The One Where I Dropped the Cakes and Cracked On Anyway
Bridgetty JoJo’s Diary
…Because ridiculous shit does, in fact, happen.
All. The. Flippin’. Time.
So, in the name of solidarity, sista, I’m sharing a weekly record of chaos, fuckwittery and the occasional life lesson to remind you that chaos does not mean you’re failing at life.
TL:DR (for the skimmers, no judgement)
I avoided starting this diary for MONTHS. Then I dropped a tray of cupcakes all over someone’s driveway and somehow that’s what got me to finally launch it. Bridgetty JoJo’s Diary is now live and full of cringey chaos.
If “I’ll start on Monday” is also your favourite lie to yourself, grab my Fight Your Fear of Failure workbook here for £5 instead of £27 ‘cos you’ve landed on this blog post.
There are two ways to avoid doing the thing you are scared of.
The obvious way is to say, ‘I can’t.’
The sneakier way is to say, ‘I’ll start on Monday.’
Ask me how I know.
Because Bridgetty JoJo’s Diary had been living in my head for months.
Not days.
Not ‘oh, I had a cute idea last week and forgot about it.’
Months.
Months of thinking it would be fun.
Months of imagining exactly the sort of ridiculous weekly chaos I could write about.
And months of not publishing a single bloody word.
Why?
Because my Inner Bitch is judgey.
Obviously.
If your Inner Bitch hasn’t yet been formally introduced, here she is in all her infamy.
Mine made notes.
Had concerns.
Very convincing objections.
‘What if nobody reads it?’
‘What if it sounds stupid?’
‘What if you start it and then can’t keep it going?’
‘What if everyone laughs at you – not with you?’
And my personal favourite:
‘Wait until Monday. Then you can start properly.’
Ah yes.
Monday.
That magical land where motivation lives. Where confidence thrives, routines begin, ideas become reality, and nobody ever drops cupcakes face-first onto a driveway.
Which was particularly rich coming from me.
I’d spent weeks avoiding Bridgetty JoJo’s Diary while selling a workbook about fear of failure.
The hypocrisy was almost impressive.
And of course Monday never came.
It just kept putting on a new outfit and calling itself ‘next week.’
So the diary stayed in my head.
Then the universe, being the tricksy force that it is, decided to stage an intervention involving a mixer, neon icing, and the birthday cake equivalent of a crime scene.
The Great Cupcake Catastrophe
I was making cupcakes for a lovely lady’s 90th birthday.
Simple enough.
Except:
- Batch one went wrong. I had to rebake them.
- I trapped my finger in the mixer. How in the AF does that even happen?
- The icing was supposed to be a delicate pale pink, but somehow ended up flamingo-at-a-nightclub pink.
- I accidentally flicked it all over the kitchen.
- The frosting bag split.
- My bougie rose-making Russian tips made little dog poo shapes.
So far, so normal.
For me.
Eventually, though, I rescued them.
They actually looked quite pretty.
Not flawless.
Not professional.
Not ‘I am channelling my inner Nigella Lawson domestic goddess, please admire my effortless excellence.’
Pretty enough.
Good enough.
Done enough.
And sometimes, my love, that is the entire victory.
I carried them out to the car.
I drove them to their destination.
I got them out of the car.
All without mishap.
And in the exact same millisecond, my Inner Bitch said, ‘Wouldn’t it be just like you to drop these?’
…I dropped them.
Everywhere.
Cupcakes.
Cases.
Pink icing.
All over the birthday girl’s driveway.
Of course I did.
What a shitshow.
Those cupcakes couldn’t be more me if they tried.
The cupcakes were beyond saving.
As was my dignity.
And, weirdly, that’s not the most important part of the story.
The Important Bit Is What Happened Next
A few years ago, this would have broken me.
Not in a cute ‘oh no, how embarrassing’ way.
In a full-body, ugly-crying, shame-spiral, I-am-a-useless-human-being way.
I would not have thought:
‘Oh dear, the cupcakes fell.’
I would have thought:
‘This is proof.’
Proof that I am chaotic.
Proof that I ruin things.
Proof that I should never try to do anything nice, visible, thoughtful, creative, or even vaguely outside my comfort zone because apparently I cannot be left unsupervised near baked goods.
Because that‘s what fear of failure does.
It takes an event and turns it into an identity.
You don’t think, ‘That went wrong.’
You think, ‘I am wrong.’
You don’t think, ‘That was unfortunate.’
You think, ‘Of course. This is what always happens when I try.’
And once your brain has turned a mistake into a character reference, starting anything starts to feel dangerous.
The email.
The gardening.
The course.
The new routine.
The conversation.
The tiny idea that keeps tapping you on the shoulder while you pretend you haven’t noticed.
You don’t avoid it because you don’t care.
You avoid it because some part of you has decided that trying and getting it wrong will hurt too much.
So you wait.
You wait until you feel ready.
Then you wait until you have more time.
Eventually, you start hoping your confidence will arrive wearing a perky little hat.
You wait until Monday.
And the thing you want to start gets locked away somewhere out of reach.
But Today I Laughed
This time, I looked at the cupcakes.
I looked at the driveway.
I looked at the food-fightesque evidence of my own ridiculousness.
And I laughed.
Not because it did not matter.
Not because I had suddenly become a serene, emotionally regulated woman with a sourdough starter and a flawless, never-skipped morning routine.
I laughed because I did not turn it into a verdict.
I did not make it mean I was useless.
I did not make it mean I should never try.
I did not make it mean I was back at square one.
I dropped the cupcakes.
That was all.
A thing happened.
It was annoying.
It was funny.
It was messy.
It was not a personality diagnosis.
And that, my lovely, is progress.
Actual progress.
The kind that does not always look like vision boards and breakthroughs.
The kind that sometimes looks like standing in a driveway, staring at a cupcake massacre, and realising your brain has not immediately launched a full internal prosecution.
That matters.
Because the goal is not to become a woman who never drops the cupcakes.
The goal is to become a woman who does not beat herself up when she does.
And Then I Realised Something Annoying AF
I had spent months avoiding Bridgetty JoJo’s Diary because I was scared of getting it wrong.
Then life handed me the most Bridgetty JoJo’s Diary thing imaginable.
Not a polished launch plan.
Not a perfect content calendar.
Not a beautiful brand moment with matching graphics and a smug little caption.
A disaster.
A hideously pink, finger-trapping, driveway-splattering disaster.
And it was perfect.
Not because it went well.
Because it made the point.
The thing I was afraid would make me look ridiculous became the thing that helped me begin.
That is the bit I want you to steal.
Not the cupcake part. Please do not hurl baked goods onto anyone’s driveway in the name of personal growth.
The reframe.
What if the messy bit is not evidence that you should stop?
What if it’s the doorway?
What if the thing going wrong is not the end of the story, but the exact material you needed to finally write the first page?
What if your ‘failure’ is not proof that you‘re hopeless?
What if it’s proof that you’re just messily getting on with it?
Because let’s face it, that’s what ‘just getting on with it’ actually looks like.
Messy.
What Fear of Failure Looks Like
A liar, liar, pants on fire, that’s what!
‘I’ll start Monday’ sounds reasonable.
It sounds tidy.
It sounds like a plan.
But very often, it’s fear in sensible shoes.
It says:
‘Start when you can do it properly.’
‘Start when you know you can keep it up.’
‘Start when you won’t embarrass yourself.’
‘Start when you have the perfect first post, the perfect design, the perfect energy, the perfect circumstances.’
And underneath all that?
It’s really saying:
‘Do not risk being seen before you know you can control the outcome.’
Well.
Bad news for the Inner Bitch.
You cannot control the outcome.
You can only control whether you keep handing her the keys.
You might apply for the job and not get it.
You might start the DIY, and your cutting-in looks like a four-year-old on a sugar high did it.
You might start the project and wobble by Thursday.
You might make the cupcakes and drop the bloody lot.
Fine.
Annoying, yes.
Terminal, no.
Because confidence is not built by waiting until nothing can go wrong.
Confidence is built by proving that when something does go wrong, you can stay with it and carry on.
Note To Self, Bridgetty JoJo
Go you for eventually swerving being a massive hypocrite.
I made a workbook called:
Fight Your Fear of Failure: Your Inner Bestie’s Kick-Up-the-Bum Action Plan.
The entire point of it is to help people stop waiting to feel ready and take messy action anyway.
And there I was, avoiding my own diary because I was scared it would not be good enough.
Honestly.
The audacity of me!
So I sat down with my own sodding workbook.
I worked through the fear.
I wrote the thing.
Then I dropped the cupcakes.
Not necessarily in that order.
But here we are.
Finally.
Turns out I should probably listen to myself occasionally.
And be more careful with icing, because I am still finding flicks of it in places icing has absolutely no business being.
So Since You’re Here…
What is the thing you have been quietly putting off?
The thing you ‘don’t have time for.’
The thing you ‘need to think about.’
The thing you will ‘definitely start properly on Monday.’
The thing you really want to do but somehow just don’t.
The one your brain can’t stop thinking about.
The one that makes your stomach do a tiny flip.
The one you would love to have started already, if only you could guarantee you would not balls it up.
The health kick.
The decluttering.
The putting your stuff on Vinted.
The first step.
The ‘I want to, but what if it doesn’t work?’ thing.
Here is your sign:
Start it badly.
Start it late.
Start it with ugly icing on the walls and absolutely no guarantee that it will be graceful.
Because the chapter will not remember that you started perfectly.
It will remember that you stopped letting fear write the ending.
And if you do drop the cupcakes?
Fine.
Laugh.
Clean up what you can.
Tell the story.
Then keep going.
Mess, mistakes, day-glo icing and all.
If you’re done waiting to feel ready, you can grab the Fight Your Fear of Failure workbook here for £5 instead of the usual £27.
Consider it a little nudge from someone who clearly needs to take her own advice occasionally.
And if not?
Start the thing you’re avoiding anyway.
You might just learn that you were never waiting for confidence.
You were waiting for proof that one messy moment would not destroy you.
Consider this your proof.
Now go start it, schweeedie!
PS: I wrote this post in March. I’m publishing it in June because I had a big falling-out with WordPress and had to lie down in a dark room for a few months before I could get it to be obedient.
But it’s still proof, ‘cos here it is.
Which, handily, leads us into next week’s episode:
Starting Again...Again.