The very next night after being trapped in my Honda Civic, I decided to have a burrito.

I mean let’s be honest – I’m 23 years old, I’m living in Colorado Springs, and I’m making $8.65 an hour in my first “professional job” out of college. It’s going to be frozen burritos or frozen pizza pretty much every night.

I was stretching every dollar. At the grocery store, I found a giant bag of bargain frozen burritos…a perfect solution for someone with zero money and no cooking skills.

But when I opened the bag, it was just one giant frozen burrito-mass. A burritomorph. So I quickly made a plan: toss the whole thing in the oven at 300 degrees for about five minutes: just enough time to thaw them loose. Then I’d separate them and repackage them individually.

I’m a genius.

Except about three minutes in, my mom called. It was our first call since I’d moved across the country, and I had some questions:

1. How do you do laundry?
2. How do you start a dishwasher?
3. How do you cook?
4. What is the difference between the sanitation bill and the water bill?

After a nice little crash course in adulting, I flopped down on my new bed feeling pretty accomplished.

Then I heard it a Hell-screech from the kitchen that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard up to that point or any time since.

The oven was on fire.

Not the burritos. I mean…the burritos were on fire. But the actual over was on fire also. I sprinted in to find what looked like a cursed midcentury fireplace roaring behind the glass. I froze. It was almost peaceful. Almost.

Then I flung the door open, grabbed the pizza pan, and started beating it with my lone oven mitt. What a mess: burnt plastic smell, scorched food sludge, total chaos.

But as I dug through the charred remains, I found something amazing: a layer of burrito that was actually cooked. Not great, but cooked.

So I doused it in hot sauce and ate what I could. Then just beneath that, believe it or not, there was still a frozen core. I salvaged what I could for later.

It was strange. It was gross. And it hurt. Because when you’re as poor as I was, waste feels personal.

That was the night I learned:

It’s not enough to make a plan. You have to stick with it. Distraction kills execution…and sometimes dinner.

What ColePress Offers

At ColePress, we deliver Perfect Burritos Every Time.

We follow through, whether it’s content delivery, a campaign launch, or project implementation. We bring discipline and clarity to the execution phase…so good ideas don’t end up half-burned or half-frozen.

[ Need to know where the story goes from here? Hop over to the Results Page. ]