A little blog for a restless mind

Coffee

I never drank coffee until a year ago. Then I noticed a vending machine near my office. It had (well, still has) quite a variety of coffee blends to choose from, like capuccino, mocaccino, etc. Sure, let me try them. All. So I begun drinking coffee, sporadic for the first few months, perhaps twice or three times a week a coffee a day. There were weeks I didn't touch coffee and there were days I drank two or three cups of it.

I should mention also that I have a very low response threshold to caffeine: a small dosage has me running already, but I fall asleep after two cups of strong coffee. So I can't really drink a lot of real coffee, but blends with chocolate and a feeble dose of coffee are okay. But not more than three cups in say, 10 hours. I really get sleepy after that. I mean, for real! People just don't believe me.

Back then, a year ago, I had a coworker. A part-time contract worker, a student otherwise. When he was around there just had to also be coffee around. Either he or I would fetch it for both of us. I guess neither of us really thought specifically anything about it, it was just a sort of a ritual, perhaps we drank coffee instead of nibbling nuts, chewing a gum, or something. As contract-workers go, this one also worked for two months regularly, then he disappeared for a month, then he came back and worked something out, and so on. For the time he wasn't there I didn't drink much coffee, in fact I think I would've stopped completely were he not to come about every so often.

But that was until about three months ago. The man finished his work and moved on. And I was left with this habit I didn't have before: drinking coffee. The interesting thing is I don't drink it because I need it or something, I just drinki it, how should I put it... to see if there would be anything different. You know, as you're doing something for a couple of hours, possibly thinking hard about the work you're doing, there comes the time you yawn, stretch and think: "hmmm, let me fetch a cup of coffee" for no apparent reason. And so I go to the vending machine, have a little talk with it about my indecisivness about which blend to get, perhaps get a cup of dilluted chocolate which I resolutely thrash into the nearby toilet and then return to get some other blend of coffee. It's quite rare but sometimes I go fetch another cup and then I'm quite happy if everything I have to endure because of it is just a slight dizziness and perhaps a weird feeling in my stomache.

Sometimes I test myself by not having a cup of coffee the whole day. Really, as much as I can tell there's just no difference if I have a cup of coffee or not. I'd like to stop with the habit, but seeing as it apparently has no negative impact (as long as it is just one cup) I lack the motivation. Somehow it just doesn't seem to matter. And then there's that yawning situation where you just have to have a break and focus on something else for a moment. Just a month ago I was eating an apple at such moments. It was an experiment. It was great, I felt swell, better than drinking coffee, but somehow I found myself back at coffee.

Perhaps I should substitute the motivator? That's what I'll do! It's quite hard to notice when you're so deeply accustomed to, that when you want to stop with something you search for an anti-negative motivation concerning the subject in question. For example, you might want to stop smoking because it's bad for your lungs. But the positive motivation about the alternate or affected object can be more effective. For example, you might want to stop smoking because you want healthier lungs with greater capacity so you could go running or jogging for a longer time. Notice how the emphasis in the former case is on smoking (bad) and how it is on getting healthy so you could perform better (good) in the latter case.

Right. During my breaks I want to eat apples so I will feel good and healthy. I don't want coffee anymore. Simple. Only, what should I do with about 80 coins for the vending machine that I still have left?

posted by AlesS @ 6/30/2004 10:00:00 PM