Adam Oster's Blog, page 6

Will it Never End?

I’ve been a little hesitant to spend much time thinking about the current situation in the Ukraine. Not that I don’t care. It’s a big deal. War is always a big deal, and it feels like the world is always at war, even if we haven’t officially had a world war since the 40s. And I’m a pacifist, so, I really hate the idea of war in general, even if I’ll allow that there are probably some times in which we, as a country, may need to go to war to defend either ourselves or those who are in trouble.

In other words, I support stopping Russia.

But, at the same time, I don’t know if I have the mental bandwidth to care much about it at the moment. I do, don’t get me wrong. I care a whole lot. But getting invested has been troublesome for me. Here I am, a guy who has watched the world, and especially our country, tear itself apart, mostly due to political differences, and has found himself at his emotional wits end trying to understand how far people will go to make their point on something as little as being required to wear a mask, and now I see a country being torn apart by literal war, by another country who believes they hold some claim to the land they are now invading. And I just don’t know that I have it in me.

Which, I guess, might be part of the point.

When I first saw the reports that Russia was going to invade the Ukraine, my immediate thought was, c’mon Putin, haven’t we had enough lately? Like, is fighting a global pandemic not enough for us all to deal with, do you really need to do this now?

And after some thought, I’m realizing this might exactly be why he’s gone this route. For a world that has been torn apart by political strife, and a populace which is generally exhausted by it, now might be the very time to commit some horrendous atrocities, because people like me are just too darn overwhelmed with all the things that have happened over these past 2+ years, not to mention everything before the pandemic came along.

Which means I need to care. I have to care, even if I really don’t want to deal with this mentally right now. I want the world to feel some semblance of peace, and if it takes ignoring a violent conflict to do so, I find myself wanting to do it. But we can’t. We can’t ignore things like this. We can’t ignore a madman taking violent means to gain power.

But that doesn’t make it any less exhausting.

I stand with the Ukraine, and I hope that this can be ended soon. But I also really want to find a moment where I can feel as if all is right with the world. Just a moment.

Teh Exhaustion

I know I’ve talked about my levels of exhaustion a lot over the past few months. Between school, work, kids, and everything else life has tossed our way, 2022 has been a whirlwind of activity.

…And then we bought a bakery…

This past weekend was our first weekend in both owning a bakery, and having the bakery open for business, and there have only been a few billion times in which I’ve found myself questioning whether this whole owning a business thing was a huge mistake.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some awesome times this weekend. I found myself waxing nostalgic about my old days working in food service and thinking that I could really be happy working this place like a good old mom and pop shop, with my wife hanging out in the back and I’m up front smiling and slinging coffee. Other times I realized that I hadn’t slept or eaten anything throughout the course of the weekend, ending with a moment on Sunday where my batteries quite literally died, like a robot, where my speech started slurring and my body had to absolutely give out under the weight of my not taking care of it.

A weekend of washing dishes and running from place to place to make sure the business could keep running while also not taking care of my own needs showed me my exact limits, and I quite literally have never seen myself in quite so exhausted of a state as I found myself on Sunday.

And I was working nowhere near to the extent my wife was, causing me to wonder how the heck she’s still standing. As I write this on Monday morning, she had her fifth morning getting into the bakery before 5am in a row, and she’s still kicking.

There are a ton of things we learned about our first weekend running a bakery, one of which being that we need more staff, and another being that we’re nowhere near as young as we used to be, and another being that people really love this place that we found ourselves luckily enough to take over.

I’m so happy that we finally found a place we could call our own, and I’m extremely excited for the time in which we can actually feel like we can control the crazy that the place is, considering its rabid fanbase, but I’m also so darn tired.

However, every time I start to question whether or not this was a good idea, I remember my hours of washing dishes while the store had a line out the door with customers, hearing nothing but the happiest of noise from all the people eagerly awaiting their treats. And also just knowing that we have an incredible staff who are ready to partner with us to make this place the place it should be.

So, mixed emotions, but mostly excited to see what we can actually do with this fantastic location in the coming months and years.

Marketing!

If you’ve been following this space for any length of time, you’ll be well aware of how much I absolutely hate marketing. I worked as a salesman for a few months of my life, and ever since then I’ve had an incredibly bad taste in my mouth for anything remotely sounding like salesmanship. Marketing, obviously, falls into that realm.

So, with my books, I’ve been historically terrible at actually letting people know they exist, much less giving reasons for why anyone should read them. I have a hard time with the idea of convincing people to do something they don’t want to do. If you aren’t already reading my books, then I really don’t want to force you to do so.

But now, I have this big building and business that my wife and I just purchased, and that business needs to do a solid job of helping us be able to afford all the money we just promised the bank that we’d pay them back. This means that I’ve now found myself in the very real position of needing to rethink my feelings towards salesmanship, or as least to get over my hatred of it in order to use my writing talents to find ways to convince people there are very real reasons that they should come by and get a croissant and a coffee, and also maybe a few macarons…and a tart or five?

It’s been a long road these past couple weeks of trying to wrap my head around not being afraid of marketing. It helps that I’m not trying to sell myself, but instead my wife and this business, both of which I believe quite strongly in. But, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still trying to convince people to do something, regardless of their current feelings on the matter. I need you all to come out and check out the business and give it as much money as you can. I’m not looking for handouts, just you to choose this quaint little building in downtown Altoona for your weekend breakfast and lunch needs.

You absolutely won’t be disappointed.

So, yeah, like I said…I need to work on my marketing skills…

Or…you could buy one of my books for less than the cost of a cup of coffee…just saying

The Nostalgic Bean is Open for Business!

So, while I had been incredibly excited to make a return to writing regularly once school was done, it’s turned out so far that I’ve done nearly zero writing, outside of in this space here and some marketing materials for the new bakery. I’d love to get mad at my wife for making my post-school period full of extra things to do that I hadn’t planned on doing, but, well, I can’t. Not really. Because, well, I kinda forced her to do this.

You see, when we decided to move back to town from the farm, I realized we would get a nice little bit of extra cash (thanks to the ridiculousness of the housing market). And I also knew that she needed a creative outlet. And I also knew that she had long wanted a retail space to flex her culinary muscles. So, I stupidly told her that she would have 2-3 years to get that space and do the thing, or else I would get to use that extra cash for something absolutely stupid, like a pool. I should note, we live almost directly across the street from the municipal pool, so having a pool in our yard, while nice, is really, in many ways, a waste of money.

Now, I didn’t think about how 2-3 years would directly correlate with the moment I would finish school. In fact, it was a rather arbitrary time frame I put into place. I also didn’t actually think she would manage to follow through timely, and I fully expected to have to take a bit more direct action to make it happen…after I finished school.

But here I am, freshly done with my schooling, and in the midst of a raging stress party of trying to prepare for the first days of owning a bakery and making sure that our employees and customers don’t see the issues that come with trying to transition from one owner to the next. And, of course, most of that activity of transition can’t happen until after we actually manage to get the keys and whatnot from the previous owners, so, I’m sitting here trying to prep all the things I need to prep so that once we have all the pieces in our hands, I can quickly do the things necessary to transition everything over.

While my wife does the much more important stuff like planning menus and figuring out insurance and whatever other crazy actual important things need doing.

This isn’t me complaining, just noting. Because I actually like these little bits. Sure, I’d be much happier if I were to be able to sit back and enjoy some writing time, but, I guess I should be happy knowing that this summer, I’ll have the perfect place to sit outside on our little café patio and drink all the coffees while I write in between waiting for the next thing to need to be done.

Things could be a lot worse.

Besides, I’m still really excited for my wife to finally have her space. Sure, there are plenty of uncertainties at this point, but in general, I foresee a solid transition of ownership, and plenty of opportunities to do some cool stuff. And I’ll be the guy sitting there as the head cheerleader (maybe that should be my official title?), making sure that I can fill in any of the gaps in needs as necessary.

But all of that is really overlooking the entirely huge point that as of the time that this thing hits the site, we will officially be open for business. That’s right, folks. My wife is sitting in the kitchen with our staff right now trying to figure out whether we have enough or too much food to feed all of you. Which means, you need to get out there and get as many pastries and coffees as you can to show your support and to make them all have to work just that little bit harder. You might even get to see me! I’m not sure if that’s a selling point or not…

So, come on down. Check out the site for details on how to find us. TheNostalgicBean.com

Let’s Talk About Wordle

It’s the game that took the world by storm, only to have its inevitable purchase cause everyone to get up in arms about all of the changes they perceive to have happened since that date.

Wordle!

If you haven’t played Wordle, it’s a simple little word puzzle game, similar to Code Breaker or Mastermind, where you have to figure out a five-letter word, with some special tools to help you along the way. It’s fun, it’s simple, and it’s only one word per day, so it’s perfect for those of us who don’t want to get stuck playing a game on our phones for hours on end every day.

I was first introduced to this game through the same rather cryptic way most people are introduced to it, with a weird series of different-colored blocks being shared on my friends’ social media pages. I figured out quickly that it was a word game, and I surmised it was similar to Code Breaker (an old favorite of mine), but it took me a few weeks before dipping my toe in. And now, mostly because of those people who like to post clues (read: spoilers) on their social media pages, it ends up being one of the first things I do in the morning.

And I’ll admit, I’m nearing the end of my caring for this game (although a math-equation version called Nerdle has been a lot of fun for the past week), I’ve been really troubled by how many people are blaming their disinterest on the game being purchased by the Times. Like, first of all, kudos to Mr. Wardle (the creator) for managing to get the Times to pay him over 10 million dollars for this little game. Secondly, the only reason I’ve seen for people to complain that they don’t like the game any longer is because the words have gotten harder. Isn’t that kind of the point of these types of games, where you have to try harder and harder as you get better at them? If anything, the one thing that has kept me going is that it has become more of a puzzle game than just a lets-see-how-fast-I-can-guess-this-easy-word game. It’s a struggle for me to try to figure out what words I can make with the few letters I have left, hoping I don’t crap out by the 6th guess. And I like that struggle.

But, the real issue here is the same issue with all trends…we’ve just gotten tired of it. While it was fun at first, it can’t offer much more than it already does in terms of gameplay. And once you feel as though you’ve mostly mastered the gameplay, you’re left with hoping that you can guess things faster. And once that loses its interest, or the words get harder, you just start getting annoyed that you can’t brag as hard to your friends about how well you’re doing.

Which means, the real issue here is that you’re just blaming the Times for something the Times is actually the reason you’re aware of. That’s right, this game had nearly zero players before the Times ran a piece on it. You know about it because of the Times. So, although I’m not feeling like I really need to defend this paper that I can’t read because of paywalls, I do think that you people need to stop whining.

Because the reality is, Wordle is just another fun fad that we’re already tired of. Like the Backstreet Boys. And the only thing we can blame it on is the fact that neither of these options had much more to offer past their starting point.

Now Nerdle on the other hand…

Time to get a Little Sentimental

EPSON MFP image

As we near the moment in which my wife and I take over ownership of a cute little café/bakery (which, assuming all goes well, should have happened a few hours before this post hits the site), I can’t help but feel a little sentimental. While I’m not the kind of guy who should be owning a café or a bakery, since my knowledge of coffee ends at black Americano, and my knowledge of baking got me as far as that one time I made cookies over a decade ago, I can’t help but recognize how everything in my relationship with my wife has really led to this.

You see, when I first met my wife, she was working in a little coffee shop in the mall. I’ve long joked about how half the reason I ended up wanting to date her is because of how much free coffee she would get me. She introduced me to the trendy coffee shop in town as well, a place where all the young kids who were still too young to drink alcohol would hang out. Not long after that, she started working at a bakery, where she quickly rose to prominence as the kitchen manager, taking over most of the activities in there while the owner, well, didn’t exactly do a good job of owning the business.

In those few short early years with my now-wife, it felt as though I had far more coffee and baked goods than I had ever had in my prior twenty years on this planet.

And it was already back then when she started talking about wanting to open up her own bakery.

For the past twenty years, it’s felt as though everything we’ve done has been to get that bakery. And the very second we finally were able to scrape together enough cash to get there, a place posted to their social media accounts that they were looking for someone to buy them out.

In this magic moment of kismet, after years of scheming and looking at buildings and trying to come up with a way in which my wife’s baking could finally have a place of prominence, nearly twenty years after I first met that coffee-shop girl, we’ve got it.

I can’t speak for my wife, but in my mind, this is the moment in which she finally achieves her ultimate self. Where she can finally be who she truly is, and show the world (or at least the Chippewa Valley) of what she is capable. And the fact that this happened within months of me having a truly revelational moment regarding my writing and the stage makes me think that maybe, just maybe, 2022 will finally be the year where these two Osters actually finally feel like they’re on the path they’ve wanted to be on since they first met.

And that makes me more than a little sentimental. It makes me think back to that coffee shop girl and that young unformed creative first meeting at the theatre and realizing they were kindred spirits. We’re just a lot older now…

Business-Owning-Eve

As I write this, I’m sitting at the precipice of a big moment. A moment in which my wife and I sign away our lives to a little coffee shop/bakery that will, by all means, define the next few years (at least) of our lives. It’s an exciting moment, but also one that has caused a new level of anxiety as we work to try to make sure that we’re not only ready for the first days of being an open retail establishment, but also planning for the future successes of this business.

It’s not like we’re not capable of doing what we’re going to be doing. Although we haven’t been in this exact position before, we’ve definitely done most of the work that it will end up entailing. And the rest of it is mostly just logistical planning where we don’t have anyone else telling us that our ideas aren’t worth pursuing. In other words, the only things we haven’t really done are be able to have free rein to pursue the ways for success with a business that we believe are best.

And for all of that, I’m excited. For years I worked for small businesses and looked at what they were doing, suggested better methods, and saw those suggestions get looked down upon. And now, well, now my wife gets to look down on my ideas, but that’s nothing new.

Although I don’t really consider myself the owner of this business outside of in name and liability, I’m really excited to be a part of this thing that I know my wife will make into something truly amazing. I’m eager to see where we can go with it and what we can do to make a purely unique and original experience for our customers, while giving our staff the opportunities to shine in the best of ways. And do it through food and coffee…which are two of my favorite things.

And that all starts tomorrow…

Well, to be honest, it’s already started. Our house is already filled with supplies we purchased for our first week, because, you know, we have to make sure everything is fully stocked. And my wife has already been hard at work planning on some cool new things to do with the business, and I’ve been designing websites and figuring out point of sale systems, and, well, to be honest, I’m already a little exhausted by the detail aspects of running a business. But, soon we’ll get to move into the creative piece of it, coming up with cool ways to do even the most simple of things. Ways to make the customer experience better, and ways to make the business shine.

And those are the things I’m truly eager to get started with, to find ways to make the whole place simply work like it should, while finding ways to let me wife’s voice echo through the small room.

We just have to get there.

And it all starts tomorrow.

Flash Fiction: Finding Calm

Harold took a deep breath in through his nose and held it, wondering if any of this was actually worth it.

“Okay, now exhale through your mouth,” the oddly calming voice with a British accent said from his phone.

Harold did as he was commanded, feeling that all of this was stupid, but also knowing that at this point he was willing to do absolutely anything he could to deal with the stress he had been feeling for so long now.

“Inhale,” the voice said, trailing off as though it was an unfinished sentence.

It’s not like this was the first time he had ever tried meditation. In high school he had certainly taken to it, although that was mostly just closing his eyes and breathing while making a noise.

“Exhale…”

Actually, it had started as something of a joke, making fun of the goofiness he had seen on television regarding meditation. But then he found it actually managed to make him feel better. He had always assumed that when he had transitioned over to smoking as his primary stress-reliever, that it worked off of the same premise.

“Now, one more time, inhale.”

And, actually, as he thought back, it really did help. It gave him a moment to step back and reflect on the day, to not be in the midst of doing something, but to simply stop.

“And now, when you exhale this time, I want you to close your eyes and feel your weight pressing into your seat.”

Come to think of it, it was probably cell phones that ruined it for him. Back in the day, there wasn’t really another option for what to do during a smoke break. Either you sat back and had a conversation with someone else who was smoking, or you stared off into the middle-distance like you were starring in an emo music video. Now you took the time to play whatever crap game you’ve got loaded on your phone or scroll through social media.

“And as you feel your weight pressing into your chair, I want you to focus on your body.”

Not that he wanted to blame cell phones for all of his trouble. They’re great. They really are. But they also mean that he’s always on, always connected. He can’t simply have a second to himself nowadays. A second to just sit back and reflect.

“If your mind tries to wander, gently return it to the body.”

It’s like the world is simply against him trying to chill out for a second. Yeah, sure, he’s sitting here right now, but how long could this possibly last. And actually now that he’s thinking about it, he’s starting to feel a heckuva lot more agitated than when he started this whole mess. Like, is this what this is supposed to be? An echo chamber where he just has more and more time to reflect on what is bothering him and how he doesn’t have time to do the things he wants.

“And now, I want you to start at the top of the head, and slowly scan down the body, feeling for any pain or discomfort. Just getting a good judge of what your body is trying to tell you. Remember, if your mind starts to wander, don’t force it, but gently return it to the task at hand.”

This is bullshit. If I wanted to just sit back for a few minutes and remember how little time I have for sitting around and doing nothing, I can think of plenty of better ways to go around it than to sit back and listen to some British dude tell me what to do. What am I supposed to be doing anyways? Breathing? Don’t I do that all the time already? How in the world is this stuff so damned trendy if all the guy is going to tell you is to breathe?

Ding!

Thank God for my phone needing me. At least now I know it’s not worth my time to waste $12.99 a month on being told to breathe.

Flash Fiction: The Rock

“You know, it’s really getting cold down here,” Fred said to Ethel. “Like, really cold.”

“It’s always cold down here, Fred. That’s what happens when the ground freezes.”

“Right, yeah, I get that. I know.”

“Do you, Fred? It seems like every year when we get to this time of year, you start complaining about how cold it is.”

“Do I? I guess I just don’t like the cold is all.”

“You know, I could keep you warm.”

“You’re cold-blooded, Ethel. You couldn’t keep anything warm.”

“You don’t have to be cold-hearted, Fred.”

“Yeah? Is that supposed to be an insult?”

“I honestly don’t know anymore. Can we just get some sleep already?”

“I guess. When it’s this cold out, there’s really not much more to do than sleep, is there?”

“I could think of something, Fred.”

“That can wait until spring, Ethel, just like every year.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, it can always wait until spring, can’t it, Fred? And then spring comes along and suddenly you’re still too tired from hibernation.”

“I don’t need this kind of abuse from you, Ethel.”

“Abuse? I’m just saying I want to feel your cold touch against my scales is all.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. You know I get a little testy when the weather turns. Come here.”

Ethel moves her body in the tight space to lean into Fred’s embrace.

“You know, Fred, you’re right, it is a little cold in here. I think I feel a draft. Did you remember to close the rock?”

School is for the Birds

As I sit here waiting for my grades from school to come back, so I can know whether or not I’ve actually completed all my coursework and can be approved for graduation, I’ve come across a metaphor for school that has helped me explain to myself my current state of ongoing anxiety, even though I’m actually done with most of the expectations for school.

You see, I’ve been in this state of waiting for approval on all of these assignments, things that I’ve worked incredibly hard on, things that I’ve now submitted to four different people who each have rather unreliable expectations for how an assignment is completed, and may or may not actually care about the actual statements make inside the assignment rubrics. Or, to put it more simply, I’ve submitted a bunch of work to people who do not have consistent expectations and may have a completely different image in their mind of what they expect to get back than they may have expressed in their request for the work.

Like…well, like a boss. I’m in this stupid situation right now where I’ve got four bosses who expect a whole bunch of work on tight deadlines, who have a very specific idea for what they are looking for, an inability to express that specific idea concisely or accurately, and give no real information on how long it might take for them to review the work and tell you what they actually wanted, which means that when you finally get the work back for correction, your timeline is at an even tighter turnaround with possibly even less clarification on what is expected.

So, I’m in stress, because although I think I’ve done an amazing job on getting these assignments done, I’m waiting for 21 different assignments to be graded so I can know if I need to correct and resubmit anything, and I have 33 days until this all has to be done.

I’m not a fan.

It also means that although I was really excited to finish the homework and get the feeling of relief that should come from it, I’m actually not feeling that relief yet. Just exhaustion and stress.

And now I’m really hoping that once all these assignments have been graded and I’ve actually been able to be placed in a position where I know I’ve passed all these classes that I’ll finally feel the relief I’ve been hoping to feel for the past 2.5 years.

So I can go back to just having my one actual unreliable boss to answer to (4, I guess, if you count my wife and kids). The one that pays me, so I can feel a bit better about unreliable expectations.

And also, I know they’ll still pay me regardless of whether the work is what they were hoping for, so I don’t have the constant expectation of failure throwing my life into disarray.

As opposed to right now.