When I started drinking coffee during my second year of university, I set myself a rule: “drink coffee only when you have time to enjoy the taste; never drink it for the caffeine.”
This rule counts out:
– drinking coffee for an energy boost
– drinking coffee that tastes bad
– drinking coffee in a rush
In essence, I see making and drinking coffee as a recreational activity rather than serving to stimulate alertness.
In the past seven years, I’ve only broken my rule twice. On those occasions, I was going through phases of intense work, and was conscious that my morning coffee would stimulate working more efficiently.
In recent weeks, I levelled up on coffee snobbery and started to weigh the grounds and the water, towards ensuring greater consistency of taste.
But during the past week, a spanner has been thrown into the works. Let me explain:
I’m very fortunate to have my food and accommodation provided by my employer. As part of that, a collection of foods and drinks are regularly stocked. Coffee is among them.
There are a handful of suppliers of great-tasting coffee who source their beans either in North Kivu or in neighbouring Rwanda. The high altitude and volcanic soil apparently contribute to the great taste.
Recently, our team house coffee has been sourced from a new supplier. It’s awful. An honest marketing spiel on the back of the packet would say “with notes of ash and sawdust.”
So I’ve been drinking tea.
It’s not as much fun to make, or to drink.
A side-effect I did not expect was mid-morning brain fog and grumpiness.
Taking away coffee has shattered my sanctimonious illusions derived from my rule, and revealed the true effect that the coffee was having. I’m a bit stunned.
So, what’s next? I loathe reliance on things, so am considering how to reduce or eliminate that. At the same, the ritual of making and drinking coffee is something I really enjoy.
But developing a long term approach to this will have to wait. First, I’m off to the supermarket to pick up some decent coffee.
Oh the irony: coffee may help me to think more clearly about reducing my recently-discovered dependence on coffee.