What’s Another Eulogy? My Non-Review of Roadrunner

July 24, 2021July 26, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Until about 5AM this morning, this week’s blog post was going to be about something completely different. I was going to write about taste, snobbishness, and keeping it in check.

But last night, Em and I decided to go to our first movie in a theater in over a year. It was a toss-up between Black Widow and Roadrunner, and Em decided she could see Black Widow another time. She wanted to see Roadrunner with me. We were both glad for that because in the back of the Laurelhurst Theater, over pizza, popcorn, and spilled beer, we both cried our eyes out.

I came home with mixed emotions and tried to write that blog post about snobbishness… but as of 5 am, aware of the discourse and controversies surrounding the movie, I knew I need to write this all out while it was still fresh in my mind. One of the problems with being a writer is that words vanish from your mind faster than feelings in your heart, so here we go.

One last story from my beloved doomed bastard of a hero, Uncle Tony.

Glad for the hat brim and lighting here- you cant see how red my eyes are.

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Getting Back to “Okay”

May 1, 2021May 1, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

When I woke up, I couldn’t tell where the nightmare stopped and reality began. It was all the same.

Imagine having a radio in your head, cranked up to full blast, and the stations changing every few seconds. Wave after crashing wave of gibberish, so loud in your mind you can barely think to breathe.
Your heart pounds through your chest, oxygen seems to stop working, and it’s all you can do to stop from screaming because you can’t get enough air in to make a sound.

Even when it finally stopped, I didn’t know how to roll over and explain it to Emily, who had just gotten in to bed beside me. Any words I wanted to say felt like they first had to come down a long tunnel to get to my brain and then out of my mouth. At 35 years old, I buried my face in my wife’s shoulder and sobbed until the words finally arrived.

“I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I couldn’t make my brain stop. It felt like I was losing my mind.”
Emily reached over and held me. “You’re fine. It was an anxiety attack. I know how those feel.”

Animated line drawing of a person with bags under their wide eyes, clutching their head and nodding back and forth in panic.

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Sometimes It’s Just Like That- The “Second Arrow” and Equanimity

April 24, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Hello everyone. This week’s lackluster blog post is brought to you by more medical bullshit and me trying to make the best of it.

It all started around Sunday. I woke up feeling a strange tightness in my chest and a headache. I did my best to go through my normal morning routine, but after eating breakfast my body made quite clear what it wanted.

“SLEEP.”

”But, I need to exercise, otherwise I won’t have the energy for work. It’s the start of the work week, I’m the guy in charge, I need to-“

”No. No no no NO NO FUCK YOU, YOU’RE GOING BACK TO BED. We are sucking all the energy out of your muscles until the LAST possible instant, so if you don’t want to pass out on the carpet you don’t vacuum enough, GET BACK IN BED NOW.”

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It’s All Energy- Personal, Physical, Financial, and Deciding Where It All Goes

April 10, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

If there is one rule I’ve learned that has radically transformed my life, it’s the Ten Words that form the heart of my book “Blood, Sweat, and Butter-“

“You Always Have Time For The Things You Make Time For.”

The collary and counterpart to this best expressed with the phrase, “Where attention goes, energy flows.”

That doesn’t just mean your personal energy… and your bank account will tell you it’s not just some freaky woo-woo stuff. The sooner you learn about where you are putting your time, your attention, your money- in other words, your energy, the sooner you start making wiser decisions about it.

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Why Multitasking Is Bullshit

February 20, 2021February 19, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“Must be able to multitask!” “Are you a multitasking master?” “Must be quick, efficient, and able to multitask…”

It’s a pretty standard line on kitchen job postings, especially production positions (as distinct from line or service jobs.) The ideal candidate for any given production job is quick, clean, polite, efficient, honest, methodical, able to be coached but also a self-starter… and possesses this legendary ability to split their focus across several tasks but perform them all flawlessly.

People like that do exist- I have trained a few of them- but that seemingly unique ability to multitask does not exist. Not on a mental level and, in fact, not even on the physical level. Regularly attempting to divide your attention across several tasks can lead to mental fatigue and even damaging your brain.

Why do people keep asking employees to do it, then? Why do people brag about “being a multitasker,” and more importantly, how can we fix the damage it causes?