I saw myself as an engineer, someone who built things, who put things together, who made things exist.

I saw myself proud of the thing I had built, let’s call it bread because this is how I saw it - something useful that also tasted good.

Something that could be as good as other breads, maybe better, but definitely not worse. Maybe cheaper. Or warmer. Or some other set of qualities that we rationally judge breads on, after biting into them.

I saw myself selling my bread in a shop called Bread, a shop my customers would always enter with a credit card at hand. That was exciting and also the plan, as they could use the credit card machine I had.

My credit card machine came in a little do-it-yourself kit that I connected to my bread making machine and everything mostly worked. I didn’t buy a pen to write invoices, nor did I consider accepting checks, because everything I did was modern and neither my customers nor I were dumb. My bread transactions would be electronic and much better that way.

I saw myself serving a healthy amount of customers. Except that because my store was an internet store, it was not in the middle of a busy street that people would walk by randomly or otherwise. Rather, it was a domain name, alone, in a desert of its own. You had to know its coordinates to get to it. I would sometimes drop those coordinates in normal conversation hoping people would remember them.

I did not imagine myself putting photos of my bread in small bottles, writing on them a name of a person that I had gleaned from linkedin, and then throwing those bottles into some direction. Some days, it looks like my store is standing alone in the desert and the bottles I threw are scattered around it, with small pictures of bread in them. I also included some words in the bottles to go with the pictures, which described how much better my bread is compared to other breads, and trying my best to convey how good it smells.

I assumed that everyone loved bread and that everyone ate a lot of it too. That anyone who loved bread would stop eating whatever breads they ate and would rather eat my bread instead, once they learned of its existence, or spontaneously went to the right coordinates.

I had cared about my bread, and that’s what people intrinsically looked for, actively, every day, as they painstakingly picked which bread to eat for their upcoming breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They made that choice with their minds every single time they got hungry, and what mattered was which bread was better for them based on a number of rational reasons they could express, think about, and were always trying to optimize. Their choice of bread was always top of mind for them and everyone else who ate bread.

They would also move on to only consume my bread and stop looking for other breads, if anyone could even be crazy enough to imagine that a better bread could ever come along, lol.

I was looking forward to expanding Bread inc. My dream was to work together with my friends and to all make bread. I’d always know who was going to do what as I would hire more people to make bread under me. I could give them little bread directions and everyone would be happy to follow my bread ideas anywhere they led. Everyone would be as inspired and motivated as I was, and for the same reasons too.

I was certain this time would come soon. There might not even be a limit to how many people could all work together producing bread under my stewardship. Maybe a 5-10 people bread company would be what I wanted. I wasn’t sure but the dream was to not make bread alone for too long. Making bread by myself sometimes made me feel alone and anxious and getting rid of those negative emotions would be good for me, as the goal of making bread in the desert was to offer me mental calm and stability.

Every day, I woke up to make bread, opened the door to my store, and waited for a line to form.