Fuel

Saturday. Morning after junior-senior (Christian school version of prom. For anyone who cares, I'm adding this one to my repertoire of "awkward prom stories" and called it a "learning experience"). I've been up for about an hour and haven't done anything - it takes me a while to get started in the mornings. Except it's almost 1. And I have three papers due for Monday. AAH.

At some point every day I have two cups of coffee. I've already had one, and the coffee pot on the desk has stopped smoking, meaning the other one is ready. I don't know why I keep up this ritual. Coffee was the original energy drink, but I've been downing the stuff for so long, I don't feel anything until number four or five. The second cup is usually weaker than the first, but I'm too cheap to dump the grounds and make a fresh pot. So if it's not for the energy...why do it?

Maybe it has to do with image. Though I'd love to sit in a messy apartment for the rest of my life, downing Folgers and writing thought-provoking essays, I was practical enough to choose English education as my major. (I've heard of people who bag groceries for a day-job and write on the side...but I work at a grocery store now, and I know better than to stay there forever.) But that doesn't mean I love writing any less - I still love the days spent alone in my room, when I sit at my computer and let the thoughts flow, driven by black caffeine. As mentioned in an earlier post, I love losing myself in words and a dark roast. In the hour between my 8am class and chapel at 10, I brew a pot and curl up on the couch in our lounge with a book; it's my time to not think before I take on the day.

Maybe it's the connection I have with the past. Every morning when my dad's home starts with coffee; my grandparents' house always smelled like coffee. Sometimes my sister and I would stop at Starbucks on the way home from high school, back when we spent time together every day, lived across the hall from each other, and drove around listening to Broadway soundtracks. During play/musical seasons my fellow acting buddies and I would leave rehearsal and spend hours at Panera, keeping the conversation flowing with mochas and frappes. It was a staple on mornings after sleepovers, when we'd sit around my kitchen table and pick up the discussions we'd stopped at 4am.

Maybe it's my way of showing I'm growing up. Coffee always seemed so very adult-ish when I was little. I tried it once at maybe seven or eight years old - my mom said you could only eat Snickerdoodles if you had coffee with it - and I hated it, vowing I would never drink it again. I've been told over and over, "Try new things, it stretches your horizons, it builds character." And at some point I re-tried it; now I can't get through a day without it. And I'm developing my own method of doing things, my own routine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have it before and after chapel; on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have one cup before chapel and one after my 11am class; on Saturdays I start with it first-thing, and I make it when I get back from church on Sundays (if I go at all). Just like I have specific times I eat dinner or days I go to Zumba, I have my appointment with my coffee pot.

An hour later, I still haven't started any of my three papers; I've wasted enough time here.