Overdue Epilogues

May 17, 2026May 17, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

CW: Discussion of health, weight, body image, diet

A few years back, I wrote a book- my first book, in fact– about losing weight and getting in shape. I used my own story, half-baked methods, understanding and experience to explain just how I did it. For the time, it was all good advice. What I failed to mention, however, is what can happen when your health, your brain, and forces your can’t hope to control take your feet out from under you.

It’s easy and glib to say “Keep trying, don’t give up, tomorrow’s another day” and the rest. It’s true as well, but it’s not the whole truth. Life comes at you fast.

Consider this post and a few others before, then, as something like an epilogue to “Blood, Sweat, and Butter.” Marie Kondo famously recanted some of her tidiness dictums because she realized that they aren’t possible for someone with kids, like she became after writing her books. I’m not necessarily recanting anything I wrote… but I’m definitely throwing up a few asterisks.

The front cover of "Blood, Sweat, and Butter- Getting Fit on a Cook's Schedule (and Paycheck)

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Theft of Spirit- An Under-Considered Symptom of Burnout

April 12, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

It’s one of those “if you see it, it’s already really bad” things. “You see one cockroach or rat in plain view in your kitchen, you’ve already got an infestation.” That fact that you can see the problem means that it’s a big problem.

In this case, however, it’s more about what you can’t see– or not as clearly, not anymore. To quote Pastor Rob Bell, “Despair is the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.” You can’t see a better tomorrow. You can’t see a brighter future. You can’t even imagine it without a painful focus on the worst-case scenario and feeling exhausted from work not yet conceived.

Burnout includes a “theft of spirit,” and you forget how to dream.

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Gaps in the Armor

March 23, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

The right food at the right time can give you nearly everything you need. In my case, I was back at the Beer Bus and had just pounded a tuna burrito from Saint Burrito. The balled-up tinfoil and a stained napkin were being held down by what remains of my beer.

I had just come out of the gym and needed a late lunch/ refuel. Protein, carbs, a bit less fat than your normal burrito, and 5% alcohol to help soothe the muscles. Beer doesn’t get enough credit as a post-workout beverage if it’s consumed within reason. John L. Sullivan, the legendary “knock out king” of 19th Century Boston, had an equally legendary drinking problem. All his work and fighting couldn’t keep his daily Kidney Pickling from turning his muscles slack and flabby. “Moderation in everything, including Moderation,” says verbal knock-out king Oscar Wilde.

A suit of armor on a black-gray vignette background

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Half-Rest

January 12, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“Music is the space between the notes.”
Claude Debussy

The slow season has finally come.

The boss kepts saying words like “slow down, take a breath, relax a bit…” but the schedule and production weren’t bearing that out, and if you’d asked any of my coworkers, they’d have said it felt like we’d been sprinting since June.

Over post-shift beer, my buddy Nick- the lead prep cook- and I compared what was to be our third holiday season at the winery with the previous two and tried to get our hands around the situation.

“It’s fucking insane…” Nick said, tipping back his pint of amber lager and sucking a little foam off his mustache. “We’re doing business and a lot of it, that’s for sure- but not that much more than last year. Events has a full roster, but prep is still short at least one person. We were short last year too though, so what the hell is it?”

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Between the Mountain and the Sea

January 5, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

“A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“And Slid said: “I am the Lord of gliding waters and of foaming waters and of still. I am the Lord of all the waters in the world and all that long streams garner in the hills; but the soul of Slid is in the Sea. Thither goes all that glides upon Earth, and the end of all the rivers is the Sea.”
Excerpt From The Gods of Pegana,
Lord Dunsany

It’s a windy and cold morning on the shore. I’m out walking the beach down by the water, where the tide turns the sand from soft tan to slate gray and my boots leave footprints. It’s easier-going for older people who are out with their dogs. The dogs, for their part, don’t seem to mind the going or the feel of the cold sand; they’re high as kites on all the smells and feeling carried on salt air and the ability to run.

In a few hours, I’ll be on a plane back to Oregon. Back to my wife and cat, our basement apartment up a mountain, and eventually a kitchen that’s felt more like a psych ward the last few months than the serene kind of chaos I want to believe I work in.

Those LeGuin and Dunsany quotes slide through my mind along with “A Pirate Looks at 40.” It feels silly and dramatic and florid, but I don’t really care. Finding a bench on the pier where my grand-uncle once tried to teach me to fish, I could almost cry.