What I've Learned About Coffee and the Nature of Time
I have quit smoking cigarettes.
I have quit drinking alcohol.
I have quit my job.
Is there anything left to quit?
Yup. Coffee.
I love coffee, but for me, it's creating more problems than it's solving.
The reason I want to talk about this is because you just might find yourself in the same place as me, and maybe this will be helpful to you. Or... maybe not. Maybe this will be nothing more than fascinating/boring insight into the mind and life of one Career Renegade.
Coffee is getting in the way of my own personal development, and that's the big thing. My goal is to meditate daily. Not for some misguided notion of spirituality, but because of how it will help me maintain a clear, calm head and allow me to perform at my best.
Meditating is freakin' hard enough already without dousing it all in caffeine and then setting it on fire. The jitters and the fake adrenaline echoes from the extreme amounts of coffee I was drinking were just not good for me. And I learned a long time ago that my personality does not have the same gears for smooth shifting into different levels of moderation that many people possess. I'm a one-speed. On or off, that's it. So coffee and me, we have to break up, because I'm just too much of an enabler for it.
But also? I'm kinda lazy. This is at odds with any amount of environmental consciousness. Laziness was leading me towards one of those pod coffee machines. Having to go through all the steps to make coffee was getting on my nerves (all I have is a French press).
Tea, on the other hand, is dead simple. Heat water, throw in leaves. It's way faster (lazy) and far less of an environmental impact (loose leaf teas bought in bulk, no packaging, compostable).
Now, I've tried this once before, but what I told myself was the day job grind made it too easy to be a coffee fiend, to not have time to meditate.
There were, in fact, about ten thousand things I told myself I'd have time for once became a free agent. Little did I know the great paradox which awaited me: now that I have no day job, now that every hour of the day is mine, what I find is that I have less time than ever!
Don't ask me how this is even possible. I have no idea. But time is moving so fast now, that I freak out because I realize stuff I should've done days ago remains undone. All that time I thought I had disappeared into a black hole. Like, I can't believe it's really Thursday, already. I just don't need to spend more time fucking with coffee and then feeling pseudo-adrenalized for three hours, then crashing.
Also, I can't seem to drink the stuff unless I put tons of cream and maple syrup in it (this is Vermont, you know). Not exactly good for the waistline. Since I want to be around long enough for normal human near-immortality, if not the outright Singularity, I have to get in better shape.
Have you ever heard a weirder bunch of reasons for quitting coffee?
I'm posting this to my blog as an accountability move. Everyone now knows Michael Martine has quit drinking coffee. If you ever see me holding a latte up to my lips, you better just slap that shit right outta my hand.
Tea is just way cooler to me at this point. Tea weighs nothing. You can do million, billion things with it. It comes in insanely cool varieties. Ever heard of Pu-erh tea? Check this crazy shit out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh_tea. That beats coffee in my book.
I also now have an excuse to blow money on cool tea stuff. Like the coolest teapot ever:
