I am not so secretly back on the caffeine wagon. About two months ago I made a big to-do about how I was going to give it up for real, how it was better for my body and my life, and how it was going to be so hard to live without that cup of coffee first thing in the morning. I also thought, what the hell, I'll even give up soda, too, except for that occasional Coke for when I'm wanting some.
That turned into I'll just do a soda every now and then, when I have to be at work at 7am. I slid even further when I decided that I would just down a 5-hour Energy drink on those days which has the "same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee" but without the stomach upsets. I do believe that statement.
And then it turned into me just getting a coffee from the coffee place every couple mornings when I was in early. All of this, I thought, was on the sly and that nobody knew. I was so drinking coffee again and it would just be my little secret. It's no so secret when you smell like your fifth grade teacher Ms. Travers and you are super excited about everything, prompting people to ask you, "Did you drink coffee today?"
Secret coffee drinking = fail. Full disclosure: I have been mixing one cup of coffee with one 5-hour Energy drink some mornings. I have yet to alienate any co-workers, but one girl did get frustrated when I made her re-do a table three times because I may have told her three different things because I couldn't remember exactly what I said the first two times. Either way, I am drinking coffee again and I'm feeling less guilty about than in the past.
Ain't nobody holding it over my head that I enjoy drinking coffee. I had to give it up, sort of, in the first place because this new medicine made it taste funny to me. And that's not even a side-effect! But I figured it was impetus enough to give it up after discovering that there was nothing wrong with my guts and that all my stomach issues could not be accounted for, not even by an IBS diagnosis.
The flavor, though, and the ritual of my coffee drinking, and perhaps an addiction to caffeine, proved too much. And there wasn't much fan-fare when I started carrying around a little red cup, with its cardboard hand-protector, just a, "Oh, I knew you couldn't give it up. It's just too good."
All of this is to say that I am glad that I haven't and won't reach my grad school levels of caffeine consumption (despite my coffee and 5-hour cocktail). A little coffee here and there isn't too bad. I mean, I was once drinking like eight or ten cups of coffee a day and then walking around in the middle of the night wondering why I couldn't sleep or get any work done. That was then.
What a crazy person.
Jon
