I just... I gotta say this out loud to someone, even if it’s just the internet at 2 AM and no one will ever know it’s me. It’s eating me up inside, this thing. And I know it sounds bad, it PROBABLY is bad, but I just… I don’t know. We all do things we don’t want to admit, right? Things that make us feel like dirt and we just hope no one ever finds out. And I’m kinda living that right now. It’s about the bakery. My parents' bakery. The one they started when I was just a little kid, and I practically grew up smelling yeast and sugar and always having flour on my clothes. It’s been their whole life, and ours. And I’ve worked there since I was old enough to reach the counter, then mixing dough, then doing the books, then everything. It’s just… it IS us, you know? Our family. My mom and dad, they’re getting older now, and bless their hearts, they still wake up before dawn every day to bake. They love it. They really, really do. But I… I don't love it like that anymore. Not the *same* way. I mean, I love *them*, and I love the smell, and I love seeing the regulars come in, the old guys who’ve been getting their rye bread from us for fifty years. And I did love it, for a long time. When the kids were little and I was mostly home with them, being at the bakery felt like my escape, my adult thing. And then they got bigger and didn’t need me as much, and I was there more and more, and I just… started seeing things differently. My parents, they’re just content. So content. They make enough to live, to go on a little trip once a year to the beach, to help out the grandkids now and then. And they think that’s everything. "Why rock the boat?" my dad always says. "We've got a good thing here, son." And he means it. He means it with his whole soul. And I look at him, all flour-dusted and happy, talking about how a good sourdough takes time, and I just… I feel like a monster. Because I want MORE. I want so much more. I want to expand. I want to franchise. I want to have a dozen bakeries, or fifty. I want to see our name, our little family name, on storefronts all over the place. I want to build something BIG. Something that lasts beyond just this one shop on this one street. I see how other places do it, how they grow and innovate and use new tech and reach so many more people. And I just think, why not us? Why can't we be that? And I’ve tried to talk to them about it, tried to bring it up gently. "What if we opened another location, just a small one, across town?" I’d say, kinda testing the waters. And my mom would just sigh, "Oh honey, that sounds like so much work. We already have enough on our plate." And my dad would just shake his head and say, "That's not what we're about. We're about quality, not quantity." And then they’d just go back to talking about the price of eggs or how Mrs. Henderson's cat got stuck in a tree again. And I just… I felt this wall go up every time. This invisible wall of "no, this is what we are, and this is what we will always be." So I started doing it on the sly. Not with our bakery, not exactly. I’ve been looking into other concepts, other types of bakeries, things that are… similar enough, but different enough. And I've been talking to people, really quietly, about investors and business plans and locations. I’m thinking about starting my own thing. A competing thing. And the guilt… it’s like a brick in my stomach. Every time I’m at the bakery, helping my mom pack up pastries, listening to my dad hum as he kneads dough, I feel like such a snake. I know what they’d say. "How could you? After everything we built?" And they'd be right to say it. It feels like a betrayal. But I just… I can’t stop. It’s like this fire inside me, this need to see how far I can go, what I can build. And I feel so selfish. So incredibly selfish. Is that just a human thing? To want more than what you're given, even when what you’re given is good and stable and full of love? Even when it means possibly hurting the people you love most in the world? I just don't know what to do. And I can't tell anyone. No one in my real life would ever understand. They’d just judge me. I just needed to say it, even if it’s just to the dark and the screen.