Sometimes I'm not satisfied with the way something came out, but then somebody comments positively on it. And then I realize, oh - I feel about it the way I do because I made it. (This happened today.)

Like, there was a vision in my head of how I wanted the thing to be, and then the result isn't what I had hoped, and that's frustrating and disappointing. But somebody reading it (or looking at it in the case of visual art) won't know about all that, because they didn't make it! They can't see inside my head! Whooooa! And if somebody else made this thing, I'd probably think it was all right. (Maybe not super duper amazing, but all right, and sometimes that's all you want!)

I think also, partly, I get very self-conscious when posting something that's the fic equivalent of rent-lowering gunshots. Like, I put upon myself this expectation that if I write something that a lot of people aren't into, I need to make it extra awesome to make up for that. But, nah. I can write whatever! And it doesn't have to be amazing! It can just be a thing! It doesn't matter!

It's always nice to have little moments of clarity like this.

Scenario: I kept having cravings for pancakes.

Problem: I am terrible at making pancakes and going out for pancakes would be very expensive.

Details: When I first moved into my condo, I kept looking up recipes to make pancakes at home. But no matter how I fiddled with the ratios to adjust the recipe to make pancakes for 1 person, it still ended up with way too much batter. So, I would end up with too many pancakes, which I then cooked poorly because I wasn't practiced at it, and some of the batter in the bin because I couldn't possibly use all of it, and I would feel very frustrated and annoyed and wasteful instead of happy because I was enjoying delicious pancakes.

Solution: I remembered that pancake mix Is A Thing and picked some up at ye olde grocery store.

I feel very silly.

(But in my defense, we almost never had pancakes at home when I was a kid! This is a very 'special occasion, have when you're out of town' kind of breakfast!)

1/4 cup mix, plus at least 1/4 cup water depending on what else I'm mixing into the batter = enough for one person. Who'd've thunk. Amazing. Also, butter in the pan instead of oil works better for this, at least for my pans.

I still suck at pouring them and flipping them and getting them into the pan in a way that will look nice, but I only burnt something the first time and now (after a few weekends of Saturday pancakes) they come out quite tasty.

So far I've tried making banana pancakes (delicious, but require a lot of water), blueberry pancakes (delicious, but the berries turned the pancakes a weird shade of blue), and pumpkin spice pancakes (delicious, but needs more spice mix than what I used this time around).

I will never need to go out for pancakes ever thanks to a $4.50 box from the local shops. Hooray.