I deserve time to myself; away from my phone, away from distractions, away from work. Just me, my thoughts, a piece of paper, and a cup of coffee.
I hear the water heating up. It layers a nice white noise hiss over the light, chilly wind outside. Dried, crunchy leaves scattered across the ground outside spin in tiny wind-spewn circles, conjuring up images of a cottage in the woods in the brisk fall, away from everything.
The illusion is broken quickly, however, by the sound of the cityscape actually outside. Sirens roll in the distance from the fire station not too far from my apartment. Construction beeping rattles on from a building-in-progress next door. The mechanical drone of cars passing by my window makes me remember just how far I am from the countryside I grew up in.
My coffee is done. I made it in my french press. I only recently started using it again. I’ve had it an entire year and only now have figured out how to use it.
On a normal day, I may have bothered to use my hand grinder. It makes far better tasting coffee anyway. But instead, I chose bagged, store-ground coffee. I would have used my ceramic pour-over as well, but today I wanted something easy.
Today, I need shortcuts.
Shortcuts are okay.
Cutting corners is okay.
Sometimes.
I blended some other pre-ground coffee in today. Something left over from a previous morning, one where I actually had the willpower to grind my own coffee.
But it doesn’t add much flavor.
On other days, my coffee tastes earthy, fruity, exciting, with hints of chocolate and cherries. This coffee just tastes stale.
It’s not bad enough that I won’t drink it.
Just stale.
Old.
Lacking flavor.
A hint of cardboard.
I must have prepared the coffee wrong, too. There are flecks of grounds floating to the top.
They get in my teeth.
My punishment for cutting corners.
A draft comes in through the box AC haphazardly taped into the window in front of me.
I wonder: Will we leave it in until January again, when the draft becomes so cold that the blazing heat from the overworked radiators can’t make up for it?
No, we can’t take it out just yet. The radiators have yet to turn on full-time. It gets so hot in here that the tape we have used to hang up posters and pictures (and to avoid losing our security deposit) starts melting off.
That hasn’t happened yet.
The AC stays.
My first cup of coffee is finished. I had to grit my teeth and shoot the last bit of coffee as one would shoot some bad liquor. That way, I don’t feel the grounds on my tongue, which have all collected on the bottom of my mug.
Pretty soon, I will grab another glass–my drug of choice today is coffee, I suppose–bearing with the grounds that come with it, and make myself breakfast.
I’ll try to get some work done, personal work, all the while fighting off the distractions that keep me from doing it every day. Perhaps today I will actually get something done.
I’ll walk to work, leaving my car at home.
Halfway through my shift, the coffee will wear off, requiring me to imbibe some more.
But, for now: one more glass.
And no more shortcuts.
No more cutting corners.