American grocery stores. Not only are our crops so increasingly modified, but they’re expensive. Just to further prove my point, my mom who is severely allergic to gluten can eat bread and pasta in Italy with no problems whatsoever. Since I have been to Italy a number of times, all around the entire country even, I can speak from experience when I say they really have us beat with food. There’s nothing I would change about the amazing food I got to eat during my week there recently. Here, if I want the same thing, I have to pay out the ass because it’s all imported and heavily taxed, and then the price is tripled. I experienced the same thing in the south of France as well. Who knows, maybe later in life I will be an Italian citizen. I wouldn’t be mad at that.

            Ok, enough of my ranting about food, the title of this is the next chapter because this part of my life really feels like that. I got engaged in Italy, and to enter this next part of life is really exciting and not as scary as I thought it would be, purely because of the confidence and love I have for my partner. On top of that amazing news, I am also writing a second cookbook, this one being much better than my first. While I’m proud to have a book, I was disappointed because it didn’t feel like “my book”. I looked at it and felt it was amateur and just wrong. Granted, the recipes in it are good, and I’m proud of them, but this next book is my chance to really make it shine, and I will. Everything about it will be better and more professional.

            I feel like I’ve had a combination of great and not so great things happen, but really, it’s just me focusing on the couple of things I don’t like, such as recent cake clients ghosting me and me not getting money I was planning on having for the next month. I don’t understand why a client would agree to a price and a payment policy, mine being half of your total is due at ordering, the other half is due the day before you get it. Us independent bakers and cake artists have to have these policies because it is the only way to protect ourselves financially. Most cake artists require full payment upfront. I try to be lenient and give the option of half or all up front because I know custom cakes are expensive and money is tight for a lot of people. But, to order a cake and not pay for it is just rude. The reason we have these payment policies is because we can’t spend an entire day of our schedules making one cake for a client to have them flake and not pay us. The upfront payment at least protects us and pays us for our time, since we have to pay ourselves. I will admit that this situation happened to me for the first time last week with two separate clients, and it bothered me just because I’m on my own now. I don’t have a biweekly paycheck to rely on. I literally have to make my own money, and if I’m short one month, I have to find a way to sell more so I’m covered. Owning a business is expensive; there are so many costs with bills, materials, ingredients, licenses and so forth that really add up, so you can see why a couple of clients flaking on me caused a bit of stress. This is a volatile industry and it’s the type of situation where you have to be prepared for anything. Clients will flake on you. Offers will go away. It happens. This is when you remind yourself of the good things going on. For me, it’s being engaged, working on a second book, getting to teach cake classes monthly now, my wonderful ongoing work with The Fresh Market, my farmers market booths, and the cake clients I currently have. There are so many wonderful things, and I am one to harp on the negative. I will let one bad thing distract me from all the good. It’s something I’ve done for a long time and have had trouble fixing, because I am so type A and just need everything to be in place for me to be totally happy.

            Oh well, things happen. What I can say is that I feel like the rest of this year is going to be spectacular. Insanely busy, but spectacular. I’m a lucky guy to have what I have, and I never forget that.

No More Questions.

I recently had a pretty emotional full circle moment when I got home from teaching my first cake decorating class. First of all, me teaching a cake decorating class is full circle in itself, because cakes were my biggest weakness and insecurity, and now they’re what I’m known for, enough so to teach a class. When I got home after that class, and seeing how flawlessly well it went, I realized how much I’ve managed to create for myself. I’m doing so much, and I have the opportunity to make it all grow. I’m finally established and have my craft mastered. I finally have everything acquired and organized so I can just focus on growing my business. It’s crazy. At this point, it’s only up from here. My recent cake video got over 300,000 views on YouTube, and that’s definitely never happened before. The places I always wondered about are the places I’m reaching. It’s fantastic.

I don’t even have that much to say right now. Sure, I still have my areas of improvement, but after so much time spent wondering, planning, learning, and so on, there really aren’t any more questions for now. Things are just starting to happen for me, and it’s up to me to do well and give things a reason to continue growing. The stressful part is coming to an end, and the growth is beginning. There will be plenty of difficulties ahead as I navigate the role of owning a growing business, trying to expand, trying to reach more people, but that’s a very normal part of this process. You can’t do great things without a lot of effort, and I’m giving it my all.

Reading through my past entries, it’s amazing to see the progress, and I’m here for it.

How It All Started

Any time a person sets out to do something, whether it’s a huge undertaking or small goal, there’s generally some inspiration behind it. Most businesses started with a dream that was inspired by someone or something, and that inspiration can take many forms. While my mom has heavily influenced my journey and beginning with food, my ultimate inspiration and motivation for everything I’ve done is thanks to one person: Ina Garten.

It all started when I was 15 years old. Before I even started journaling, I would come home from school every day and be so motivated to become great at something. I grew up with a mom that cooked and baked professionally, so it was sort of a no-brainer for me to try and gain my own talents and skills. I definitely learned a lot from my mom, but one day I came home from school and The Barefoot Contessa was playing on TV. Ina was making profiteroles, and I had never heard of them and figured it was a great way to start trying to learn things on my own. Very soon after, watching Ina became my after-school entertainment and extracurricular activity. I would write down what she was making with a pen and paper, beg my mom to get the ingredients, and I would try to make it. My mom was super tight on money, so I couldn’t always get all the ingredients that I needed, but sometimes when I was lucky, I’d have what I needed to try the recipes I was writing down.

At the time, I had issues at home. I had an alcoholic stepfather that did some pretty major damage to my family. He and my mom fought a lot, he’d often yell. Luckily, the arguments were never physical, and I know he would have never harmed my mom, but the emotional damage was substantial. I became depressed and anxious. Even the slightest noise in the night would make me sit up in bed because I got scared that they were fighting again. So, it’s no wonder I mostly stayed in my room every night. I didn’t like when he was there because I didn’t know when he was drinking or sober. It was just my sister Christina and I living with my mom at that point because my other two sisters were in college. My parents divorced when I was 10 and she remarried pretty soon after.

It was a night when I was 14 and we were all up in New York visiting some relatives on my mom’s side of the family. I was sitting on the couch between my oldest sister and my stepdad, and for a solid 10 minutes, they were just quietly passing insults back and forth at each other, and I was just silently there, literally in the middle, just listening to it. Eventually, I just couldn’t keep listening to it, so I stood up, shouted at them both to shut up, and that’s when all hell broke loose. It became a yelling match between them, him calling her awful names, my mom getting up and yelling at him, my other sister and I just crying, sitting in the corner watching it all happen. The cops were called, and we found out he had been sneaking drinks the whole night, getting totally plastered. We all slept on the living room floor that night, or at least we tried to sleep. From that point, my family was never the same. My mom was in such a tough place, she loved this man, but he had this awful sickness that was doing so much damage. For a couple years, she tried so hard to make it work, help him get better, all while taking care of my sister and I on a shoestring budget. For those years, my sisters wouldn’t talk to or see my mom. They wouldn’t even come over on holidays. Most of the time, my mom just spent the holidays crying, and my sister and I simply did what we could to make the day a little better for her. This went on for years, and you can only imagine the emotional damage that all of that inflicted on us. After that point, we are to where I started this entry. I came home from school, had emotional issues, and wanted, or basically needed, something to add to my life that made me feel better about myself. The kitchen became my safe space, and Ina became my mentor. She pulled me out of the dark times, whether those dark times were me trying to isolate myself in my room, or my listening to my mom and stepdad fight. It was also around that time that I watched Julie&Julia for the first time, and it immediately became my favorite movie. I was so emotionally drawn to it, and I was so inspired by it. Watching Julia Child’s portrayal of her literally paving the way for the food industry in America, and an unhappy Julie Powell trying to escape the monotony and bleakness of her day job. I told myself that I’d follow in those footsteps. I would start a journey with food and learn how to be a pro all on my own. That movie gave me hope. It made me feel something other than sad. It’s still my favorite movie today.

There is a reason I have developed the mindset that I have, the motivation that I have, the work ethic that I have. I have witnessed people that let everything go for nothing. I have witnessed people who have potential but lack the strength to turn it into something. I have witnessed friends and family die at young ages and miss out on so much. I refuse to live a life where I don’t give it everything I’ve got. I refuse to live a life where I have goals that I don’t attempt to reach. I’ve gone through too much already to allow any negativity to stop me. When I discovered the Barefoot Contessa and started my journey in the kitchen, the lessons I Iearned were some that I ended up applying to my life in general. Ina was in a place in her life where she was successful, and I wanted that too. When I started asking for her cookbooks as birthday or Christmas gifts, reading and cooking from them became the only thing I did to pass time or distract myself. I soon developed a long list of kitchen items, equipment, and ingredients that I hoped to have some day because it was all the stuff Ina was using. It was all super expensive, and I knew it would be a long time before I’d have any of it, but it became the subject of almost all my daydreams. It was also at that point when I decided to write Ina a fan letter. I hand-wrote a 3-page letter, explaining to Ina how much she meant to me and how much she helped me. In return, I got my most prized possession to this day, an autographed photo on which she also wrote “For AJ”. 14 years later, that photo is still framed and sitting in my living room, where I can look at it every day.

It's crazy that something like a photo can carry such an intense and emotional story. It’s not often that I really think about all that I went through as a teenager, but I can’t forget how all of this started, and I never will. Fast forward to now, I crossed off every item on that list of things I hoped to have some day. Ina inspired me to try and write my own cookbook, and I did. She inspired me pursue what I loved even though I didn’t have formal training, just like she did. She took a leap of faith, and now she’s an icon. I took a leap of faith, and I feel successful. I’ve achieved an unbelievable amount accomplishments for someone my age. All of the big goals I wrote for myself: the cookbook, being on food network, etc. I promised I’d make happen by the time I turned 30. I just turned 29, and I’ve already crossed all of it off the list. To this day, in the rare occasion I have free time, I’ll find some Ina videos on YouTube and watch them, and all the memories, emotions, and so much more, just flood back at one time. To see where I was then, and where I am now, I don’t really have any words for it. Years and years of hoping, dreaming, trying, job-hopping, being broke, making mistakes, and just so much more, lead this point in my life where I finally am reaching the place I always dreamt of reaching. It’s full circle.

Attitude Is Everything

I’ve been journaling for 12 years now. It all started when I was in high school, lying in bed one night looking out the window, thinking to myself that I wanted to commit to something. I wanted to give myself something to do every week that I could look forward to, and that’s exactly what it became. It became my emotional outlet. I’ve always been a daydreamer. I’ve always been a deep thinker with a lot of emotions. Sometimes I show my emotions in different ways, and sometimes I don’t show them at all. That night, I was listening to some music that sparked some pretty significant feelings, and I knew that writing was the best way to express them.

Fast forward 12 years, and I’ve kept it with me all this time. Tomorrow, I get to be on the news for a sit-down interview, which I consider a huge honor. It really makes me think about those nights I was in my room, wanting to achieve big things in life. It’s crazy to think about the goals I had for myself. Obviously, in high school, we are just beginning to really discover ourselves and develop our minds and thought processes as we approach the next stage of life. I turn 30 next year, and it blows my mind that 12 years ago, in those first journal entries, I was wondering what life would be like when I turned 30. Throughout my 20’s, I promised myself that I’d achieve all my goals by age 30, so that I could set myself up for a good, stable life, and a life that I would be proud of.

It's not often that someone gets to go on the news and be interviewed about their story and business. To have media interested in what I’m doing is such a boost in confidence, and its hugely flattering. As my business has continued to grow, my reviews have remained positive. Other people and businesses have started believing in me and trusting me. I’ve started to grow my community footprint, which I think is the most important thing to do when you have a business. All these years, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do or where I was going with the YouTube videos I was posting. Seeing how my goals and priorities have changed over time is a real eye opener. You really can’t expect to achieve everything overnight or even next week. The things I’ve achieved are purely because I’ve had years to think about it and work towards it. I’ve discovered new goals throughout this whole crazy process.

I think my journey has been one with lots of obstacles. Lots of confusion, mistakes, and disappointments. Just because those things happen doesn’t mean the entire story is ruined; they are a normal and important part of getting where I want to be. My one biggest dream is having my own TV show. After all this time, the thing I love most is teaching others and entertaining others. I’m so excited to start teaching cake classes at Cooks Warehouse here in Atlanta next month, and I feel that it’s the perfect opportunity to show people why I do what I do. I always wondered what it felt like to wake up happy every day, knowing I get to do what I love for work, and to be feeling that today is perhaps the best feeling ever. It’s a feeling so many don’t get to experience, for so many reasons. To this day, I still can’t tell you exactly how I managed to make everything work the way it has. I know that my passion and talent has proven that I deserve this, but it feels so much more complex than that. I know everyone is dealt a different hand. Everyone has individual circumstances that lead them in certain directions because there are too many things out of their control. I also think that your mindset and attitude are the most important things in whatever you pursue. If you go into something doubtful and negative, the journey won’t be a good one. It will affect you every day. I will admit I am very fortunate to have a good family and supportive parents. I grew up with financially secure parents that put me through school and helped me when I needed it. That’s huge because I know so many people don’t have that. That’s when I get in my head and wonder if I deserve this or if it came easier because of my circumstances.

I think about how lucky I am every single day. I think about all the things I have, and all the things I’ve been able to do, and I never take it for granted. Even though I have all those good things, I still had to make everything happen. I had to put work towards the things I wanted and believe in myself to get where I wanted to be. No one paved the way or handed it to me. I did it myself. I talked to others for advice when I needed it and took a while to figure out what I was doing because I wanted to do it right. Life is short, and a lot of the time, you don’t get second chances with things. I treat every endeavor as my only time having that opportunity. I stop at nothing to make it happen because I want it that badly. That drive and determination is exactly how I’ve gotten where I am today. That’s exactly how I get to go on TV tomorrow to share my story. No matter how large or small the exposure is, it is something I’m extremely lucky to get to do, and I will always appreciate it. I will always appreciate how I’ve grown my business and become busy with so many different things. I refuse to put all my eggs in one basket, which is exactly why I do so many things. I do wholesale baked goods, cake orders, social media partnerships, and have my line of mixes. I want lots of pieces to fit this puzzle, so by the end, it’s a beautiful picture and story with different colors and themes. Also, I have to protect myself. Owning a business is extremely volatile and risky, and you have to be ready in case something doesn’t work out. If any one of these pieces falls, I have the others to back it up. I’ve learned that recently.

In the end, believing in myself was what I lacked, and in the last year, I finally started believing, and look at where I am now. That just goes to show how your attitude affects everything. I keep a positive outlook on everything in life for that very reason.

No More Wasting Time

Throughout my journey, and my life for that matter, there have been numerous people who have come and gone. There have been people to whom I’ve done wrong and the other way around. There have been people I simply lost connection with. There have been people that I lost. This decade of my life has been very defining. It’s my 20’s, and I’m in my last year of them. You hear a lot about your 20’s; that it’s the time of your life where you’re supposed to fool around, discover yourself, take risks, have fun, etc. I know that at 29 I’m still very young, but honestly my mind feels a lot older. When I look at where I am in life compared to other people my age, or to friends and where they were at my age, I’m often told that I’m ahead of the game. That’s not intended to come off as a brag, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t treated myself as much older than I actually am. I’ve treated myself like someone who needs to get their act together and have an established life. I’ve always been a pretty proactive person, but in the last couple years, I’ve amplified that and really tried to do everything I can to be successful at a young age. I’ve done that because I’ve experienced a lot of losses. I don’t want my life to not be one I’m proud of. I’ve talked about that concept before too. I’ve always been a pretty emotional person, and throughout my life, my strong emotions have led to a lot of decisions, some good and some bad.

            I’ve gone through quite the whirlwind of emotions the last week. My mom was life-flighted to a hospital after her heart stopped. She was basically dead for 6 minutes. The strangers where she was, and the paramedics who did CPR are the reason she is still here today. The reason I started this off talking about people throughout my journey is because throughout many peoples’ journeys in life, there are prominent figures. In my life, my mother has been the most significant person. In my family, there are different relationships between different people. Some of us are closer with certain relatives than we are with others. I’ve always been closest to my mom. As a kid, I always wanted to be near her. As an adult, I’ve always made sure to keep her close in every way I can. After the last week where I almost lost her…. How do you think that affected me? I can’t even put it into words.

            Certain moments in life teach you a lot. They wake you up, change your headspace, completely alter your senses of reality. Whether those moments are terrific or terrifying, you learn a lot and take a lot away from them. Some of those lessons are with you your whole life. I’ve noticed that recently I’ve really reflected. I’ve listened to music I haven’t listened to in years, watch movies and shows I haven’t seen since I was little. I’ve brought back my favorite things from earlier in life, and I’ve seen the parts of me that have changed and the parts that have remained the same. The day my mom’s heart stopped, I felt off the entire day. My head was slow, blank, my body a little tired. I dreamt of her the night before. She and I were together on a dance floor dancing to all her favorite music. I get the call that night and didn’t sleep. I left early the next morning to go see her, and since, she’s made an unheard-of recovery in a miraculous timeframe. Even though things are ok now, the experience was traumatic. Days later, I’m still feeling the effects. This is too significant to simply go back to normal life after a day or two. This is a wakeup call for sure.

            I’m not going to lie, things are going well career wise for me, but there are things I could be accomplishing or doing that I’m simply not. There are days I allow laziness. I realize taking a day off is important and that I need time to recharge so I don’t burn out, but there are times when I don’t have that much going on and could very well be doing more to advance my business and grow, but I simply don’t. My mom almost lost her life last week. What if she did?

            Clearly, life is short and unpredictable. You cannot possibly know when your time is up. Last time I wrote of this concept, it was just that, a concept. Having experienced what I did the last week, I’m not going to be upset with myself with wasted time in the past, but I’m certainly not going to allow it anymore. I’m a very lucky person who has worked hard to get where I am. I want more, and it’s not going to come easily, but I’ll be damned if I waste another day not trying to get where I want to be.

When Things Finally Start Working Out

I’m a tad bit overwhelmed, but in the best ways. I seem to have lost track of time, and I remember last year my blog entries here were written with a more troubled mindset. I was dealing with the decision of leaving my job so I could finally succeed with my business, and here I am checking back in having achieved success in a few ways.

I don’t know how, but it just seems that in the last month, everything has taken off. I’ve had 3 online articles come out, my custom cake orders have increased by quite a lot, and I now have 5 wholesale clients that I sell baked goods to. To have 5 different cafes and shops around Atlanta selling my stuff is a dream come true. There are so many more great things on the horizon too, and that’s what’s caused me to stop for a minute and realized how much I have going on now, all because I made that extremely difficult leap of faith last year. I have never been happier, and I can’t believe how much I haven’t missed my old job.

I took a stroll down memory lane this morning, because as all these good things keep happening, it makes me reflect and be grateful for the crazy long journey I’ve been on. Everything I’ve wanted to achieve in life, or witness for myself, I’ve done anything to achieve and witness. I will stop at nothing to reach my goals, especially now. I’m finally established and growing in the community, and I’m so proud of that. To think that this all started with YouTube videos and now 6 years later I have a business not only selling custom cakes and desserts, but wholesale stuff to other businesses, monthly Instagram content partnerships, and an online store, it’s just mind boggling.

6 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I was horribly depressed and making a lot of bad choices. The one thing I still have in common with myself 6 years ago is that I don’t give up. I don’t say something is too hard and choose an easier route. I will do anything to be happy and feel successful. I’ve lost too many friends recently to have a different mindset. Life is too short and unpredictable to waste any time. The amount of big things I’ve accomplished in the last year, thanks to this mindset, is overwhelming to look at. Food Network, the news, a newspaper, online articles, and more. Here I am today wondering how it all happened, but I know exactly how it all happened. I worked my butt off. I didn’t let the judgement of anyone else stop me. I learned from my mistakes and grew from them.

It's never too early or too late to start your journey. It’s ok to be scared, but don’t let that stop you. You should be scared. You should be nervous. Achieving your goals isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to test you in every way possible. It’s supposed to carve a new person out of you. If you never try to go for what you want, you’ll never know what it feels like to have it.

Life Is Short, So I Try Even Harder

This is a touchy topic that hits a lot of us on a deep level. While I always write about my own life, what I’m doing or trying to achieve, that doesn’t mean I’m always focused on myself. Obviously, I have to focus on myself and my life when I’m trying to do all these big things that require a lot of work, but when I see other struggle, it always affects me. When I see others struggle, go through hard times, or take things to the point of no return including suicide, I can’t sit here and pretend that I’ve never thought about it myself.

There’s a reason I work as hard as I do and have such big dreams. There’s a reason I try to accomplish my biggest goals as soon as I can. There’s a reason I hate wasting a single minute not working towards my aspirations. That reason being life’s unexpected nature and unknown length. I’m not here to talk about the meaning of life or what our purpose on this planet is. I’m talking about what life throws at you, or how things can change on a dime, and you can be completely convinced that there is nothing else to look forward to. I’ve seen a lot of death the last several years including family members, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. The causes ranging from sickness, to overdoses, car crashes and suicide. It’s not only devastating when you lose someone, but terrifying. Terrifying because if that person is your age or younger, you realize that you really never know when your last day is. I know that’s dark, but isn’t it true?

I’m not saying I wake up every day saying, “this could be my last day so how will I spend it”, but I do often carry the mindset that life is unexpected, and I don’t want to go out on bad terms or go out wishing I had done something else or tried a little bit harder. All my friends and family would say that I’m a fighter. I fight for what I want. When I plant a seed in my mind about a goal or something I want, I stop at nothing to make it happen. The mindset I’ve had for many years now about life’s uncertainty is why I’ve worked as hard as I have and managed to achieve the huge things that I have in such a short amount of time. When I think about it, witnessing deaths of those close to me changed me in a lot of ways. It lit a fire under my butt because I want a lot of things in life. I want to look back at my life later on and be proud of it and say that I did everything I could imagine. I want to be able to have crossed off all my bucket list achievements. I don’t want my final days, whenever they may be, to arrive and cause me to feel a sort of failure or grief for not doing more or trying to cross off another thing from my list. Between our own conditions within or outside of our control in life, and the current growing tensions and attacks in the world, especially regarding those of us in the LGBT community, life is perhaps more precious than ever. It’s a gift that I intend to cherish and get the most out of.

Now more than ever, it’s important to be yourself and not feel ashamed about it. It’s important to try and at least make a few steps towards your dreams, even if you don’t know where to start. I am fully aware that it’s way easier to say than to do that. I’ve had anxiety and depression issues for years, and a while ago they were so bad that I literally had no idea what I was going to do with my life because I was scared and full of doubt. Between the cultural issues the past few years and the losses I’ve witnessed in my family or circles of friends, I’ve realized that no one is going to live your life for you. No one is going to get you to make things happen. You have to do them yourself. You have to make a choice. You can choose to be sad, doubtful, etc., or you can choose to put in effort and make something out of your life. Some of us have harder times than others doing that, and over time it can be detrimental and have irreversible effects on our lives and the people in our lives. We all have our own reasonings and justifications for what we do or how we think. Not everyone understands where we come from or why we do what we do. For a lot of us, our own approval is all that matters. Not everyone wants help. Not everyone wants to speak up. Sometimes saying “it will be ok” doesn’t work, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. This is a rough topic where so much can be said, disagreements will be had, and opinions will be strong.

Nowadays it’s hard to talk about anything because there’s the possibility of being attacked online. I’ve become more and more disgusted at how mean people are to one another on social media. I understand when someone has done something truly wrong and deserves to be told so, but when a simple disagreement turns into murdering each other with words while we hind behind our phones and computers is the norm, and it makes social media a different place than it used to be. It used to be fun. I still can’t bring myself to go leave hateful comments on someone’s content, especially when the hate only comes from a place of disagreement, not logic or truth. A lot of this rhetoric has been shown to us and taught to us from political figures, and we’ve done the rest to escalate it to the point of people wanting to end their lives. We live in a world where wanting to be heard has become forcing our opinions and beliefs on the community as a whole, and when someone resists, that’s all we need to attack. Clearly, that achieves nothing.

In the end, I just want happiness, and I’m lucky to have it now. I see so many going through rough times, and it hurts me to see. I want to help any way I can, even when there is no way for me to do so. I remind myself how lucky I am to have what I have. I’m grateful to have the opportunities that I do, because I realize how difficult it is to get past the hurdles in life, even the ones you think you can’t get past. It’s more difficult than ever to ignore whatever hate is spewed at you. I will always remind myself that life is short and unexpected, and because of that, I will do anything I can to achieve the things I want.

The Struggles with Social Media

Every day when I wake up, I look at my social media. I look to see if any of my videos did well, if I gained any followers, and I answer any messages. In that process, I scroll to look at and interact with other creators, 99% of them food related. I both love and hate how social media has become this attempt for so many of us to make money or grow a brand. I love it because it helps and works for many, I hate it because it’s become increasingly more difficult to stand out and grow now that there are more and more people doing it every day, with changing algorithms and all these factors that seemed less significant a few years back.

It's easy for me to get discouraged when I look at other big channels and pages that have likes and comments out the wazoo and gain followers every day. I spend so much time and money on my content and a lot of the time it doesn’t really perform that well, even after researching times and days to post, things to include and so forth. It’s a giant headache and is basically a full-time job. Sure, my channel has grown and given me the credibility, achievements, and reputation I have today, which I’m very proud of. However, the sky-high numbers that I still dream of just don’t happen for my content, which makes it emotionally difficult. People don’t care what time and effort goes into the 30 second video they scroll past on social media pages. They care about what excites them and looks cool.

There’s a particular thing about my Instagram page that haunts me to this day, and that is the content I used to post and the reason I have the following that I do. There’s a reason my following is continuously dropping instead of rising, and that’s because a lot of my followers were there before the baking content. I posted thirst traps. Lots of body content, some quite suggestive. There was a time when I had no idea what I was doing with my life and didn’t care about my social media content, but I loved the attention I got from it. I grew a following of mostly one type that only looked at my page to see a body. Changing my profile from that to food obviously is going to be extremely difficult. Now, any time someone posts an inappropriate comment or sends me a creepy message, I get really annoyed. I clearly don’t do that anymore and all of that content is long gone from my profile.

Being gay is tough in the sense that I felt like I always had to look good to be popular. I feel like I’d only be considered attractive if I was super fit, and posting it online only made it worse, because I became an object, not a person. People thought they could just send whatever they wanted to me because of what I posted. But I figure if you’re putting so much out there, can you really be that surprised when people respond the way they do? Sure, it may not be what you want, but you can’t stop people from simply responding to what you’re providing. I feel like that past made it hard for me to be taken seriously when I started posting other content and getting rid of the old stuff. I never regret it because that only delays my daily progress towards my actual goals and dreams.

Social media will always be that difficult game for me, because while starting a new page is probably best, I’ve already had so many opportunities because people saw that big number. Little did they know that the number is just a façade, and a lot of those people will continue to leave and unfollow, which I hope they do. The only reason any of this matters this much to me is because I have built an entire brand and business from my social media and it’s my primary way of marketing myself, as it is for so many other businesses now. I want people to appreciate what I put out there because I work so hard to produce it, and I have to keep working every day at it to keep growing, letting go of the old followers and welcoming the new, who are there purely to enjoy food with me.

The One Man Business

Somehow, we are already approaching December. Every year I swear I say it was the fastest year yet, and I find myself saying it again. This year was such a damn blur in every possible way. I’ve pushed myself and tested my knowledge and skills more than I ever have before. Every year, I think about what I want to achieve and most years I manage to cross a lot of things off my list but still have a few things left that I didn’t manage to do, but this year, I exceeded my expectations.

This year was huge, and it’s not even over just yet. In one year, I managed to establish my dessert mix line, start selling desserts to the public, get on national TV, the local news, publish a book, appear in a few online articles, perfect my craft with recipe videos, and leave my job to do all of this full time. That’s a lot of huge stuff for one year. Having all that under my belt adds a lot of pressure for next year, because obviously I want to keep that momentum going, and now that I have a reputation, I’m finally able to keep that ball rolling and really show what I have to offer, because at this point, there is proof that I not only know what I’m doing, but I’m serious about it. I’ve wanted so badly to make an impression and name for myself for what I love, and it’s finally happening.

Out of the hundreds of lessons I learned this year, a lot of them taught me that not every day is great. There are days when people stop at nothing to try and bring you down. There are days when people leave nasty comments on something you put so much time and effort into. There are days where motivation is lacking, where you have no idea what to do, where you draw blanks on how to reach the next step. There will always be those days. There will always be negative people who have nothing better to do than to try and ruin someone else’s day to fill their empty lives. It’s harsh, but it’s true and we all know it.

On the very best days when there’s not a thing you would change, it’s important to remember those bad days, and be proud that you got through them. The bad days aren’t supposed to stop you, they’re supposed to test you. When you’re trying to achieve such big things in life like I am, it’s near impossible to avoid bad days. In fact, there are too many bad days to count, and it’s not because you’re doing things wrong, it’s because life, people, and the world are too unpredictable to guarantee perfection, especially on a daily basis. It’s ok to feel depleted sometimes. It’s ok to have slow days, or days where you’re low on motivation.

 I work so hard that it only makes sense that I have days where I think I need to do nothing, because doing more would make me physically and mentally sick. I am still a one-man team that writes recipes, films, and edits them for all social media platforms, bakes and sells desserts, produces, sells, and ships dessert mixes across the country, has pop up tables on weekends, and searches almost daily for even more opportunities. That’s a lot, especially for one person. Do you think I am able to keep that up indefinitely? Absolutely not. I have days where I allow myself to do nothing, because I can only manage to keep it going if I give myself a break, which I will admit is very hard to do.

I’ve gotten in such a habit of being busy because that’s how I make a living. Next year I really have to play my cards right and keep all of this going so I can manage to hire help, because now that all of my efforts are paying off and my content, dessert, and mixes are more established with customers and followers backing them up, building a small team to really push it all will only make it better. I can’t do this alone forever, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. This whole business of Bake it with AJ has become so much more than I imagined. It was just a fun idea at first, but I did literally everything possible the last couple years to make this business my life, and it worked. I proved to myself that if I work super hard and just keep going, it will pay off. After that, you reach a point where you’ve achieved everything you wanted, and start planning the next, bigger goals, and those goals require even more time and effort. After all I’ve done, there’s no doubt in my mind. But for now, it’s time to enjoy the holidays and help others do the same.

The Final Trip

Here I am in Paris on my final trip as a flight attendant. I have to say I’m not feeling sad, rather very lucky, actually, extremely lucky. Over the last 4 years as I’ve tried to figure my life out, decide what I wanted to do for a living and career, and discover myself, I had the privilege to travel the world. I had a job that allowed me to see places I never had before, many of which I thought I’d never get to see. It’s emotional being here knowing that tomorrow is my final flight, and that it’ll likely be a while before I get to come back to Paris or any other city overseas.

Paris is significant to me because it was always the first place I wanted to see. It was the first international trip I got to work as a flight attendant. It’s the home of one of my closest friends. It’s a center of culture and cuisine, much of which influenced my journey in baking and food altogether. I wouldn’t have chosen any other place for my last work trip, and of course I’ll be back here in the future, but knowing that I got to experience this place a number of times because of my job is something I will never take for granted or forget. I would not very likely be in an extremely different situation had I not found this job. I may have not had the financial stability to finally work for myself, or the knowledge and social skills I’ve gained to grow in the world of social media. This job really taught me…well.. almost everything. It taught me how to love all people, it taught me how to appreciate the world, it taught me how to be grateful for what you have. In the end, I wasn’t happy. I knew that I’d reach a time when I could no longer balance this job with my business endeavors, because as I’ve said before, I can’t reach my biggest goals if I’m not giving them 100% of my time and effort. So, it’s a bittersweet moment for sure, but mostly sweet.

I’ve had the privilege to visit 21 countries in my mere 4 years with this job, and to think of all the cultural influence and exposure that gave me is mind boggling. The world is huge, every place is so different, yet we get so caught up with our own lives that we sometimes forget there’s anyone else out there. Having witnessed so much in such little time, it’s made it very clear in my mind that life is never guaranteed. Time is limited. You don’t get it back. Life is short and you never know what it will throw at you, so why waste any of it? I know I’m still young at 28, but I refuse to live another day without giving it my all to achieve my dreams. I want a life that I’m proud of, and while I already am quite proud of my life and what I’ve accomplished, there is still so much I want to do and achieve, and it’s time to give it my all. First I traveled the world, now it’s time to conquer it.

200 Recipes Later…

Hitting recipe number 200 on my website definitely invokes a lot of feelings. In the process of those 200 recipes, I went from having no idea what I was doing to making it on TV, publishing a book and starting a business, and finally being able to leave my job. It’s fucking crazy how far I’ve come. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so proud in my life. Every day I try so hard to be positive and tell myself that great things are coming, but I’m forgetting that so many great things have already happened because I put in the work to make it happen. Right now, it’s bliss. My final trip with Delta is this week and I’m sure it’ll be emotional, but what I’m doing here is so difficult and takes so much, and it’s a constant battle against the doubters, haters, and even demons in my own mind.

            It’s hard to comprehend how much I’ve done, especially considering I started all of this from nothing.    I remember writing my first journal entries in my bedroom at my mom’s house back in 2011, and to think 11 years later I’ve done all this is a lot to wrap my head around. I’m still only 28. I promised myself in my early twenties that I wouldn’t waste any time because life is never certain. Your time here is never guaranteed. I’ve worked so hard, and I have so much more to do, and at this point, you’ll never convince me that I won’t get there. Everything that I thought was out of reach, too hard, required too much, or was unrealistic, I’ve made happen for myself. I took those dreams and made them realities. I did the damn thing. It sounds crazy to say that even still, I’m quite small compared to the big dogs in the food world but trust me when I say I will make my mark on the industry. Great things are coming. If I was able to make all this happen, you know I can make more happen, and I will. That’s my new promise to myself. There’s no holding back and it’s only up from here.

Taking the Leap of Faith

Everything I’ve set out to do has led up to this point. All of my effort, dreams, goals, aspirations, whatever you want to call them, have led me to the decision I just made. I put in my notice with my job as a flight attendant. I’ve talked about this decision for a long time but never knew when I’d actually follow through with it. Obviously, it was a very hard thing to do, but the fact that I feel no regret tells me all that I need to know.

I know a lot of people who wish they could work for themselves, myself included. It’s a nice thought, but I don’t think a lot of people realize just how hard that is to do. It took me years to get to this point where I’m confident enough to make that choice and take the leap of faith, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared or a little anxious about it. It’s a huge adjustment for someone like me who likes stability and knowing how much money I’ll be making every month. When you decide to go your own route and be your own employer, you can’t always guarantee how much you’ll make every month, and I hate that I’m talking this much about money, but in the world right now, everything is expensive and not getting any cheaper, which makes finances among the first things in your mind when it comes to your job. At the end of the day, I realized that I was getting more and more depressed going to work. I enjoyed my job in the beginning, but that faded quite quickly. Being a flight attendant has its perks, but it also has its disadvantages, which for me started to outweigh the perks.

When you have big goals like me that include publishing books, creating merchandise lines, getting on tv shows, and more, you will reach a point to where none of that is possible if you aren’t giving your business ventures and endeavors 100% of your time. I tried to make 2 jobs work as long as I could. I tried to fly as little as possible and pour the rest of my time into my business and content so I could keep growing, but I have to say that it didn’t work well. It allowed me to get a little more off the ground, but if I am to be successful and grow online, it takes all of my time and energy. Adding merchandise and dessert orders to that only requires more time and effort, because for now, that’s how I’ll make the most money. I’ll have to do more. I can’t do more if I have another job taking my time away, especially when that job requires me to go somewhere else for however long.

A lot of this is a big mental game as well. When we want something, we focus on it. When we go somewhere that hinders our ability to focus on what we want, it affects the process. Even though I flew a lot less this year in order to have time for my own work, it made the process less effective, because I got comfortable saying that if something fell short or I needed more money that month, I could just work a couple flights to make up for it. That is not the mindset to have if you’re trying to grow a business. If you’re short and need money, find a way to sell more, do more, make that extra money. It creates a very specific mindset and thought process that becomes more and more helpful over time, because you become completely business oriented and learn firsthand what works for you. This is no hobby of mine; this is my career. Having published one cookbook and appeared on one TV show and a news segment already, I’d be insulted at this point if someone called this a hobby.

In the end, I’m still confident in my choice. It’s scary, but it’s the right thing to do. This will allow my mind to focus solely on my goals and figure out exactly what’s necessary to reach them. I am determined to make this work. Life is too short to not at least give it a shot. There’s no looking back, because that will only make me second guess myself, and I didn’t work this hard for that.

The Importance of Time Off

It’s no secret that the life of a creator is constantly busy. In my case, I not only film, edit and post content almost daily, but I also manage my online orders with the dessert mixes, plus the recent addition of dessert orders, weddings included. Those are 3 completely different and almost full-time jobs that I’ve combined into one massive job for one person to tackle. On top of that, I’m still a flight attendant and have actually flown a little more the last couple months to make up for some slower sales. So, when you put all that together, you wonder “how does one person possibly do all of that”.

To answer that, I think it’s important to point out that so many online creators deal with the same situation of having to balance multiple jobs at once because in the beginning phases of it, it’s hard to make a lot of money with just one of those things. Content creation pays off over time, but that’s only if you gain the following and interactions required to make your content get picked up by the dreaded algorithms, so the public actually gets to see it. I know so many talented people who post great content, but it seems to go nowhere and can often be very discouraging, because all of this content takes so much time, money, and effort to produce. So, when you have that in mind, you feel like you have to constantly be pushing out quality content so that your page has what the algorithms want in order to appear on search pages and whatnot. Think about that, recipes every day, pictures, and videos every day, website updates every day. It’s a lot. Granted a lot of big creators can afford teams to break up the workload so they can solely focus on the recipes and filming. However, a lot of us don’t have that luxury, and now it’s more difficult than ever to get to that point because there are more and more of us every day, trying to do the same thing. It’s become competitive.

Getting caught up with all that makes it easy to neglect your personal life and health. This all eats up your time, and in my case, I’ll be in my kitchen from 10am to 7pm without eating, sitting down, or even thinking anything else because I’m so drilled into crossing off all my to dos in order to have enough good content for the week. Taking a day off or allowing myself to do a little less one day is always a struggle because I feel like that’s me slacking. I feel like if I miss a day or even a whole week of content, then I’ll fail and ruin my hard work. This “industry” creates the mindset that you have to constantly be busy, creating, brainstorming, filming, posting, etc. You see an upcoming trend and want to jump on it and post something including it in the hopes it’ll gain you more following, and in the long run, more business. In order to make good money off social media, it takes a lot of hard work and patience in the process of growing. So, you can see why taking any time off in that process is hard for someone like me. It’s like I’m ok with delaying that process and affecting my income.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m tired every day even though get enough sleep. Currently, I’m in bed sick. I’ve actually made myself ill because of how much I’ve been trying to do. I’ve been eating less, going to the gym less, and pretty much only allowing myself time to sleep every night. The rest is spent constantly working on the multiple things I’m trying to accomplish at the same time. Even the last couple days where I’ve been forced to do less because I’m sick have been difficult, because it has become so normal in my head to not allow down time. If I have down time, it doesn’t last. I create more to do because I feel like there is always something else that can be done, to either contribute to my goals or make more money. That mindset is important if you are trying to be self-made and successful, however, beating yourself up at the thought of taking a day off or even allowing one day to have a couple hours of down time is very unhealthy. None of what I’m doing is easy by any means. It’s not easy to put yourself out there in videos on every social media platform for the whole world to see. It’s not easy to continuously come up with new recipes that work and are easy enough for others to make themselves. It’s not easy to post videos every day and keep them all looking better than the other videos on social media. It’s not easy to add cake orders, weddings, dessert mixes, and keep looking for more business opportunities in the process. Out of nowhere, I’ve found myself doing all of this at one time, and there are times when I don’t even know how I pull it off, but what I can say is that it’s completely passion driven. Yes, I’m trying to make money doing all of this because it is my career and way of life, but I do it because I genuinely enjoy it all.

The holidays this year are going to be trying. I’m going to have more dessert orders than ever, I’m going to be selling a lot of my seasonal dessert mixes, and I’m going to be posting lots of content. I have feeling that by the end of the year, I will no longer have my flight attendant job, and that was the goal all along with what I’m doing. Regardless of all that, my point with all of this is that our lives are busy, now more than ever. No matter what you do for a living, I urge you to realize the importance of your own health and wellbeing, because if those start slipping, so does your work. Take a day off every now and again, because I’m willing to bet that one little day can be so beneficial to your mental and physical health and have little to no effect on your long term goals and growth online. The world can wait for a day. You deserve down time.

Being on Food Network

Just the title of this alone is something that sends chills down my spine because it’s surreal that I’m actually writing about it. Appearing on Food Network, whether it was for a single episode or winning a whole series, was a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. I will say that Halloween Baking Championship was a show I didn’t initially see myself on, but as my food career has progressed, I started saying yes to everything, and I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to see one of my dreams become a reality, even if it was for a show I wasn’t the best fit for.

I’ve applied for probably 6 different baking competitions over the years and made it to a Skype interview for 2 of them, Halloween being one of them. Both shows I had interviews for, I was reached out to about. I didn’t initially apply. I was discovered by the headhunters on social media and was encouraged to apply because I looked like a good fit, which was super motivating because it told me I was doing something right. I’ve always wanted to expand into TV after publishing my book and continuing to grow my social media presence. I love entertaining and teaching and TV is the best way to do it.

When I made it on Halloween Baking Championship for Food Network, it didn’t even feel real until I arrived at the studio for filming. That was a very bittersweet moment because I was super proud of making it on the show, which is not easy by any means, but I saw who I was up against. This show in particular was focused on artistic desserts, which was never my forte. I was up against cake artists and sculptors, bakery owners, bakers who made things I had never attempted. For a moment, I wondered why I was even there. It crossed my mind that I was cast purely for personality, which isn’t unheard of even for food competitions. I am confident in my skills and talents, especially now, but at the time, I did have some moments of doubt as to how far I would make it. At the end of the day, I had my doubts, but I filed those away and celebrated the fact that my dream was coming true, and I made it on Food Network. I didn’t care if my exposure would be tiny or huge, I just cared that something I always dreamt of was finally happening.

There are a lot of things I am not allowed to say about the show in terms of filming and how things work on set, but I will say that it was both the most stressful and most exciting time of my life. All your knowledge is put to the test on a timer, and you have to literally give it all you got to stay there. Spoiler alert, I went home first. That was something I never wanted. At first, I didn’t really care, because I was just proud of making it on the show, especially compared to who I was competing against. I think it was right for me to go home first, because everyone else had such inconceivable levels of talent, plus they had been baking professionally longer than me. I respect them all too much to have any negative feelings towards them. Even though I was only there a few days, I made friends I’ll keep forever because of the deep level of understanding we developed for each other in such a short period of time. I’ve been baking for years, but I haven’t ever been surrounded by other bakers who share the same passion and enthusiasm or understanding for the art. Being in a group of people all like me in that sense, I felt a sense of comfort and acceptance that I never feel, because I’m mostly doing this by myself. Sure, I have those in my life who support me and see me regularly, but they aren’t bakers or people who have the knowledge and understanding that I do.

Going home first did a lot to me. I was really upset with myself because I didn’t want my short time on the show to be the audience’s determination of all my skills. My two desserts on the show were total flops and not reflective of what I’m capable of, and the thought of that still haunts me. I don’t want to look like an idiot who was out of place. Ever since I got home from filming, I’ve invested so much time and energy on practicing and perfecting my skills, posting as much quality content as possible so that by the time the show aired, I could at least prove that I do know what I’m doing. Being on that show showed me exactly what I needed to work on and being around a group of such talented bakers showed me what I was capable of, and how to get where I want to be.

Regardless of my performance on the show, I am so proud. I am proud that I was able to create my own brand out of nothing, and progress so much that I made it on a TV show. I am so proud of how much better I’ve gotten since being on the show, and I am so proud to be associated with those who were on it with me. All of this just goes to show that you can’t give up on your dreams, because they’ll come true when you least expect it.

Success Doesn’t Always Involve Money

It’s a tough situation when the outside world sees you as successful and thinks you have lots of money because of it. I still have a very intense financial struggle, but I’ve let my mind not go to dark places about it. Right now, as I continue to try and fly less to have time for my own business, I’ve accepted the fact that I’ve had to take a serious pay cut to do so, but with that being said, that’s how I’ve managed to make my accomplishments happen. These accomplishments don’t always bring big paychecks, but they’re crucial for me to keep growing.

Right now, I’m just happy that I can keep paying my bills, even if I don’t have a lot left over. That at least shows some success. It shows that I am starting to be able to support my life with the sole income of my business and content, which is what I wanted. I am also holding out because I know for a fact that come October, my business will pick up a lot after being on the news and my episode on Food Network airing. My long-term goals never involved wealth. Right now, my mind can’t be focused on that either. It’s easy to go down the mental rabbit hole of “I’ve been doing this for so long, when will it pay off”. The term “pay off” doesn’t always mean money. It means goals and accomplishments that you achieve along the way to bring you more business. It’s a tough, tough life doing what I do in these smaller stages because it requires so much work and often doesn’t result in a big financial benefit.

I’ve decided to fly a lot in September to give myself some extra money with the hopes that it can go to savings once I hopefully make more in October with content and desserts. I don’t forget the fact that it is a luxury to still have a job I can choose to work more of to get more money if I desperately need it, but I’ve been training myself to start trying to rely on my own income to determine what more I need to do to make it my full time career. The bottom line of all this is that I still have that fire and passion to keep doing what I do, and that is always what has carried me through. Things are getting better, and they’ll continue to do so. It’s all not only a matter of time, but also a matter of keeping my head held high, believing in myself, and working harder and harder if I am to get what I want.