Enjoying Your Morning Coffee

When I was in high school and college, I envied my mom for having the time to sit and enjoy her morning coffee. She would set up the coffee pot the night before so that all she would have to do is push the one and only on-button the following morning. Once I had convinced her that cats are a necessary part of life, she added feeding them some canned food to this morning routine. Mom would then take her mug to the couch where she would turn on Good Morning America to see what is going on in the world. As someone who could never get myself up early enough to do anything but the basics, I could not comprehend how she managed to get up around 6AM every single day. In middle school and high school, when I was a bit self-conscious about my wavy hair because silky, straight flat ironed hair was the trend, I would force myself to get up super early (AKA 6:00AM) and straighten my hair. Once I was in high school, that concern eventually fell away. There wasn’t a good enough reason to waste my precious sleeping time to have straight hair like every one else. I actually got compliments on my natural hair and found out that a beautiful, curly-haired college friend of mine had a very similar experience. As I matured and got older, I still could not find the time to actually use a coffee mug for its intended purpose unless I made hot tea. In case you are gripping your seats in curiosity, it was usually chai tea. Maybe it’s because one of my majors was East Asian Studies, but I started drinking a whole heck of a lot of tea on a daily basis. I actually figured out that people started associating my huge Tervis cup with sunflowers on it with me when someone would call and ask if they had found my cup after I had left it somewhere on campus.

            It was not until I started writing and blogging for the fun of it that I ever got up early. It definitely helped that my husband needed a ride to work at 5:30AM since our roommate totaled his car, that we eventually adopted a dog who needs to pee at 8:00AM sharp, and that I had fallen off the morning yoga in my bedroom bandwagon and taken to watching TED Talks to start the day instead. After taking Mike, my husband, to work that morning I would come home and sit down at our off kilter, round kitchen table and open up my laptop. At first when this habit continued into the weekend, I lied to Mike about what I was doing and said I was doing the online class I’m definitely still supposed to be working on. As I write the first draft of this section, I still have yet to tell him that I started a blog. The secrecy seems to make it kind of fun for the time being. Creative writing was never something that I had much of an opportunity in school to cultivate since I avoided English classes if I could, but I also felt like I had nothing to really contribute to the written world and so I avoided it into college as well. The funny thing is that as I read more blogs and listened to TED Talks and YouTubers, that self-doubt was essentially erased. If they could do it, then I could too. One quote that resonated with me was to “write what you want to read.” If I re-find this quote, I will make note of it and give credit where credit is due. I really would like to thank this person for inspiring me. This quote was so simple that it hit me like a ton of bricks. It really made me sit and think about whether or not I could actually be a writer like some of the TED Talk presenters that I had really enjoyed, like Elizabeth Gilbert, who is most famous for writing Eat, Pray, Love, Committed, and Big Magic. Both of these books are currently on my To Read List, but hearing her TED Talk made me want to read her work more so than I had before when I did not have a face and voice to put with the name.

            Whether or not I’m qualified as a life coach or some guru, I want to keep writing about my life, the things I have learned, even the smallest experiences that made a difference to me, and my thoughts on something. I don’t care if only my parents read this. At this moment in my life, I want to write for me and for the sake of writing. I have always loved the process of creation and that is why I identify as an artist. I’m an artist with no true medium. In my opinion, half of the fun is trying a medium that is new to me to see what I can create. Developing that process further is another awesome step on that creative journey. I have to say that the time I spend in front of my laptop at my kitchen table with a hot mug of coffee is precious to me. I wish I would have found the value in it earlier in my life, but maybe if I had then I would not appreciate it as much as I do in the present. Enjoying my morning coffee is akin to taking the time to do my skin care routine and enjoying a relaxing face mask for a whole uninterrupted fifteen minutes. We should all be doing the little things that makes us smile, makes us feel relaxed, and makes us feel inspired.

Every day is a fresh start and a great day to have a great day.