"Ça va Venir"

Now that I've completed the first arduous month of my stage at SAIN (Saveurs d'Antain et Ingredients Naturel) Boulangerie, I'd like to share some of the various insights and outrageous happenings of this trivial adjustment period. From mistaking 800g of brown sugar for 8kg in an almond cream to being knocked on the head by a 47 year old alcoholic Marseille obsessed baker, it's been quite the experience. I began my stage in the peak of Galette des Rois season, which felt like being thrown into a malfunctioning maze of a production site with tricks on every corner, sleep deprived stressed chefs whose names you already forgot, imperative rules and cues that were never shared, and French jokes that would take lengthy explanations to even remotely understand. Broken stairs, missing equipment, no space, overflowing mixers, questions, bumping, shuffling, recule, aller retour. Summed up as désolé, désolé, désolé. In this environment. one quite quickly starts to feel like a burden, especially when every corner or room feels like a mouse trap waiting to catch and present you all vulnerable with the admission that you are completely lost and don't know what you're doing in that kitchen or with your life for that matter. But I guess it's a bit faster to just ask where the butter is kept. I'll admit that in these first few weeks I took everything personally. I remained quiet, pushed myself into corners, shrunk my instincts, and apologised like it was my first name. Self doubt felt like a dark shadow hovering over every action, word, mistake, every moment of every day. There's no way your dream career is meant to feel like that right? So in order to survive and prove that I could do my job well, I had to accept two truths: number one was that this can be a very toxic, chaotic poorly organised workplace. Rather than clinging to regret, I decided this would not be the model of inspiration for my own own bakery but maybe the opposite, and at the very least another perspective, reminding myself that I came hear to learn and experience, not have the dream experience of my life. Just because the duckling goes to the wrong house - does not mean he is on the wrong path. We can either let hard experiences define us and chain us to our sorrow, or we can acknowledge and grow with it, like sowing seeds again and again digging into the dirt every single fucking day. The second truth I had to recognise was that although the enviornmemnt is less than ideal, a big deal of my suffering was coming from myself and my own lingering anxieties. Fixating on every small action meant I turned people mean in my head and used my imagination to create evidence that my b biggest fears were all true; that I wasn't good enough, didn't belong there, knew nothing at all. Yeah that was a lot more exhausting than peoples responses and emotions as their own stress and not a direct attack on me. A few times in moments of frustration, workers would give me words of encouragement or understanding. The phrase I've now heard a few times is " t'inquiète, ça va venir" - don't worry, it will come. It's like running cool water over a fresh burn, or shushing a stupid crying baby to sleep. To just let yourself be and trust that with the consistent hard work you are putting in will all pay off, that it will all come to you. Practice practice practice. It takes so much repetition to reach mastery so why should I compare my work to someone 20 years ahead of me in the career? The only person I should compare myself to is myself at the start of my journey before so much growth. Look at the improvement since my first baguettes!!! How lucky I am to be mastering such a fascinating craft !