Practice and Mastery: In both slices and sentences, repetition fosters growth.

The last couple days at Hotlips I've noticed myself having a much easier time remembering what to do and when to do it. I'll soon be able to operate without thought, a regular pizza-bot. It's been fun to be conscious of the way that the job is changing the way I think. The slice line provides a good example of this. My first day I struggled to remember the system we use to keep orders together and to recall whether an order is "for here" or "to go." After I got that down I struggled to remember people's requests such as to only heat the pizza for a couple seconds or to cut it when it came out. Now I'm able to remember those requests with ease and am able to pay attention to what everyone else around me is doing.

None of this is astounding but I've tried to be very aware of the way I've adapted as time has gone on. I think the job has improved my ability to focus on small, individual tasks away from work as well.

With that in mind I'm trying to be more diligent about writing. If I want to pursue writing as a career I need to stay involved in the process. I need to be practiced and ready to approach a keyboard without having to hesitate before I begin typing. I need to be more fluid in my ability to turn thoughts into clear concrete sentences. I kind of take for granted that I am a good writer and tend to forget that being good at writing, like anything else, requires practice.

I remember being in Reporting last year and being amazed at how quickly my writing improved as I was forced to produce focused, clear articles in short amounts of time. Just like the slice line, I was quickly able to get past focusing on the nuts and bolts of writing and was able to focus more on larger order concerns like structure and tone. I just need to keep writing everyday, hone my skills and stay in pursuit of opportunities. While it feels good to be on the road to pizza mastery there are some bigger goals I hope to accomplish down the line.