I Haven’t Given Up Caffeine Yet, And That Doesn’t Make Me A Failure At Pandemic Resolutions
By: Jessie Dumont
Tags: Habits, Humor, Moderation, Resolutions, Coffee

I Haven’t Given Up Caffeine Yet, And That Doesn’t Make Me A Failure At Pandemic Resolutions

Source: Me :)

Giving up bad habits during a pandemic is like New Years Resolutions. It seems like everyone made them early this year. Being home a long time does that to a person. It makes them feel like they need to have goals for themselves. Something to reach for. It’s not the actual act of making goals that makes me upset, it’s the nagging messages of the community I curated that is most exhausting. The barrage of positive messages of hopeful inspiration for productivity makes me want to vomit. Everyone has their “one” that can’t part with. The “one” thing often takes the willpower of Hercules and a few interventions from the synapses in your brain to finally let go of the “one”. I think maybe I’d like to keep my “one” thank you very much.

Caffeine is my “one” and I know it isn’t the healthiest for anyone, but in a sick and twisted way, I’ve convinced myself that I need it and it needs me. I’m often reminded that caffeine is the cause for a lot of bad things, sometimes my gray hair is even blamed for the consumption. When you’ve grown used to the security of a cup of coffee every morning in order to be productive, the messaging surrounding productivity without coffee sounds ludicrous. When you’re tired, you’re tired, and I’m tired every morning. For the most part, I’m proud of my relationship with coffee, and it’s proud of its relationship with me, the energy levels and the co-dependency we have on each other cannot be matched.

It’s not the amount of caffeine that wears me out. It’s the number of times I’ve been told to quit it that irks me. Labels like overachiever and #health come to mind. No matter how often you tell me of the health benefits of quitting caffeine and show me how often it’s not doing me any favors as I lean on it for support, isn’t going to convince me. I’m not quitting guys. My hopes every morning for the inevitable coffee pot, the aroma of coffee grounds in the kitchen, the almond milk in the fridge that I froth to create cool designs like a barista in my own kitchen. Over and over this ritual happens. And over and over I enjoy it more and more. The habit adage goes like this: It takes 21 days to make or break a habit, and I say I don’t give a sip. I have a very hard time believing the statistics embedded in Pinterest pins and Instagram posts, the reality that we all can’t have the willpower of Hercules, or make it to the 21 day mark. I didn’t start drinking coffee to quit it.

So, every morning I make a cup of coffee. The caffeinated me is productive, a nice worker, happy and pleasant. I walk into my kitchen like I’m ready to accept an Emmy and think back to this time yesterday when we had our morning meet-up. I try to create a heart shape in the froth at the top of my coffee cup, a message in a bottle that I truly love it. I’ve been waiting for this moment all day, and all night, like the TV show you used to wait for as a kid every week, the anticipation, the longing to be a part of it all again, the excitement when you finally reach the day the TV show episode finally comes out, live. It’s that kind of special feeling. The messages during the pandemic have pointed me in all kinds of directions. The type of person I thought I wanted to be, the one prone to practice mediation in the mornings, without coffee, making time for yoga outside, eating green juices only, and not letting the business of the workweek get to me, I’d be completely zen.

The best reveal came this fall. In the summer when the pandemic measures were really taken seriously, I wasn’t working. I had more time. I really tried to be that version of myself, the better version. It took me quite a while to look at myself in the mirror after green juice after green juice, looking myself in the mirror and going: this isn’t you. I wondered if I’d ever be able to break out of the habit of my reliance on caffeine, maybe I wasn’t strong enough to give it up, march through the caffeine withdrawals all the while being in pretzel figure four position. This was the shortest amount of time I’d ever attempted to give my morning habit up with a record of 1 day and 30 minutes later. Note that I slept 8 hours during this time. Closer calculations would prove that I barely gave up my habit at all. I barely tried.

But, why should I though? It’s best not to look directly at the problem, and ignore those messages coming from others on social media and in-person so you don’t feel like a disappointment, a failure. This is how New Year’s resolutions feel to me anyway, and I wasn’t falling for it this time. To me, I wasn’t failing. Failing to give up my coffee just encouraged me to love my ritual even more. Every now and then, I’m calmer on caffeine, it’s the expectation rather than the reality, the taste rather than the miracle work that it does, maybe it’s a little bit of both. So, to all of you creating pandemic resolutions, the ones who have something missing from their need to be “bad”, to fall back into comfort and co-dependency, I don’t envy you. Do your thing, but don’t put that crusade on me. I’m perfectly fine the way I’m flawed. At least, I hope you’re happy. The resolutions you’ve made to go prana this pandemic are enough to cure global warming and pollution in a 2 for 1 special. I’m not mocking you, I tried to be zen too. But for me, it’s less about going 24-hr prana and more about moderation. I’ll hear advice from others about how caffeine is a drug, how it is turning my hair gray, that the very act of smelling coffee can age you. I’m happy with it. I wouldn’t want to wake up at 80 years old and regret the coffee I didn’t drink. I’m grateful I don’t know what it’s like without it.

Really, it is an experience. This pandemic has reminded me of how much willpower I really don’t have and how much I really love coffee, even without anything to do. This is the one time when I’ve truly uncovered the depths of my desires and ended up at coffee. Sitting in the morning and writing with a cup in my left hand, typing with my right, I haven’t spent more than a minute regretting this decision. I just want you all to know I’m happy. I can assure you that I’m okay. I’ve met my bad habit. This morning. It’s easy to continue. If this isn’t happiness I don’t know what is.

I don’t have an answer to you all who want to change and become a new, #healthnut. There’s no one answer, of course, to be a healthy human being. The only potential connection that we all have is through the things we love, rejecting this perfect version of ourselves, and being honest about the things we love that aren’t great for us. Even the health nuts, even the Instagram accounts I follow that somehow have time to post-yoga poses twice a day while recording Insta stories of them drinking juice while carrying two children and still having time to meditate with the sun. Perfection is only found in imagination, in our state of mind. Who are we to preach perfection to anyone? Who are we trying to convince?

Listen, you’ll be thinking now, thinking about how you’re learning to be perfect. Listening to how healthy the yogi Instagram accounts all sound and look, the entirely true story of those who have willpower, the willpower you fail to have without doing half the things yogis do online. But, to be honest? This time, you have to stop comparing yourself, you are not a yogi. You are not perfect. You will never be perfect and that thought alone will set you free. I’ve received messages in my life that nudge me in the direction of “giving up” the things that are apparently “holding me back.” I’ve sat across a table from people who stare at me with my cup of coffee at 8 PM at night and tell me how my companion will turn on me at any moment and keep me up all night. I’ve been barraged by people in my life who are on their own journey to become perfect and decide that preaching is their catharsis to healing the habits they can’t quite break. I’ve been pressured to switch to Dandelion Root Tea from the losing weight messaging, which was good for when you felt sick, but when you finally come back to Earth and feel better it tastes like dirt from the ground you walk on. I’ve switched back to coffee after being told I’m reliant on it.

After a while, you learn to ignore these messages. You wonder why everyone keeps messaging you, why you even tried to turn off your addiction to coffee, and switch to dirt water, the fact that you can’t help but wonder why or who you were trying to be someone that you have never been. Everything was starting to make sense. The fact that the pandemic has turned people into pandemic perfectionists to find meaning to something without one. How I, too, spent the first months of the pandemic trying to be the “perfect” version of myself, because the challenge of doing this during a normally busy schedule seems and feels impossible.

At some point, you start to wonder who you’re trying to do this for. When does it end? When do these “challenges and efforts to be perfect” end, and when can you be whole by yourself? With your flaws and your bad habits. I served my sentence. It’s funny, that when you stop trying to be perfect, rather than trying to be perfect, you reach the point of no return. You start not to care for the messages, you start to see people as people rather than machines who mess up and need to be “fixed.” You start to welcome the things you actually like, and maybe even find happiness in your cup of coffee in the morning.

My need to be perfect, to get rid of bad habits in order to be happy is a formula I’ve created in my head. A math problem I never answered correctly, the algebraic equation I never could solve coming from other people’s expectations of what I should be doing instead. When you can’t solve the perfection formula, what do you do? What do you do when this formula doesn’t give you the results you actually wanted?

I guess you take a sip of that habit you consider “bad” and have a look out your window.