My own sense of timing is beginning to spook me. The day I wrote my valentine to the wonderful food journal Petits Propos Culinaires, which spawned both Prospect Books and the collection The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy, was the day that the Guardian published the obituary of PPC founder Alan Davidson. The day I wrote about May This House Be Safe From Tigers, written by Alexander King, “artist, playwright, raconteur and frequent guest on the Jack Paar program,” Jack Paar passed away. Hmmm. I wonder if I am living in some Bizarro World version of The Sixth Sense, where I am actually Death but no one remembered to tell me. Or maybe I am more like Eric Idle’s character in the Prawn Salad, Ltd. sketch on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, where a quiet, pleasant young man unwittingly triggers death and destruction around him (bookcases collapse, maids fall on daggers, police officers suffer fatal heart attacks, mansions collapse like the House of Usher). Note to Self: Don’t Write About Anybody.
Since Paar’s death was announced last week, CNN and NY1 have been running footage of Jack Paar’s famous on-air meltdown/resignation after NBC censors edited three minutes of show time to excise a joke about a water closet. It is almost painful to watch Paar say, haltingly, “There must be a better way of making a living than this,” knowing that he was this close to bursting into tears on live television, in front of millions. Of course, Paar was back within four weeks, and he was able to take that fine wire edge of pain and turn it into one of television’s finest and funniest hours. “As I was saying, before I was interrupted...I had said that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well...I’ve looked...”
I thought about Jack Paar a lot today as I returned to LuthorCorp, the Monday After The Week That Was. Fact is, until somebody tells me this isn’t my job anymore, it is still my job, and I still have to do it. But something is new. Something has changed. In the past, even in the worst moments on the job, even with the angriest or meanest customers, even with the biggest snafu’s, even with the overwhelming sense that our work contributes in a very real and measurable way to the degradation of the environment, there was still a certain measure of satisfaction in doing the job well. Here is point A, there is point B, and here are the loops and hairpin curves in between; now go make it work. At the end of the day I would be tired but relieved, and glad to work with people who valued the work I did. Now, though, I have been afflicted with the kiss of death for people in sales-support jobs: I no longer care. I can fake it, certainly; that which was urgent shall be continued to be treated as urgent, and, of course, the three salespeople I report to will continue to receive the benefit of my care and feeding. But in the midst of all this activity, it runs through me like a pulse: I don’t care, don’t care, don’t care, and that, dear friends, is the real answer to the question how do you know when it’s time to go? As Jack Paar said, there must be a better way of making a living than this, and I do not want to be back four weeks or six months or ten years later, saying, “Well, I’ve looked...”
Tonight I was welcomed back into a community with which I’d lost touch, actually one from which I’d shrunk away, and yet they welcomed me back immediately, as if I hadn’t been gone. Until recently, I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing happily on The Baking Circle, an online bulletin board group hosted by King Arthur Flour’s website. (Registration is required, but it’s free, and you get a really nifty newsletter every other week.) This is an excerpt from a comment I posted tonight, my first one since the end of October:
In truth, as winters go, it was a tough one. It started with the death of my beloved grandfather at the end of October, and continued with some hard decision-making on my part, namely my decision to stop working on the business plan for my bakery. I was continuing to refine it, re-estimating my costs, trying to get a better picture of my space needs. I don’t know what stopped me, but at some point I just became convinced that I couldn’t proceed, couldn’t get the money I needed without some more industry experience, and because of the job situation my husband and I are in, I couldn’t afford to quit my current job and take a job within the industry. In addition, we had been hearing the hard economic news coming from Pittsburgh, where we’d planned to relocate, and we decided that maybe this was not the right time to start a business in Pgh.
Once I’d made this decision, it became *very* tough to bake indeed. Every time I’d start a loaf of bread, I’d think about this dream on which I’d given up, and I would be unable to continue. I threw away a lot of pate fermentee over the past few months, which embarrasses me now. 
I received all sorts of wonderful new baking books and cookbooks for Christmas, and I couldn’t bear to touch any of them. (I did hold it together long enough to try the Persian cardamom rice-flour cookies in the new Alford/Duguid book Home Baking, which were lovely.) It got to the point where I wondered if I would ever bake anything again.
Fortunately, this ends well!… [snip to remove the whole Fellowship vs. LuthorCorp saga you all know well]
Funny thing: since I received the good news, I have been baking like mad. Rice bread from [Elizabeth David’s] English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Sandtortes from Maida Heatter’s Cakes and Richard Sax’s Classic Home Desserts. Pumpkin breads from Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Cafe. Biscuits, every kind I know how to make. And I finally took my white and rye starters out of the fridge and started feeding them again. They are each a party out of bounds. I also started a weblog and have been writing like crazy. I just can’t stop. And my mom told me last night that my stepfather found an ad for a bakery for sale outside of Philadelphia, on the Main Line. I can’t afford it yet, but maybe soon...who knows? I’m so glad to be baking. So glad to be writing. So glad to be back.