Coincidence?

A few weeks after I moved to Seattle to begin my master's degree in photography, somebody broke into my apartment and stole all of my cameras. I spent most of my first year in the program trying to figure out how to rethink my ideas about my work with a plastic camera instead. My work spiraled down quite substantially. I lost my focus, instead shifting into some pretty sloppy ideas that I could never express. I became more interested in reading articles than making work, and by the time my thesis was due, my work was even more uncentered, although nice to look at, the concept and the visual just never seemed to mesh. Perhaps it was losing my cameras so early in the game, perhaps it was the wrong medium. In any case, I'm glad to have found pastry, to which my true artistic vision can be achieved, albeit through some struggles, with usually consistent results.

I started to feel that same panic when I realized my oven would not cooperate. It's currently jumping around between 350 and 500 degrees, and if you know a little bit about baking, that's not a good thing. I burned another two pans of scones this morning, so people, that oven's got to go. Ten years ago, I was a photographer without a camera, and now I'm a baker without a reliable oven. I'm so glad I'm not going to let it get me down.