J.R. Johnson

I’m working on a draft of something today, and it helps to remind myself that the important thing, the first thing, is to get it down. I can fix it later, and even if I don’t to quite my satisfaction, I’ve still done something.

“Anyone who’s ever made America’s favorite round and flat breakfast food is familiar with the phenomenon of The First Pancake. No matter how good a cook you are, and no matter how hard you try, the first pancake of the batch always sucks. It comes out burnt or undercooked or weirdly shaped or just oddly inedible and aesthetically displeasing. Just ask your kids. At least compared to your normal pancake–and definitely compared to the far superior second and subsequent pancakes that make the cut and get promoted to the pile destined for the breakfast table–the first one’s always a disaster. I’ll leave it to the physicists and foodies in the gallery to develop a unified field theory on exactly why our pancake problem crops up with such unerring dependability. But I will share an orthogonal theory: you will be a way happier and more successful cook if you just accept that your first pancake is and always will be a universally flukey mess. But, that shouldn’t mean you never make another pancake.”
— Merlin Mann