The Relapse Cake
I have been doing so good for so long at not overextending myself. I’ve made big goals, but I haven’t overdone it in terms of my energy or capabilities. This matters for me because one of the lasting side-effects of burnout is that when I overdo it, I pay for it with debilitating exhaustion, and it takes me a couple of days to recover. It’s been over a year since my last relapse…
that is it had been over a year until last Friday…
Last week was “birthday week.” My youngest daughter turned 7 this year and she is cute enough she can talk me into just about anything. Last year, we had a bounce house, a cotton candy machine, a unicorn cake, and almost 20 friends filling the back yard. This year, she told me that last year’s party was a “little overwhelming” and so we opted for a simpler party this year. We chose to hold it at the park with just a few friends. The only extravagant thing she requested was a “bunny cake.” In years past, I’ve teamed with my husband or my sister to create very fancy fondant and buttercream character cakes and so without thinking twice about it, I agreed to making her a pinterest worthy bunny cake this year.
Here’s the thing, to make these kind of cakes, it takes a minimum of 3 days of preparation. Between each stage of baking, you have to pop it into the fridge for a while and so it’s easiest to break the process up into at least 3 days. I’ve always been the one to make the base of the cake and then I hand the decorating over to my husband (he has surprisingly good buttercream piping skills). No matter what, these cakes take several hours to complete and the process takes over the entire kitchen – not to mention my brain power.
For some reason, this felt doable to me. I probably even justified it by thinking I was somehow saving money by making the cake myself.
Unfortunately, I got sick on day 2 of our preparations and needed to stay in bed that day. That means, I was frosting, rolling out fondant, and prepping buttercream all on the morning of the party. My kitchen looked like a sugar encrusted war zone. There were stacks of mixing bowls, spoons, spatulas, and all sorts of other baking tools scattered around and covered in various sticky substances. Cornstarch covered almost every surface, including my clothes and my hair. Because I had to shorten the time for it to set in the fridge, the cake wasn’t a nice smooth tier but instead had 3 distinct lumps where the inside layers were stacked on top of each other. It also had a slight lean. Without time to fix it though, we pushed forward and made the best of it that we could.
At the park, my daughter praised the cake for all of 30 seconds. Thanking us profusely and then quickly scampering off to play in the splashpad and on the playground. For the next hour and a half, I sat at the table, without any makeup on, my hair piled in a messy bun on my head, cornstarch ground into my black pants, bags under my eyes, and a scowl on my face while I watched the lumpy cake that took so many hours to make slowly melt in the 95 degree heat.
I kept asking myself why I did that to myself. The cake was cute – enough. It was also only seen by a grand total of 5 pre-teens. No matter what, it had taken over my entire week not only in terms of time, but in terms of energy and emotional stamina as well. Why did I let myself do that?
After a lot of sleep, I thought back on my psychology classes to help me figure out what happened. What I landed on is that there are two big biases that I let take the wheel and they did me dirty:
Bias 1: Sunk Cost Bias
Sunk cost bias is when we lean into something because we’ve already started it or because we have sunk enough into it that we believe we may as well keep going. For instance, in this scenario, I was thinking of the two big tubs of cake making supplies that I have in my pantry. I’ve gathered these items over the years and have them stored away for that once or twice a year I feel like making a cake. I’ve convinced myself that since I’ve spent the time, energy, money, and storage space on these items that I need to use them. The bias wasn’t done with me yet though because even after getting sick, I still felt that I was in too deep to step away or pivot from making the cake myself. Instead of simplifying the cake, or heaven forbid, ordering one from someone else, I trudged ahead with my original plan – just now on a shortened time frame. Hello recipe for a stress melt-down!
Bias 2: Consistency Bias
In his book, Influence, by Robert Cialdini, he discusses a handful of biases that basically cause our brains to just “click” and then “run.” Meaning, once it is triggered, we are likely to move to action without really thinking about it. One of these biases is that we want to be consistent with our past selves. So, because I had enjoyed making fancy cakes in the past and because my daughter referenced her unicorn cake from the year before when asking for her bunny cake this year, I had a “click, run” response. Without even hesitating, I agreed to make her cake happen. Ironically, if you ask me outright if I’m the same person I was a year ago, I would tell you that I have changed significantly. And yet, this bias still got me.
The sneaky thing about biases is that they’re influencing us at subconscious levels. This means, I was skipping down the road of disaster before I had even realized that was the road and so, despite all the work I’ve done to build my own awareness around my capacity and increase my skills for balance, I still fell back into old patterns.
The good news is that I am now able to recognize what happened so that I’m less likely to fall for these scenarios again. Instead of beating myself up for having a burnout relapse, I’m letting myself learn from this experience. And if you ask me for a cake, I’ll probably direct you to the nearest bakery. 😉
Thanks for reading with me today. I hope you take some time to evaluate any of the hiccups you’ve been hit with lately. Who knows, there may be a wealth of learnings are waiting for you.