It's Not World Peace, It's Just a Doughnut
Or, mostly good things for a mostly tough time of year.
For a refresher on what JFT is, you can click here. Ty for reading. 🫶
“It’s not world peace, it’s just a doughnut.”
In my early twenties one of the random odd jobs I held was being a barista and counter server at an old fashioned-style doughnut shop about ten blocks from my little lofted apartment. It was (at the time) the perfect job for me. I’d wake up absurdly early, trudge to the shop and greet the bakers who’d be there since 2 or 3 AM, make coffee for myself and the locals, and sling doughnuts and fritters until we ran out or I was relieved at noon by the closer. Working there and the pizza place the same owners maintained (that one just twenty blocks from my place) honestly made for one of the best years of my life. I loved working there; I think about saying “fuck it all!!!!” and going back at least every other month.
The thing I loved the most about those jobs was the people. Once, one of the bakers ran out from the kitchen to yell at my ex-boyfriend when I spotted him biking around outside of the shop. He then proceeded to tell me to hide in the back and he’d man the front to make sure I wasn’t forced into an awkward altercation against my will. One of the chefs at the pizza shop taught me how to make Karfiolleves (a smoky, paprika-y, cauliflower-y, dumpling-y soup) from his grandmother’s recipe. I make it every winter to this day and it hits every time. That same chef taught me how to roast squash, properly dress a salad, and roll a burrito. I never mastered the burrito. One of my managers caught wind of a tricky breakup I was navigating and always made sure I ate on my break. “There’s no reason you should be sad, dealing with drunk people, AND hungry,” she would say while pointing at me in a vaguely threatening manner with a fork from the pickup window.
In the corporate world hearing someone say, “We’re a family!” in regards to work makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But in the food world and behind the counters of each of these shops, there was something that you can only describe as familial. Everyone had each other’s backs, whether that was helping keep your food restriction at bay during a depressive episode or keeping your insane ex from storming a doughnut shop unannounced.
The doughnut shop notoriously received much more…heated customers than the pizza joint. Which is surprising when you consider the copious amounts of sugar in the building and lack of a liquor license! The fact is it was popular, in a high traffic area, and small batch, artisanal, and handmade. Meaning they didn’t produce super high volumes and therefore sold out fast and often. Like before 9 AM often. Those of us who manned the opening shifts were regularly accosted with pissed off moms and dads who were just beside themselves that they could not satiate their craving for a Boston Cream because they were too little too late.
As anyone who has spent more than five minutes in the service industry can tell you, these “disappointed” customers were never just simply bummed, shrugged, and moving on. They always had to let us HAVE it. I have only been yelled at in a workplace more by a sociopath I worked for briefly who I legally shouldn’t talk about. Something about people not being granted access to the carbs they so desperately wanted in the mornings set them the fuck off. And an overly complicated coffee beverage that we’d each been trained for an entire day on how to make perfectly and exactly would simply not suffice.
Stephanie, a manager I really came to look up to, had the perfect outlook to this. And said outlook has followed me and I apply it to so many facets of my life.
After someone would offer their general displeasure our way because of whatever happened, Stephanie would wait for them to stomp their way across the checkered floor of the shop, the door swinging behind them before shrugging her shoulders and saying:
“It’s not world peace, it’s just a doughnut.”
INWPIJAD is applicable to so many things and anyone who knows me has heard me say it at least once. Probably twice. Probably more like 5+ times.
You trip up your sentences in an important interview or presentation? INWPIJAD
You’re nervous about a first date and how you’ll come across? INWPIJAD
You get upset and react to something on social media? INWPIJAD
You screw up and miss a deadline? INWPIJAD
Really almost anything happens and you shame spiral? INWPIJAD
As it’s been revealed many times throughout this Substack and elsewhere like, idk, any interaction with me ever, I am a person with a fair amount (understatement) of anxiety. It’s not abnormal for me to wake up from kidnapping dreams, or simply start the day feeling like my heart is going to pound its way throughout my body. While I’m still mastering grounding techniques and considering the SSRI of it all, repeating how small scale most things are is something that helps bring me back.
“It’s not world peace, it’s just a doughnut.”
I reminisce about my summer at the shops not infrequently—a year where my workout was hauling buckets of flour for the bakers and I clocked in more steps in a day than when I was running 5ks regularly. Every time I come back with boxes of doughnuts from the place down the street, every time I wrap leftover slices in tinfoil for the fridge, every time I pop a beer open with a lighter (another chef lesson), every time I hear the grind of an espresso machine, and every time something feels more monumental than it should and I need to remind myself how small we all and it all really is, I think of that year and how good it was for me.
I suppose that’s the thing about the people who make you feel like family. They’ll never really go away.The sun will continuously come out tomorrow, apparently.
I have a complaint! And the complaint is the fact that for the last week or more, it has been bright as fuck outside.
I can appreciate sun, I can. But I moved to Seattle for two specific reasons.
One) My best-friend was moving here to be closer to family and I cannot picture a life without him readily accessible to me.
And Two) Because I adore the weather.
I get that we need Vitamin D or whatever but especially this time of year this whole “it’s so sunny out!!” thing feels like a scam. I mean, it probably is explainable by something dire like global warming. But just vibe wise it is, in my super humble opinion, not it.
This is the time of year to snuggle up under no less than two blankets, succumb to the 4 PM sunset, and watch movies that any other time of year it would be too bright to see the screen at that time. It’s the time of year for jackets and socks over your leggings and needing hand lotion at the side of your bed for your cuticles. It’s the time of year for soups, soups, and more soups. The time of year for hygge, or whatever.
It’s not the time of year for being blinded by the sun while I’m trying to read a book about messy women. It’s not the time of year for seeing people eating al fresco with their sunnies on. It’s not the time of year for feeling like Little Orphan Annie is serenading me every time I get up and the fog had faded and I’m greeted with no clouds and a UV index that is higher than I’d like.
I’m desperate for the rain and the dark and the weather that will complement the hermit thing I’m working with at the moment. It truly cannot come soon enough.For the love of the long-read.
There is little I love in this world than a good read. A book, a magazine, a solid text? Love it, c’est magnifique, no notes, 10/10, top tier imo.
But a lesser appreciated (again, imo) genre of the good read is the internet long-read. Journalism is and has been under attack for a long time, and frankly I think long-from journalism has suffered tremendously from it. People don’t appreciate a good story the way that they used to! *slams 30-something fist to the proverbial table to emphasize a point*
A friend of mine and I have a habit of sending and requesting a long-read from each other throughout the work day. When your 40-hours-a-week life is almost permanently in front of a screen, it’s indisputably necessary to have a break up or two that stimulates the frontal lobe. And a long-read is my personal preferred “still staring at a screen, but different!” kind of break.
Since I’m very much anti-The Five Love Languages of Love, I’m constantly on the hunt for things that make me feel loved and ways I show love to those I, well, love. Like being told I’m right, like tracing freckles that dot our arms and shoulders in between tattoos, like offering to wash the dishes, like keeping someone’s preferred creamer around (just in case), like making soup, like asking for someone’s opinion because you actually value it.
And for me, like sending an essay/article/long-read and saying, “You need to read this.” It is absolutely, without question, a love language.
So since I love that you are here and tolerate that I have never met a topic I couldn’t grandstand about, I present a list of long-reads for you to check out. I think you probably need to read them.
The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser for The Paris Review
My Family’s Slave by Alex Tizon for The Atlantic*
Scene Stealer: The True Lies of Elisabeth Finch by Evgenia Peretz for Vanity Fair
Who’s Afraid of Kathleen Hale? by Scaachi Koul for Buzzfeed News
You’re 16. You’re a Pedophile. You Don’t Want to Hurt Anyone. What Do You Do Now? by Luke Malone for Medium*
Coming Out at Panera (And Other Extremely Heterosexual Restaurants) by Casey McQuiston for Bon Appetit
The Watcher by Reeves Wiedeman for New York Magazine
I Wanted a ‘Freebirth’ No Matter What. The Internet Brainwashed Me. by Brandy Zadrozny for NBC News*
The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire Life by Shannon Keating for Buzzfeed News
I Never Called Her Momma by Jenisha Watts for The Atlantic*
The Year in Stupid Tattoos I’m Sure I Won’t Regret by Scaachi Koul for Hazlitt
America’s Most Political Food by Lauren Collins for The New Yorker**denotes trigger warnings
Can we all be done with the manufactured compliment?
I hate a lot of things. Maybe that’s harsh (but probably true) to say! But I’ve never met a thing I could not form an opinion on so it’s safe to say at least sometimes (probably more) they’re not exactly glowing.
There is nothing lately that grinds my gears more than someone saying something with the intent of being nice that they A) do not mean and B) only are saying for the purpose of coming across as nice. You know what’s free? And easier than lying? And saves the calories? Silence. And I would rather hear silence in any circumstance than something disingenuous. Every. Single. Time.
A saying I’ve heard regarding people on the West Coast is that we are nice but not kind. And to a certain extent I think that’s true. But I think it’s reserved more for the Southern West Coast than Washingtonians since most Washingtonians would rather eat a bowl of their own fingernails than talk to anyone, positively or negatively. All that to say, I think there are a lot of things to strive to be. But striving to be perceived as nice? I haven’t cared about that for a long time. And I don’t think any of us should.
I honestly don’t have a ton to say about it other than the fact that it’s the holidays and we’re likely confronted with more personalities and bodies than usual, so we’re all also probably running into more fake niceties than usual. And if you also hate it and are feeling like a bitch for hating someone’s actions that they’re doing to be nice, I am here to say that’s okay!! It’s annoying! And patronizing! And I also hate it!! Exponentially!
And I hope someday it all stops. 😇A little good thing to send you on your way…
It’s just a video of my dog sleeping on a bag filled with books snoring. Have a good day. 🫶