Blog | Fred Aiken Writing

Echoes in the Small Delights

Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.

Daniel wakes up at 6:30 a.m. to the piercing screech of his alarm clock, an unpleasant cacophony that shatters the fragile boundary between sleep and wakefulness. He groans, slaps the snooze button, and buries his face in the pillow for a few stolen moments of respite. But the reprieve is brief, and he soon finds himself trudging through the well-worn steps of his morning routine: a lukewarm shower, a hastily gulped-down cup of coffee, and the mechanical process of dressing in his standard-issue office attire, the bane of his individuality.

The commute is a predictable gauntlet of frustration. The endless sea of brake lights, the symphony of car horns, the suffocating feeling of being trapped in a metal box while the world inches forward at a maddeningly slow pace. Daniel listens to a podcast, something about the decline of honeybee populations, or maybe it was about how fat everyone is getting, it hardly matters; his mind is only half-engaged, flitting between thoughts like a restless moth. The subject matter, ostensibly alarming, fails to penetrate the fog of his ennui.

Arriving at the office, he steps into the fluorescent-lit purgatory where he will spend the next eight hours. His cubicle is a microcosm of banality: beige walls, a cluttered desk, and the faint, persistent hum of the overhead lights that seem to drain the color from the world. He performs his tasks—emails, spreadsheets, meetings—with the detached precision of a well-oiled machine, his mind elsewhere, anywhere but here. The work itself is a nebulous fog of “god-knows-what,” a phrase that encapsulates the ambiguity and meaninglessness that has come to define his personal and professional life.

The end of the day brings no relief, only the anticipation of the return journey through the same congested arteries that brought him here. By the time he reaches his apartment, the last vestiges of daylight are fading, and a sense of weary resignation settles over him like a heavy cloak. He opens the freezer and extracts a plastic-wrapped tray, its corners tinged with the telltale white frost of neglect. The frozen entrée—once a meal of promise, now a symbol of his inability to find time for anything more—goes into the microwave with a mechanical beep.

As he waits for the food to thaw, Daniel’s gaze drifts to the calendar pinned to his wall. Each day marked off with an ‘X,’ a visual representation of time slipping away. A sudden thought strikes him, an impulse that cuts through the haze of routine. He grabs his phone and types a quick message, his fingers moving with uncharacteristic urgency. The response is almost immediate: “Be there in 15.”

Fifteen minutes later, Daniel finds himself at the local animal shelter, a modest building on the outskirts of town. The air here is different, imbued with the scent of hay and the earthy, unmistakable aroma of animals. It’s a sensory overload that contrasts sharply with the sterile environment of his office. Marcy, the shelter’s ever-cheerful volunteer coordinator, greets him with a wave.

“Hey, Daniel! We’ve got a new batch of puppies today,” she says, her enthusiasm palpable.

Daniel’s heart lifts, the weight of the day momentarily forgotten. He follows Marcy to the back, where a cacophony of barks and whimpers reaches a crescendo. The puppies are a chaotic, delightful mess, a tangle of fur and energy that brings a genuine smile to his face. One puppy in particular, a golden retriever with oversized paws and floppy ears, makes its way to him, its movements a charming blend of curiosity and clumsiness.

Kneeling down, Daniel extends a hand. The puppy sniffs, then latches onto his fingers with tiny, sharp teeth, gnawing with playful determination. The sensation is a strange mix of pain and pleasure, a reminder of life’s more visceral joys. Daniel laughs, a sound that feels foreign yet liberating, echoing through the room.

For the next hour, Daniel is lost in the simple, unadulterated joy of playing with the puppies. Their exuberance is infectious, each wagging tail and eager yip a small antidote to the monotony of his daily existence. The puppies, in their boundless enthusiasm, offer a glimpse into a world untainted by the cynicism and fatigue that have come to define his own.

As the evening sun casts long shadows, Daniel reluctantly says his goodbyes. “Same time tomorrow?” Marcy asks, her eyes twinkling.

“Definitely,” he replies, feeling a lightness in his step that has been absent for far too long.

The drive home is a blur, his mind replaying the evening’s moments like a cherished film. The frozen entrée, reheated and still slightly freezer-burned, doesn’t seem so bad now. He eats it slowly, savoring each bite with a newfound appreciation. It’s not the food itself, but the memory of the puppies that adds flavor, transforming a mundane meal into something more.

May 29, 2024

A Personal Resume, Of Sorts

Daily writing prompt

What jobs have you had?

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As a kid, I sold lemonade and mowed lawns, as I imagine a lot of kids do between 10-14. I also used to housesit for neighbors when they went on vacation, which mostly consisted of looking after pets and plants to ensure neither died. But I guess I wouldn’t necessarily claim that any of those were really jobs, per se, especially since none of them were things I clocked in and out of, but rather were more so random activities that kids tend to do to make a little side money in order to pay for video games. I think I spent a majority of my money on a Nintendo 360 console and then games for it.

But the first job in which an actual institution/organization was paying me would be the tutoring job I jobs I had in college. It paid minimum wage, but thankfully I had enough scholarships to go to school that I didn’t have any student loan debt, so I was able to use the job to pay for energy drinks and cigarettes, which tended to be my college diet for those 4 years. The job mainly consisted of helping students with their papers, so a huge chunk of the time I didn’t really do all that much. I would say I just hung around in the university’s library and read/did my own schoolwork, and then one or two students would come in per shift and I would help them with any issues they were having on whatever draft of a paper they had.

At the time in which I graduated college, the economy happened to be at the tail end of a recession, in fact The Great Recession, as it’s become known as, so not too many companies were hiring. I think I applied to well over 500 companies and went in for about 10 interviews per month, on average, before I ended up just taking a job at a restaurant as a busboy to at least get me through the summer, when hopefully something else more promising would come along.

I never particularly enjoyed the hours of working at a restaurant, since most of my shifts were between 4pm until 2am, with little to no breaks during the shift, but I was good enough at the job. I ended up working my way through the back of the house of that restaurant, from dishwasher to line cook and then eventually pastry chef. I was there just shy of 2 years before getting a job at a pet hotel.

The pet hotel job was another entry-level position, and really the only question I was asked when interviewing for it was whether or not I liked dogs or not, which seems kinda ridiculous in hindsight. I mean, why else would I have applied for the job? And even if I didn’t like dogs all that much, did they really think I would have told them so? But anyway, I did, and still do, like dogs. But liking dogs and working with dogs, I discovered, were two entirely different things. Working with dogs meant dealing with and cleaning up all their messes. The romance of what amounted to dog sitting 25-50 dogs at any given point loses its appeal after picking up the 4th diarrhea within a 15 minute time frame.

The other issue I had with the pet hotel job was the pay. The company I worked for was only given me 20-25 hours per week (to circumvent the then-new rules of the Health Care Act), so I figured I would get another part-time job. And this 2nd part-time job I got was in a cafe. So, for almost 10 years of my life, I worked with dogs and I worked with coffee. I probably put in about 60-70 hours on average. My mental health was at an all time low. But I never felt like I really had time to look for and interview for a full-time job that paid a living wage.

As luck would have it though, and around the same time, oddly enough, both the pet hotel job and the coffee shop job offered me management positions. I would only be able to choose one, and like I said, picking up dog feces for hours on end was not an appealing career path. But ultimately what did it for me was that the coffee shop job had better benefits, better commute, and more opportunities for growth within the company.

So, I became a coffee shop manager. I did that for 2 years, and even excelled in the position. I had very little turnover, my P+L reports looked really good each month, and I had a gotten pretty good at latte art. Plus, I got all the free coffee one would ever need and/or want, so it was a fairly good time. There was the occasional HR issue, especially since the majority of baristas I hired were young, like late teens and early twenties, typically going to college and thus away from home for the first time, aka experiencing ‘freedom’ for the first time. But overall, it was a consistent job with its usual ebbs and flow that I could easily anticipate from one day to the next.

Then the pandemic hit. Everything changed. Everyone was on edge. From workers to customers to higher ups. No one knew what was happening, and job security didn’t seem all that likely for a few months. But federal and local governments called us ‘essential’ workers and urged restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores to stay open. Granted, we were expected to stay open during a global pandemic with no change, absolutely no change, to our pay structure. We were called ‘essential’, alongside healthcare workers, which was explained to me at the time as ‘if multiple food sources and options close, then the remaining open stores would take the brunt of the increase demand and cause ever evolving panic buying’. Though, that I kinda happened anyway, especially with toiletries and sanitizer and face masks like no one’s business.

It was at the 3 month mark of when the pandemic hit the States, around June of 2020, that I looked for a way out of the coffee shop business. Mostly because my mental health was again at an all-time low, and I just knew I more than likely would not like the job for not only months to come, but probably years. So, I loaded up Indeed and went through job listings pages like no one’s business. Eventually, I fell on a help wanted link for a coffee roasting company. No roasting experience required, but had to have at least 2 years experience in the coffee industry (which I had 9 at that point), and ability to work industrial equipment. I had never worked in a warehouse setting, but I figured having multiple years of coffee related experience would work to my benefit. And I was right.

I was hired as a coffee roaster almost 4 years ago. The job is pretty singularly focused, obviously with roasting the coffee being the end-all be-all of my responsibilities. Over the past couple of years, I’ve worked my way up the company, and so now I’m the head coffee roaster, which has meant a few more responsibilities, like scheduling the roast schedule each day based on analyzing sales and trends, green coffee buying, developing relationship with importers and exporters from around the country and world, and developing roast profiles while also conducting quality analysis of new and existing lots of coffee.

At the moment, I’d say I’m pretty content with my job and what I get to do. It’s a pretty easy job once I got use to roasting hundreds of pounds of coffee per hour and not messing up the profiles. Not to say that everything goes perfect each and every day. But when I go in in the morning, the expectations are pretty clear-cut and simple to execute. I mean, I know a lot of analysts and experts say that the arabica coffee supply were be drastically smaller come 2050 due to climate change. But I am constantly reading and researching all the efforts agronomists and various scientists are putting into maintaining and improving each and every crop, including coffee, that I do remain more hopeful than pessimistic at the moment that the industry will be able to circumnavigate the difficulties that might arise.

In terms of what my role will be in the coffee industry, well, that I’m a little uncertain of. I honestly wouldn’t mind remaining a coffee roaster for the next 40 years. The pay isn’t all that bad, and I’m able to afford everything I would want and need, and then some. But I could also see myself in a more permanent coffee buying and trading capacity if the need were to ever arise. But I guess I chose the industry I wanted to be in when I took that management position at a coffee shop all those years ago, and I don’t see me leaving the industry any time soon.

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May 27, 2024

Inter-Through-the-Net

Daily writing prompt

Do you remember life before the internet?

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Yes, but only vaguely, and perhaps not entirely. I’m one of those millennials that grew up when the personal computer wasn’t quite yet in everyone’s household. Granted, the internet was created before I was born in 1983. But I’m fairly certain it’s use and functionality wasn’t all that user friendly until the late nineties and 2000’s with the explosion the tech companies.

So I guess I’m more so remembering a time in which the internet was around, but not yet a part of daily social interactions and life. I was more so apart of the generation that transitioned from the internet and computer tech being a kinda niche that only a small population really interacted with to suddenly there being multiple computers in every household and then in everyone’s pocket via smartphones.

A bulk of my childhood was during the 1990’s, and the internet definitely played a role in shaping culture and how we interacted with one another. But as a kid, or at least in my household, I was still restricted from using the internet, at least until I turned 15 or 16, which was about in the mid-2000’s.

I do remember people talking about the internet and its innovation the same way that a lot of analysts and money-folk are now talking about artificial intelligence. I’m sure there will always be some surface-level changes, but at the core of it, I don’t think people change all that much, despite what new, shiny tool comes out.

But from what I can recall, as the internet was starting to become more and more a part of daily life, there always seemed to be a sense of mistrust and acrimony held towards it. For example, as a student in the 2000’s, it was frowned upon to use Wikipedia or most any internet-based article as a reference in any of our papers. For good reason, though. Data collection and scraping for information was in its infancy, so often internet articles and digital encyclopedias weren’t held in as high of esteem as good ole fashioned books and print news articles. It seems a bit silly to think back on it, because there were plenty of news sources and books that printed false and/or misleading information all the time. I suppose the internet just led to the proliferation of it 1000x over.

Though at the core of the question, I don’t think I can really speak all too well to a time before the internet, since like I said, the internet has been around in some form or fashion since 1983, and I was born in the late 80’s. So, even though I might not have had a personal connection or interaction with the internet while growing up, there were certainly instances in which the internet was influencing and affecting life during that time that more than likely influenced my life.

I will say, though, that it was definitely a period in time in which people’s digital and technological literacy was far from where it is today. When teachers were tasked with introducing us to computers and how to use them, it essentially amounted to teaching us how to use computers as if they were typewriters. In essence, most of my computer science classes were basically learn how to type as quickly as possible, which isn’t necessarily a bad skillset to have, since I really can’t stand how slowly some of my older colleagues take to type out a few sentences. But it wasn’t until college that I started being able to explore the different computer languages and how to utilize them for my benefit.

In terms of the benefits to cost ratio, then I probably couldn’t really speak too much to that. I would think someone that grew up pre-1980’s would have a more definitive clarity as to what and how society changed going from no internet to internet in everything, including internet in your appliances, like fridges and microwaves. From the people that I know that came from that generation, it seems like there’s always a consensus that time before the internet and the personal computer was a lot simpler and easier of a time.

Though I guess they might also be neglecting to remember the fact that the world was on the brink of nuclear war when the two superpowers, the US and Soviets, went back and forth on the will-they-won’t-they either annihilate all of humanity or kiss and makeup for the good of the species. All of which hardly seems like it was an easier and less-stressful time in which to come of age.

I’m kinda curious as to whether or not there could have been a Cold War had there been internet back in the 60’s and 70’s when the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation was at its peak. It’s obviously only a curious thought experiment, but I think an argument could definitely be made that the introduction of the internet in the 1980’s led to events like the Cold War going through its natural progression at a lot quicker of a pace and coming to a conclusion faster than it would have had the internet not been around.

Maybe…or maybe not. I mean, it is a theory.

Fred Aiken Writing

Category: Blog

June 1, 2024