Joe no mo' (Week 8)
"I love coffee, I love tea. I love the java jive and it loves me."
I'm begging you, Ink Spots, shut up. For a solid seven days, your 1940 blues tune has been ringing in my head. I've been hearing it every time I pass a Starbucks or look over at my co-workers cradling their coffees in front of them.
Maybe you've already guessed it; my commitment this week was to go caffeine-free. I decided to go whole hog on the idea, which meant no morning coffee, no afternoon tea and no caffeinated sodas. I also picked a particularly challenging week to do it; at a Benevity client conference in Palm Springs, where silver-plated coffee urns waited outside every meeting room, where hundreds of attendees strolled the corridors with their paper cups, and where the heavenly smell of coffee filled every nook and cranny.
In hindsight, I don't even know why I did this. If my 52-week journey is supposed to be about discovering myself through goodness, I'm not convinced this was a good thing. The benefits of coffee are being widely touted: weight loss, physical performance, and even defence against some types of cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's. On the other side of the column, we have headaches and insomnia, and that's about it.
Still, I figured too much of any one thing might be a bad thing, so I went forward with the experiment. Val was not about to join me in this one, which made it even tougher with her merrily sipping away beside me. Anyway, here's my own tale of woe.
For two consecutive nights after going coffee-free, I slept like a stone. But then again, I usually do. Maybe it was the withdrawal talking, but on Day 3 of my little adventure, the absolute opposite side effect set in. I woke up four times in the middle of the night. Figuring it was a short-term symptom, I kept up the self-imposed punishment. Each night, the insomnia got worse. So...myth busted!
I think the best part of the week was welcoming the blessed black mud into my life. Val and I ordered up a pair of breakfast blends and enjoyed them poolside at the Omni Las Palmas resort. A few hours later, strolling down Palm Canyon Drive in downtown Palm Springs, we spotted what is probably the most beautiful Starbucks in all creation.
As we lounged lazily outside and watched the hoi polloi of wealthy California drift past, I had time to reflect on what I had failed to achieve as I closed out my second month of Goodness 52.
Just like my week of going without booze, I once again had to learn the tough lesson that not all abstinence is good abstinence. Like wearing a hair shirt and whipping myself with a cactus, I'm not going to develop some deeper character just by torturing myself needlessly. Come Monday morning, I'll be listening to the welcome drip drip drip of the coffee maker at 6:30 in the morning, pouring myself a cup at the office two hours later, and joining the crew for an afternoon cuppa just down the block. I am giddy with anticipation.
NEXT WEEK: Shirt and tie every day!
I'm begging you, Ink Spots, shut up. For a solid seven days, your 1940 blues tune has been ringing in my head. I've been hearing it every time I pass a Starbucks or look over at my co-workers cradling their coffees in front of them.
Maybe you've already guessed it; my commitment this week was to go caffeine-free. I decided to go whole hog on the idea, which meant no morning coffee, no afternoon tea and no caffeinated sodas. I also picked a particularly challenging week to do it; at a Benevity client conference in Palm Springs, where silver-plated coffee urns waited outside every meeting room, where hundreds of attendees strolled the corridors with their paper cups, and where the heavenly smell of coffee filled every nook and cranny.
In hindsight, I don't even know why I did this. If my 52-week journey is supposed to be about discovering myself through goodness, I'm not convinced this was a good thing. The benefits of coffee are being widely touted: weight loss, physical performance, and even defence against some types of cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's. On the other side of the column, we have headaches and insomnia, and that's about it.
Still, I figured too much of any one thing might be a bad thing, so I went forward with the experiment. Val was not about to join me in this one, which made it even tougher with her merrily sipping away beside me. Anyway, here's my own tale of woe.
For two consecutive nights after going coffee-free, I slept like a stone. But then again, I usually do. Maybe it was the withdrawal talking, but on Day 3 of my little adventure, the absolute opposite side effect set in. I woke up four times in the middle of the night. Figuring it was a short-term symptom, I kept up the self-imposed punishment. Each night, the insomnia got worse. So...myth busted!
As we lounged lazily outside and watched the hoi polloi of wealthy California drift past, I had time to reflect on what I had failed to achieve as I closed out my second month of Goodness 52.
Just like my week of going without booze, I once again had to learn the tough lesson that not all abstinence is good abstinence. Like wearing a hair shirt and whipping myself with a cactus, I'm not going to develop some deeper character just by torturing myself needlessly. Come Monday morning, I'll be listening to the welcome drip drip drip of the coffee maker at 6:30 in the morning, pouring myself a cup at the office two hours later, and joining the crew for an afternoon cuppa just down the block. I am giddy with anticipation.
NEXT WEEK: Shirt and tie every day!
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