Living Three Lives Simultaneously Pt. 2

Look Mum I’m writing on a weekly schedule again! Hahaha. I expect this will last all of today.

So last week I talked about how my new job is like…bewilderingly good and I can’t really get over myself about it. I have a bunch of Feels on the matter but that generally continues to be the case. 

This week I’d like to focus on my second professional life: my experience as an entrepreneur/small business owner.

When asked how I felt about starting Queen ofStrawbs I responded, “My only regret is that I didn’t start sooner.” Everything that’s happened about becoming a small food business owner in one of the coolest foodie scenes in the country has been positive. The margins are huge but I’m staying in the black on my hobby. There is literally nothing more I could ask for.

A lot of folks have asked if I will be selling my jam at farmer’s markets. I usually respond that I’m struggling to keep up with my friend requests and then usually get a puzzled look in return. It recently occurred to me that the average person does not regularly communicate with 1000 people on any platform. If 30% of my “friend” base on Facebook were to buy 1 jar of jam each, that’s still 300 jars of jam for me to make and distribute. This is not including people I work with, people I attend synagogue with and other tenants at the share kitchen I rent. If I were able to produce adequate supply for all of those people, yeah—maybe I’d consider taking my jams to a farmer’s market. In the meantime, my side hustle is intense enough as is.

And then there’s this guy:

This guy has bought close to 20% of every jam I have made to date. He freaking loves my jam. He loves my jam enough that I think everyone in his life is getting a jar for Christmas. And if they all like my jam, that’s another whole network I just acquired. Like, damn yo. Slow down.

I’m loving all the things my friends are doing with the jam. A common recipe is yogurt with muesli/granola and jam on top. Some friends introduced me to the wonders of hollowing out one of those crappy little croissant from the supermarket, filling it with jam and microwaving it for 15 seconds:

That one was actual heaven. It was so good I forgot I was the one who made the jam.

The same couple made a mixed drink and called it a Sara Jewlep and it looks as follows:

The recipe:

• Bourbon
• Mint
• Queen of Strawbs "Get Stuff Done" jam

Another friend made shortbread cookies:

And like…I’m completely in love with every single photo I get. Everything looks phenomenal and the fact that something I made with my hands is bringing people joy is literally the best feeling I have ever felt in my life.

Getting space at a share kitchen is quadruple-fold the best thing I’ve ever done, especially to keep a project like this going. Things that are awesome about industrial kitchens:

• I pay my landlady money and I get a shelf in a walk in freezer to keep my fruits.
• There are ladles and scoopers of multiple sizes. It turns out that ladles come in 3 oz and 4 oz varieties, which is super helpful when you need to fill a jam jar to 7.75oz.
•  INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH NINJA BLENDER
• Dish washing machine that washes and sanitizes in 3 minutes <<<makes all the rent I pay 1000% worth it.
• 6 burner gas range
• A Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer for the Gods (rando internet person for scale).
• Stainless steel surfaces that can just be wiped down and sprayed with bleach.
• A mop and floors that are easy to mop.
• Did I mention I don’t have to wash my dishes by hand? I don’t have to wash my dishes by hand.
• Walk in freezer that freezes blueberries to marbles in 1 hour (I timed it).
• INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH NINJA BLENDER. No more hand processing, ever.
• Bose sound system with a Tupac Pandora station. Tupac has become my mandatory soundtrack. Biggie can join too.

I invited some friends to help me this weekend where I attempted some very aggressive goals: three flavors and processing 60 lb fruit. Let me just say that it absolutely wouldn’t have happened without them and I owe them much but all I have is gratitude and jam so I paid them in that. I’m going to name the couple AdventureTeacher and King of Pomegranates (or KPom). I call him the King because he singlehandedly processed 50 lb of pomegranates. We all got our talents.

I really liked AdventureTeacher’s remarks upon the kitchen: “This place isn’t fancy. It isn’t huge. It just has the best stuff in it. It’s like they went with absolutely no frills and just went straight for quality.” This warmed the depths of my utilitarian heart. That’s exactly what I love about my kitchen.

I emphasized to my friends that just because I was setting crazy expectations for myself, I did not set the same for them and they were free to go when they needed. They stayed 8 hours, for which I am eternally grateful. It turns out I was starved for friendship and companionship and hanging out all day made me feel much more sane. (That goes for all the other friends I’ve had seen in meatspace in the past 5 days or so. The sanity benefit of spending time physically present with friends and family is absolutely irreplaceable)

I, however, did not give myself a break and I worked for nearly 13 hours straight. The issue with jam is that once ya pop the fun don’t stop. If you have jam on the stove, you need to see that jam through to a jar/can until it’s sealed. I successfully met my goal and here is a glimpse of the final products:

I’m really excited about the flavors. I used the blueberries I froze during my first couple days at the kitchen. There are three flavors:

·      Blueberry, white nectarine, ginger

·      Blueberry, pomegranate, vanilla and fresh sage

·      Pomegranate, mint (spearmint) and cumin

The final flavor is hands-down my favorite. It’s also my first jelly! (Jelly does not have fruit pulp. Jam has some, preserves, like “Get Stuff Done” and "Summer Jam" have whole fruit pieces.)

I have not fully decided on flavor names but I think the blue/nect/ginger will be called “Morning, Darling” and the pom jelly will have Moroccan in the name. I definitely leaned into my deep memory of Moroccan food of my childhood to put that flavor combo together. It will work excellently on meats, particularly white meat like chicken breast or pork.

It turns out I have a word that’s in my head but it’s not a word, it’s a hand motion. It’s the motion of opening a lever 90°. I use this word/motion to describe how I pair savory components with the overwhelming/overpowering aspects of fruit. With pomegranates, the overwhelming attribute is the sour, so the compliment I chose was cumin. I don’t know if this is a real thing or I’m just weirdly good at identifying these pairs. ::shrugville::

The real treasure of working in a shared kitchen with other food entrepreneurs is the people. The people who work in my kitchen are the most wonderful, generous and lovely people I’ve ever met in a professional setting. Working together in the setup we do, it is common for folks to share resources, share tips/suggestions/opinions about vendors and most importantly: SHARE FOOD. And the other chefs in my kitchen are amazing. They make little macrons, lumpias, all manner of baked goods…it’s just basically heaven TBH.

One instance that really summed it up was when I worked in the kitchen this weekend and some of my dishes (I’d left them soaking) disappeared. I asked the guy from the other company what happened and he just shrugged and was like “Eh, we’re all in here together. We help each other out. Welcome to kitchen life.”

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of drilling life, which I’m learning more and more about. First of all, within the context of drilling I am hired as oversight and management. I liked the way one trainer put it: "we’re the professionals, [the drillers] are the experts.” They carry two 100lb sacks of cement on their shoulders, I carry a clipboard and nitrile gloves. Drillers, so far as I’ve met them, tend to use crude language but are generally not rude. Not that kitchen folks have prim mouths—I certainly do not, in either context--- it’s just that working in a kitchen seems softer, in a way. They’re both kinda harsh work conditions with lots of physical exertion. Overall I didn’t get very close with any of the drillers or my work colleagues. I parted ways for the week with a firm handshake. I hope that was the right thing to do. Corporate interactions are so confusing, esp in a white collar version of a blue collar job. Light Blue Collar, I guess. Like my arts high school motto “Fight high school fight, for the blue and the liiight blue.” You would think so many artists in one place would choose better spirit colors.

Kitchen folks are also more up in each others’ lives than I expected going in. Everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. I don’t mean like business plan kind of business, more like who’s going out with whom type thing. One time there was a drug phone found in the doorway and that rippled through the tenant like a gossip wave. We have our own Facebook group. I think this is a side effect of having a small business: your personal life and your professional life don’t really get the luxury of separating. It’s all you, all the time. I like it for that very reason. As long as I make good jam and I want to keep being there, I’m allowed to be exactly who I am.

Being in control of my own business, being a little bit my own boss has been a great experience for my sense of myself as a leader. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep doing this because my day job requires a lot of logistics so having a logistics heavy hobby is pushing my limits. I am struggling with my demand. Freakin’ everyone wants my jam. And I don’t really know how to alert people in a kind and fair way to let them know my jam is on sale before it sells out. Hopefully having a bigger supply this time will buy me some more time. My last batch, after distribution to my GoFundMe backers sold out after one day of my announcing publicly that jam was for sale. 3.5 gallons of jam completely gone in 3 days.

I am definitely going to finish out my contract (and complete the jam from the stored fruit I made in August) but I am probably going to put this experiment on hold until I can get a more reliable travel schedule. Being that I was 100 mi south of home on Friday and I’m on a flight to somewhere 800 mi north on Tuesday, it might be a good minute before I have a “predictable” schedule.

But, as Tupac says, “That’s just the way it is”

Living Three Lives Simultaneously Pt. 1

As my wise friend Good Panda commented on my life: it appears that I am living three lives simultaneously. In case I’ve never mentioned, I straight up do not understand the concept of being bored. I can’t remember many times in my life when I was bored, and when that happened I probably went and did something else. #HighFunctioningAnxiety

I did block out this post in advance but I have a feeling that this is going to take a moment anyway. More tends to happen in three weeks of my life than does for many people in months. My plan is to visit each “life” I lead and then do some meta-analysis and State of The Brain (spoiler: it’s filled with poo and lies) at the end. If there is a part you feel would be relevant or interesting, you can jump to that part. I am not fancy enough to know how to do those hyperlink jump-tos so you’ll have to scroll and look for the bolded sections for now. Or teach me? That could work. Or I very well might just write separate posts since my days are absurdly long and I can only manage so much writing in a night. (Edit: this is what I'm doing, more posts to follow)

Life One: Sara the Geologist

Let me just start off by saying that actually working in the position I have now (woohoo, got employed!) is like…a million times easier and better than pretty much every other job I’ve had in my life. It’s like working, but on easy mode. Even though I’m out in the field this week, I’m only doing what I would consider “actual work” about 3 hours out of the 11. The rest is oversight and safety management.

So that’s one thing: the hours are long. They usually involve doing skilled labor that either involves thinking a lot or management/logistics/planning skills. One of the weirdest things I’ve had to do so far was research pee and poop for a day. Turns out sewers are dangerous on top of being gross? Who knew.

While taking lunch is required (yay, legalities) we have to make up our time and bill 8 hours each day. This means that my days are typically 9 hours long in the office. So far the field days have been “short” in that they’re only 11 or so hours. It’s only Tuesday and I’ve put in 23 hours, including transit to my site. PartnerPenguin has commented that it’s exactly what I wanted, several hours more per week than I wanted it.

One type of mindset shift that has been hard is the concept of  “staying billable.” In academia there is a disproportionate burden placed on the shoulders of the professors to bring in grants enough to support the lab running. In environmental consulting people are a lot more…open about talking about money. It feels like the veil around actually living in a capitalist society has finally been pulled back. Instead of this mysterious thing shrouded in shame and misery, it’s a shared burden. There is this concept called utilization-everyone needs to try to make as many of their 40 hours a week billed to a cost code. It is impersonal in some ways, but it also spreads the responsibility of staying in business on everyone, not just one professor. Obviously I am a mere peon and my manager shields us well from pressure Up Above so I have little idea what that’s like. But the firm I joined is quite large so the supply chain is long and the contracts are large. I’m working on several DoD contracts and they’re pretty cushy.

Definitely one thing I can get behind is that I’m finally not the only woman in the whole office who cusses. My manager (loosely, she just makes sure I have work to do, she doesn’t actually supervise me) dropped the f bomb at our “get to know you” lunch. I have never felt such automatic comradery.

Yeah, that’s another thing I’m not used to. I’m not managed. Like, at all. I’m not micromanaged. My “manager” has even commented that it’s OK if I contact her less. Holy shit working in academia/government was a horrendous nightmare compared to how work gets done in industry. I’m assumed to be competent. I’m allowed to ask questions. No one gets judgey or annoyed when I ask too many questions. And then I’m encouraged to ask more questions to clarify. A supervisor on one project called me on Thursday last week because I hadn’t checked in all week on a thing due on Friday. It wasn’t a long conversation, just said what I’d accomplished and what I predicted I could accomplish by the deadline. She said I did the hard part and thanked me. And then we hung up after 15 minutes. Like…that’s it.

Related to that project: Did you know that there is a poisonous newt in Idaho? Along with rattlesnakes, bears and wolves they are the deadliest animals in the state. If I ever go there I might have to make up a newt based nickname.

Another friend who pivoted from academia to industry put it this way:
“I thought I would miss the rush of doing original research, of seeing things that nobody had ever seen before and figuring out puzzles that nobody had ever figured out yet.  Part of me does, but I found that part offset very quickly when I realized that my employer thought that what I was doing was inherently and obviously valuable, and paid me without me ever having to justify my work by writing grant proposals.  I hope that you find the experience equally rewarding.”

The hardest shift for me has definitely been the shift from Poverty Mindset to Safety Consultant Mindset. I feel like this might be difficult to describe but I will try:

The site I’m working at right now is investigating an emerging contaminant that is currently ubiquitous. It’s the thing that makes Teflon nonstick. It’s in sunscreen. It’s in GoreTex. It’s in anything that’s possibly waterproof. Because of its ubiquity combined with low testing limits, there are bananas absurd preparation methods for this field season. Someone in the field made the uncomfortable observation that we have more of this stuff in our bloodstream than we’re testing for so to some extent we can’t actually be blank slates for sample prep.

What has this meant for your regular, average, everyday Sara? Well, the requirement on clothing is that everything is natural fibers, eg. cotton, wool, linen (ha! Noooope). Ha! 100% cotton does not exist for women with curves, so Target would have me believe. I have since learned that field folk prefer Duluth or Carthartt but fuck spending that much money on clothes before I got my first paycheck. I only had one-ish pair of acceptable pants at the beginning of this whole thing so I bought 3 more pairs of pants, 4 new bras (they are terrible, I hate cheap bras with a burning passion), several new pairs of panties and a set of wool long undergarments. The kicker: I had to wash them 6 times before I went into the field. The worse kicker: my Laundromat is 5 blocks from my house. And I have had pitifully little time to go do this sort of chore so we’ve paid for fluff’n’fold.

Now how does this affect poverty brain?

New clothes are a dreadful necessity that must be avoided at all costs. Buy clothes at thrift stores, discount stores, Walmart, Target, or just wash your current clothes cunningly to disguise the lack of diversity in wardrobe.

Counterpoint:

I absolutely refuse to risk exposure so I need to commit to making sure the breakthrough time on my clothing is as long as possible. This means new clothing. And I need my boobs to have some sort of support too, so I need more than 2 bras total.

This battle in my brain keeps coming up because I have been trained that only the cheapest option in any situation is ever acceptable, no matter the time cost. My “manager” actually told me in an email that my time is more valuable than trying to get a truck on Sunday so I didn’t have to pay for Saturday. I almost cried. I have very very rarely been told by an employer or manager that my time or skills are valuable.

Somewhat to satisfy my poverty brain, but also to satisfy making sure all of my food needs were met adequately: I have become the Hobo Queen of the Quality Inn this week. I brought a rice cooker, a slow cooker and the room has a microwave. This was my dinner tonight:

and this was how I rigged all the dishes I’ve been doing:

I have been preparing all three meals a day in my room. Though…I did discover that the hotel has biscuits and gravy at breakfast.  Yum. I think I’m still going to make myself oatmeal. PartnerPenguin has been perfecting the art of slow cooker oatmeal. Here’s his/our recipe:

3/4c (or 1/2c) steel cut oats

3/4c (or 1/2c) milk

3/4c (or 1/2c) water

Raisins

Strawberries

Cinnamon

Poppy or flax seeds

Put all ingredients in a Pyrex bowl thing. Place in a slow cooker with water enough to meet the sides of the Pyrex but not overflow it. Cook on high for 6-8 hrs. It creates enough of a double-boiler to cook the oatmeal well but keeps the great texture of the steel cut so eating isn’t too tedious.

So yeah. That for breakfast, sliced meats and cheese with pickles, veg and fruit for lunch and meat of some sort for dinner. I think I’m going to expand my meatsies prep and go full 50’s housewife and get into microwave cooking. We’ll see.

Anyway. All this prep has been an absurd amount of time commitment.

The final thing that’s difficult about my new job is how normal everyone is. People have functional families. They certainly encounter challenges but from what I’ve heard they are all very tame. I actually thought such a thing was fiction but multiple people have talked about events transpiring that I imagine can only happen with functional families. They certainly encounter challenges but from what I’ve heard they are all very tame. I caught myself mid-story today because I realized I was so poor when I lived in a house with a gas leak for a month I kept my head down and was just thankful for having a roof over my head instead of being concerned about dying from the accumulated natural gas in my bedroom. They just don’t seem to have stories like that. And I don’t know yet how to temper my life to seem more normal than it has been. More on this topic later.

To some extent it is nice that a lot of people are much more normal than me-in regard to anxiety at least-because they set the standard for what kinds of actions and levels of chill should be approached in a given situation. But it’s pretty mind-boggling. Though in some cases I am grateful to listening to my AnxietyBrain: it has prevented me from being phone-less for a week.

Overall I am loving the job and loving the work. I get to do weird research. I get to read policy documentation. I get to do Quality Checks and tell people where they fucked up, but like…they asked me to point it out and also I’m nice about it? I get to be outside and I got a <safety mullet> for my hat. Thanks to this job I have rad long underwear that I’ve avoided buying for my whole life.

Ok. I think I need to shower and make my food for tomorrow, despite that I definitely have more to say. I think I’ll make this LiveJournal-esque and say that I’ll come back tomorrow and talk about my other “lives.”

P.S. Here are some photos from the field:

Me, in field gear. Minus Safety Mullet (just bought it today, this was taken yesterday)

No babies in buckets. Needs to be stated, I guess.

Tren fren. It's a special freight line that branches off the national line...for some reason?

Volunteer melons! Because watermelons like composted sewage? Anyway they're fuzzy. I'll let you know if we try to eat them how they taste.

Yeah, this is just insanity pants cheap. Oatmeal costs at least $1.00/lb by us.

And because I’m feeling silly and un-original tonight, y’all are getting one of the best videos on the Internet.