I spent many afternoons in my childhood hunched in a trance in front of the television, engrossed in the fascinating world of bake offs and cooking shows. I stared in awe as bakers, wielding their blow torches and piping bags, moved through their precise recipes in a seamless choreography to eventually reveal the most ornate baked art.

It was only natural, therefore, that my first foray into baking was rife with immense intimidation and an acute awareness of my own clumsy ineptitude. In my mind, I had neither the equipment nor the talent necessary to take on a hobby like baking and be good at it. But two months into the pandemic-induced lockdown, as the days melted into each other and I had exhausted my capacity to stare at my bedroom wall, I felt an unshakeable desire to create something with my own hands.

Having consumed just about every show, podcast and music playlist, I needed to put something back out into the world for once, however small or imperfect. While I briefly considered taking on creative writing or photography, they simply didn’t feel messy enough. I craved a visceral, sensory experience that wasn’t limited to a screen, a space where I could use touch, smell and taste to create something of my own. And then it struck me: baking. It felt like an ingenious way to concoct something wholly original without breaking my city’s lockdown protocol.

I chose, as my first creation, the unassuming brownie, and it quickly became evident that I did not actually have any of the equipment required by the recipe. I scrambled to substitute the baking tray for a rectangular ceramic bowl that my mother served curry in, the whisk for a feeble fork and even the oven for a microwave setting I managed to figure out.

In the hours that followed, I managed to spill molten chocolate across the stove, sweat through two t-shirts and stress eat one too many spoons of raw brownie batter. But somehow, amid all the chaos, I baked my very first brownie. The decadent smell of dark chocolate and molten butter wafted through the kitchen that afternoon, and for the first time in months, I felt creatively challenged. I had finally made something with my hands, which — despite all its deformities and cracks — somehow sparked immense joy.

Over the next few months, as the pandemic continued to wreak havoc across my city, Friday mornings became the sole creative anchor of my week. Baking imbued a childlike curiosity in my life that seemed to be lacking for so long: watching lumpy, lifeless dough metamorphose into flakey, airy cinnamon buns felt nothing short of magical.

Each week, I tried to push myself a little further, eyeballing all my ingredients in coffee mugs in the absence of standardized measuring cups. Would my Levain Bakery inspired cookies turn out too chewy? Did I add too much cardamom to my Mava cake? With every experiment I worried that I had gone too far with my pastiche of substitutions, but each time, I was left with a delightful, albeit imperfect, surprise.

While my social media spewed copious “pandemic productivity hacks” and “how to monetize your hobby on Etsy” videos, my messy Friday mornings stood in bold defiance of our conditioned hustle culture. My new hobby was neither a good business idea, nor was it likely to garner any social media clout. Instead, it was a liberating space that fully embraced my mistakes, allowing me to play with a myriad of aromas and textures to create something entirely my own.

I’d be lying if I claimed that my initial hesitation to pursue baking stemmed solely from my lack of skills and equipment. More fundamentally, it came from a belief that it was never worth trying a new hobby if I wasn’t going to be really “good” at it. To me, a creative pursuit was useful only if the finished product produced some tangible value in my life, without which it felt like a waste of time.

I couldn’t remember the last time I set aside a few hours to intentionally do something just because it was fun, knowing fully that what would come of it would be far from presentable. Throughout my late teens, I wanted so badly for all my creative projects to be “perfect” that I refused to give myself the permission to just enjoy myself and accept the small hiccups as part of the playfulness of the experience.

But with every sunken loaf, uneven glaze and lopsided cake, I found myself embracing the unique sensory experience of creation rather than depending on a flawless finished product for a feeling of accomplishment. The pandemic liberated me from my own suffocating perfectionism by forcing me to be scrappy and innovative with the limited equipment and ingredients that were available to me.

I distinctly remember a moment during the summer where I negligently burned a tart crust in the microwave, engulfing my entire kitchen in a cloud of smoke. Without skipping a beat, I simply threw the ashen remains of the old crust out and immediately started mixing the dry ingredients for fresh dough. As I whisked the eggs with my plastic fork, it dawned on me that I had just failed, a realization that would usually be met with immense self criticism. But months of weekly experimentation with baking had imbued me with an unfamiliar acceptance and compassion for all the little things that inevitably turned out to be less than ideal, both inside and outside the kitchen.