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But despite the whole body exhaustion, and the knowledge that I have to wake up bright and early to get baking, I can’t sleep.
Not because I’m overthinking every moment that brought me here.
Not because I’m panicking that day two will be a flop.
Not because I’m terrified that I won’t be able to live up to the expectations laid upon me, both by my family and myself.
These things are true, but they aren’t the source of my insomnia.
Instead, it’s the bass of Cake’s “Shadow Stabbing” pounding through the walls of my new apartment, which I’m learning at this moment, are incredibly thin.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s a great song. In fact, I even have it on my “Shitty Day” playlist, which I play to get myself out of a funk.
But when it’s midnight on a Friday and I need to be up at five, it becomes even less appealing.
Panic floods me.
I think I may have made ahugemistake.
When I saw the ad in the paper, I barely questioned a thing. The advertisement stated that a commercial kitchen and storefront were up for lease with a small one-bedroom apartment above it. I called up the owners, came to see it, and put the deposit on the lease all in the same day.
They advertised the location as a “bakery on the quiet end of the Ocean View boardwalk,” and when I came here to tour the space, it was just that. It’s on the far end of the boardwalk, nearing the homes valued at millions of dollars each and far away from the bars and amusements that draw the rowdier crowds.
It wasperfect.
Once I signed the lease, I only came to do work on the bakery and make it my own during the day, spending my mornings working on making the bakery my own, then afternoons at the commercial kitchen I was still renting, and evenings doing in-person deliveries of what I baked to my existing customers.
The apartment wasn’t available to move into for another month after I signed the lease, but I was okay with that, so long as I could get a jump start on the bakery.
Now I’m seeing this may have been a terrible choice.
When a loud cheer comes through the walls, I scratch out the “wondering” part.
It wasabsolutelya shitty choice.
That’s because it is 12 a.m. on a Friday night and music from the apartment next to mine is blaring so loud, I can barely think straight.
When I found this location in the paper just days after that wake-up call, I saw it as a sign that this was the direction I needed to go.
In some ways, I saw it as a push from my mother that it was time. That I had done my duty and I could live forme.
I’d been quietly planning for a storefront for years, scrimping and saving the money, telling no one about my dream.Mom’s dream. It had been a donut shop in a past life, but when the other half of the donut shop couple left, the remaining owner closed the business and stayed in the apartment while figuring out what to do next—hence the apartment lease not opening untillast night.
While last night went fine, despite my inability to fall asleep in a strange place, it seems I never had the chance to find out the neighbor is loud.
And when I say loud, I mean when I went to make myself a glass of chamomile tea an hour ago, my dishware was rattling against itself in the cabinets.
Thatkind of loud. The kind of loud you can feel in your bones.
After a long day, I was hoping to go to bed early, get rested for another early morning. Except this noise is fucking with that plan.
The noise started at eight. At eight, I was fine with it—it’s about what I expected, moving in next to a tattoo shop on the boardwalk. And considering I woke my neighbor up early with my own work schedule, I figured fair was fair. We’d eventually figure out a schedule that worked for both of us. Tomorrow, I’d come over and deliver some treats and have an adult conversation.
But now it’s four hours later and the muffled sound of alternative rock is shaking in my brain.
When I signed the lease, I knew getting a place on the Ocean View boardwalk would be loud, especially during the warm months. Sure, I thought situating myself on the quieter end would be better, but I never came into this thinking I’d have a sound, silent sleep every night.
In fact, for the first two hours I told myself this was just training for what’s to come when the real summer crowds hit.
