#190: Starting A Brand New Ending.
This is a great sign. Assuming responsibility for a living being takes courage and requires a belief in a favorable future.
I have taken the big step to start a new sourdough culture. You might challenge whether that is actually worthwhile writing about. What if I told you that the first time I used the story about my first sourdough starter immediately landed me a job I so desperately wanted.
It wasn’t paid. It was just an internship. I could sleep inside the bakery and had access to the shower in the basement. Would you call that a big deal?
I would. Having just finished my career in finance of 30 years, I had serendipitously met the hipster baker of Zurich and was invited for an interview. On the table was the unpaid month-long internship and I managed to secure it in just two minutes into our conversation opening up about my early baking days.
«Few things in life I actually contributed to make me proud to this day. There are obviously my two children, but then it is also my first sourdough starter. I still remember fondly when I ran around in the house all excited to show it to everyone: Look, I made this!»
I knew perfectly well that it had created itself… well, kind of as microorganisms do the hard work without my creative contribution to the fermentation process, ignoring my daily feeding for a moment.
«The most rewarding thing about making bread is that the process of learning never ends.»
Chad Robertson, Tartine cofounder
The fact that I have now started a new starter gives me much confidence that I am ready to learn again, to make bread and to create lots of other good things, edible and not. Most importantly, I buy into the notion that my process of learning never ends.
Prince Ea once said in one of his motivational videos that «you cannot go back and make a brand new beginning, but you can start now and make a brand new ending.»
That is exactly what it feels now.
… and then a friend of mine whom I hadn’t spoken to in months sent me a message today asking whether I was the one giving baking courses in a newly opened brewing and baking outlet. Coincidence? Definitely unrelated and completely unrealistic.
On the other hand, things do get moving once you decide to make the first step, don’t they?
