06/19/2026
With it being Father's Day weekend, I'd like to share an excerpt of a little something I've been working on and hope to publish soon!
In honor of the man who's fault I'm where I am now in the first place 😜🙏🏼
Love you Paul Donald
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"When COVID hit and everything came to a sudden halt, the impact looked different for everyone— no one escaped the quiet. Jobs shifted, routines disappeared, and the familiar hum of daily life went silent.
For me, that silence was jarring. For the first time in years, there were no orders to run, no customers to charm, no “Corner!” to yell so I don’t smash into someone. Just me, my kitchen, and a whole lot of quiet. It was uncomfortable—but it also gave me something I hadn’t had in a long time: space to imagine what else might be possible. Space to plan out my next move.
That’s when I remembered something my dad had said to me while he was eating a slice of my caramel chocolate chip cheesecake at Thanksgiving just a few months earlier:
“I don’t know what you’re doing, girl, but you should be selling this. It’s THAT good.”
I thought he was out of his damn mind at the time. I don’t have time for that! I had two serving jobs at the time and was very protective of my “free time”. But fast forward to May 2020 and guess what I had? Nothing but TIME. I finally listened to that crazy ideal and I started baking cheesecakes—not because I had a grand business plan, but because it calmed me down and gave me a sense of purpose again. Maybe it could give me a little grocery money. At the very least, it kept me occupied with something that mattered instead of going absolutely insane with anxiety and uncertainty of what was happening or where I would end up on the other side of this pandemic.
Graham cracker dust on the counters, eggshells piling in the sink, more blocks of cream cheese than I can count, and me mixing like my life depended on it—because honestly, now it kind of did. Baking became my therapy. I realized that, after years of surviving organized (and unorganized) chaos in restaurants, serving upwards of 100,000 guests, I function better when my hands and mind are busy.
Then something happened: people wanted more. First it was family, then friends, then friends-of-friends. Before I knew it, I was selling cheesecakes out of my home kitchen—with one set of pans and a hustler’s mindset. Still scared out of my mind, but also ridiculously excited.
Let me be real with you: I was shaking in my apron. I worried about everything. Was I good enough? Would people actually pay for this? What if they hated it? What if I failed and had to crawl back into a “safe” job—or worse yet, end up staring at a computer all day in what I would consider a “soul-sucking” remote gig?
The doubt was loud. But I kept baking anyway. Each cheesecake that went out the door was like a little vote of confidence—proof that maybe, just maybe, I was onto something..."
