Leaving my full time career & opening my bakery

Feeling No. 1

I started this piece late last year. Here’s how it started:

_{A little bakery. My little shop. Early starts with purpose. A space to hold all my ideas. Constant ideas that drown in the sea of full-time work. I’m scared of financial instability. Something, I’ve built for myself. If there’s failure, I’ll feel it. If there’s greatness, I’ll feel it? Do I have a negative perspective or am I being realistic?}

_{First Drawings}

_{First look at a space}

_{After the first space, I went on to look at many others. I landed on an old battery shop.}

-

Six months. Somehow, it’s been six months since writing that.

I left the full-time job. The thing that paid predictably. The thing that made the numbers make sense. I thought leaving would make me feel exposed. Instead, it made me feel responsible. There isn’t another version of my life happening somewhere else anymore. This is it. I really thought monetising my passion would dilute it. That turning creativity into invoices, wages, rent and tax would make it feel like work. It didn’t.

It did the opposite.

The more responsibility I had, the deeper I wanted to go. Better recipes. Better coffee. Better systems. Better design. Better service. Somehow the pressure didn’t flatten the passion. It sharpened it. I’m still here. I think I love building something as much as I love what I’m actually building. Being free of a corporate role has allowed me to go so much deeper within. Reflective? I don’t know. I’ve noticed more of my flaws and talents. I’ve realised something else too.

I always thought I was comfortable alone. Independent. Self-sufficient. But somewhere between opening the doors, hiring people and seeing familiar faces every morning, I realised I don’t actually want to build something alone. Independence isn’t isolation. They’re different things. The strange part is that I’ve spent years building security everywhere else. Financially. Professionally. Creatively. Yet relationships have been the one place I’ve expected someone else to give me what I haven’t consistently given myself.

I’m more extroverted than I think. My besties tell me this. I’ve caved, they are right.

The conversations across the coffee machine. Staff laughing in the kitchen. Regulars who know what they’re ordering before they reach the counter. Someone asking, “How’s business?” and genuinely wanting the answer.

The bakery became a place where people met me, but it also became a place where I met myself. Not the version hidden behind achievement. Just the one standing behind the counter or oven. And that feels strangely new.

I still worry about money. I still think about worst-case scenarios more than I’d like to admit. Maybe that never disappears when you’ve built something yourself and haven’t had relying on someone as an option. Every slow day feels personal. Every busy day feels temporary. The pendulum swings. But underneath all of that is something I didn’t expect. I’m excited to do things. I’m excited to create and converse. In an age where communication is behind a screen and loneliness is at a peak, I’m dedicating my life to building a place where there is real connection.

Not every morning, I’m jumping out of bed. I’m not trying to romanticise exhaustion. Some mornings are just early alarms and heavy eyes. I’m alone but not lonely. For so many years of my 20s, it felt the other way around. That was a very ugly feeling.

So, go for it?

Experience it. Whatever or whoever it is. It’s easier said then done. Life is worth it though, while we still have it?

Christiana