Oatmeal: The Breakfast Constant in a Changing World

Local woman wakes up, screams silently into the void, makes oatmeal.

It all started with a local woman and a bowl of oatmeal on January 26, 2021. Feeling the collective angst of the pandemic world, I decided to write daily breakfast tweets in which I shared aspirations to smash the patriarchy, create a cure for conservatism, cancel disinformation spewing celebrities, reallocate funds from billionaires to education, healthcare, housing and a variety of other lofty and magical goals. All of these hopes and dreams were fueled by a big bowl of oatmeal that I’ve always found relaxing to make and comforting to eat in the morning, whether my day starts at 5:00 or 10:00 A.M. What began as a bit of a joke quickly took hold among my Twitter followers, as they embraced the creative fantasies laid out every morning, made suggestions for future goals and occasionally fought with me on the validity of the oatmeal aspirations. Two years later, the oatmeal tweets are still going strong, and I’m not yet bored of eating mostly the same oatmeal every day.

Lately I've been described as the Oatmeal Queen of Canada or Twitter Queen of Oatmeal (and started calling myself an Oatmeal Influencer), tagged in all the random oatmeal posts and had strangers recognize me while out and about in Edmonton or Calgary, starting conversations with “Hey Jen, how was your oatmeal today?”, and I genuinely love that people have connected with me through the oatmeal. It can also be a bit creepy at times, but more often a nice experience. Over the two years I’ve wondered what it was about the oatmeal that seemingly united a group of like minded souls on Twitter, as oatmeal isn’t exactly a new or exciting breakfast food. Then in March 2022, I heard psychologist and author Dr Sarb Johal on CBC Radio’s Sunday Magazine discuss building little islands of predictability in a changing pandemic world, and I realized the power of the daily oatmeal. Silly as it sounds, that oatmeal had become a constant for so many struggling in an unstable world. It was something to rely on, look forward to, celebrate, amidst all the awful things in their lives. When all else fails in society (and lately there is an excess of failure), there is still oatmeal.

Twitter has long been a divisive platform, fueled by outrage, but it has always been my personal internet philosophy to spread joy as much as possible even on websites dependent on disagreement and negativity. I try to share reliable information, to constantly learn from people and groups I’m less familiar with, to build community across the digital world, even if we are surrounded by verbal and physical threats of violence. I’ve been on Twitter for 13 years and for much of that time, had a low profile within the library Twitter community, with some current events and cute animals thrown into the mix. But in the last few years something shifted, people embraced my lifelong weirdness a little more than before and in a relatively short time I found myself with larger following of people who delight in my daily dresses with pockets, oatmeal, dog photos and my own brand of sarcasm, in addition to sharing marginalized voices and doing my best to ignore the constant noise of those who control the microphone. Like any woman on the internet, I am harassed by bots and trolls, but the joy still outweighs the anger in my Twitter world.

I believe that creating the oatmeal constant pulled people in, knowing there would be an update every morning that sometimes lamented the state of the world, sometimes brought a call to action, and was usually injecting a dose of silliness and magical realism into a world I’d desperately like to change for the better. What started as a personal love for oatmeal has grown into something bigger. It’s still just a series of silly Twitter breakfast updates, but those updates have brought humour and conviction to the monotonous days of many people. I have received messages of thanks from random Twitter people for the oatmeal and other updates getting them through the difficult moments in their life: a friend or family member dying, relationships ending, a mental or physical illness endured, and a common frustration with the hypocrisy of their local politicians. I’ve also had people send concerned messages on days I don’t share an oatmeal update, as it often implies that I am sick or there is something else keeping me from that breakfast constant. As someone with multiple chronic illnesses, I frequently have bad days, feel terrible in the morning and occasionally consider making a different breakfast, but the security of oatmeal fuels me too.

Will I eat oatmeal forever? Probably not. Will my time on Twitter eventually end or transition into chronicling my life on another website? Yes. But until then, I feel comfort in knowing that my oatmeal has brought people together in their joy, anger and apathy for the world, at least for a short time.

Local woman oatmeal recipe

1 cup water

½ cup rolled oats

Bring water to boil in small sauce pan, add oats and cook at medium-low heat, stirring continually. When all the water is cooked into the oats, cover the pan, move off the burner and let stand for 5 minutes.

Chop up ½ or 1 cup fruit (frozen in winter and fresh in summer) of choice. I use peaches, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries and add to oatmeal, along with a spoonful of plain yogurt, sprinkle of cinnamon, nutmeg and drizzle of maple syrup.

This is a repost of an essay originally published on Tumblr on January 8, 2023.