Adam Oster, Novelist

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.