Make the damn cookie yourself

Every Monday, I’d walk five minutes from my flat to buy a dark chocolate chip and raspberry cookie. It was my small weekly ritual.

Then one day the cookie was gone. I asked the owner, and she said the supplier had shut down. No more cookie.

I was genuinely in distress. I didn't want to order in bulk from the internet, and no nearby supermarkets or cafes stocked them.

So you know what I did next? I accepted my cookieless existence. I couldn't buy it anywhere, so that was that.

Then I realised, why didn't I just bake the damn cookie myself? Why was I only relying on others to provide for me and ok with being utterly helpless in changing my situation? I think it was the sheer amount of time I was spending online.

4.5 hours a day on my phone, scrolling through god knows what. I calculated it, and that turned out to be nearly 19% of my year. That's a lot of precious time gone. Just gone. And if I am being brutally honest with myself, my day to day felt like I was dragging myself through adult life, living for the moments I had time to just myself and my phone. It was the only way I felt like I could relax.

But that didn't explain why I had become overly dependent on others providing for me. I think I was just used to being on the internet so much, where everything felt so easy. It was all designed to take away any friction. Spend as much time as possible there. It's easy, it's safe. Here's an ad. You can buy this in one click. So simple! Bored? Consume somebody else's ready made content. Hungry? I could order in or buy a ready meal, done in 20 minutes. Do I need something? Anything? Buy any random thing you desire with a few clicks.

And because online life felt easy, real life felt harder. So I wanted to spend more time there. And the more time I spent there, the worse it became. Ultimately I let this happen to myself. It's not as simple as blaming the internet or my phones. They are tools, and they can be misused. There is a wider discussion to be had about making the tech companies more accountable for their addictive applications, but that’s for another article.

But I decided it was time to overcome this addiction. It was time to go. I chose to return to my real life, do the hard thing.

The evenings I had after work that used to feel so rushed were now a long stretch of empty, meaningless hours that dragged on and on. I didn't know what to do with myself, and a deep sense of disappointment overwhelmed me. I must be so boring to not want to do anything. I felt pathetic and useless. The reality was I was overwhelmed with choice, and did the only thing that felt I could do at that moment; I chose to do nothing. I sat there staring at a blank wall while my brain screamed at me. For the first time in a long while, I had to entertain myself.

After a few excruciating hours, I managed to pull myself together, and baked a batch of cookies myself, startled that the whole process took less than 30 minutes. I remember my husband coming in, surprised by what I was doing, and then seeing his face light up when I offered him a still warm cookie.. It made me feel satisfied in a way I hadn't felt in a long, long while.

So I kept doing it. I started baking and sharing the gifts with my friends, who were all too happy to receive them. I expanded into cooking, where making dinner used to be a rushed affair, is now something I enjoy doing. Sitting down, legs aching after labouring away over a hot stove and tucking into a delicious meal to share with your husband, I feel a sense of joy and pride.

I got my confidence back, and this kept building; now my evenings feel full, but not rushed as before. I'm trying new things, putting myself out there. It's scary after being a consumer for so long and finally being a creator, and it's much harder being on this side.

If you are finding yourself feeling similar to how I felt, and want to start creating again, but don't know where to start, may I suggest you start with some baking?