Making a Mess
I make a mess.
With everything I do. No matter how hard I try, I seem to make a mess.
And it's not a mess I can't clean. I can definitely clean it, and I will scream and I will yell! I will say,
"Please forgive me! Please forgive my mess! It will just be messy for the time being."
And I will tell you that I can handle my mess. Because I know that I can, or I'm pretty sure I can. Because I'd be proud to clean up after myself. Even if the mess I make is gargantuan and out of control.
And if I don't know how to, I will learn. I have to learn.
I may have overturned the flour jar, and then in my frantic apologizing I will have knocked over the sugar and spilled all of the milk around me.
If I only slowed down!
While no one really needs this part of the kitchen, I will still say, "Sorry! I got this! I'll clean up! Don't worry." And you'll look at me, and think, "wow i don't really think he has it covered."
Frankly you may be right, but you wouldn't want to help me clean up my mess. Or maybe you do, but who would know since I would never ask you for help.
I've gotten through the past month by telling myself, "Oh, You'll forgive me."
Thinking you have already made your own share of messes or have yet to make them, there will be a certain time when you understood how messy it was. and you understood how messy it could get. You will or have or do forgive me. right?
But this hadn't stopped you and other people, even momentarily, turning your noses up at the mess I was making. I can tell you are fed up with my messes!
Be patient! I beg,
The weird part is I know is that I am making a mess. But I don't even know what mess I am making! If I asked, I too would have to ask what mess I am even making.
The first week of my bakery job, we packed cookies. I asked my supervisor how I should pack the cookies, and he said, "For the cookies, we wrap them up in paper and put them in the box." I had done my own share of origami, so at this point I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to wrap the cookies with whatever past knowledge I knew from origami in a way that was just as efficient. Of course it just ended up being rolled up in a sheet of parchment paper with crumpled edges.
Fuck, I knew I was making a mess. I knew that this couldn't be right, because the naive way of wrapping those cookies was fucking messy. It was ugly. whatever THE way was, this wasn't it.
My coworker who doesn't speak a lick of english looked at me with slight disdain as I fumbled with my seemingly lego hands. I looked back at her and she looked back at me. Like a disappointed auntie, she walked over to my side, and motioned for my stack of cookies. Then with the smoothest slight of hand, she makes an initial fold of the parchment paper, places the cookies strategically and then folds down the paper and with two smooth side creases. She creates a beautiful seam that I would be gassed to receive in my cafe.
Without once looking up to see if I was following, she knew I would be.
Weird! To rely - or to be taught by others how to clean up my own messes.
This doesn't change how scary it feels to ask for help to navigate the mess that I am making. It's slightly silly and embarrassing for me to put you in that weird position asking you to tell me to my face what kind of mess I'm are making. So often I will not.
Oh the fear! Let me catastrophize a bit!
If all goes well, you tell me the mess I am making, and you even take the time to show me how I can avoid making the mess. But alas, I am a slow learner and these things take time... You will grow frustrated. I know you will.
Or debatably worse!
Maybe the way you clean up a mess isn't actually very intuitive to me because we have different preferences? Maybe you like to start baking the muffins by mixing the wets first, and then the drys separately. Or maybe you prefer the drys first, and the wets, then combining the two? Or maybe your way of doing things as fast and as the make sense to you begins with gathering both the dries and wets and then hanging around the scale for the rest of the time being. And when you teach me how not to make a mess, I can barely grasp the method, because what makes sense to me in my process differs completely in how I will end up preferring to bake, containerize my mess and handle the station the way I like to and can.
Maybe I just need some time to get a more experience making the thing, and creating the mess as well. It'll take time, and hopefully You'll forgive me as I make my mess right now. I can only hope I learn how to contain my mess, with time. Not for a second should you doubt that I appreciate the help –if well intentioned–, and the most I can do is be open, both to new strategies that feel intuitive to me, and the strategies that you might prefer.
Still, I can't make everyone happy. Especially in these learning periods, when I am deeply lost.
You might very well be fed up with my mess. Or at least some of you might. And I need to learn how to be okay with that, at least while I figure out how to clean my mess. So I will tell myself the lie, that You'll forgive me, even if you might not.
Because if I keep fixating on apologizing and explaining that I never meant to make a mess in the first place, I'll just keep knocking over more sugar and spilling more milk.