I Make the Coffee Before I Make the Plan

I make the coffee before I make the plan. Most weekdays, anyway. The kettle goes on, the grinder does its thing, and for about six minutes nothing is asked of me yet.

That's not nothing.

Six minutes is a decent stretch of time when you're not doing anything but waiting on water to hit the right temperature. Long enough to notice the light outside, or that you forgot to set a mug out the night before, so you're standing in front of the cabinet deciding which one feels right for the day. Small decisions. They don't matter and somehow they do.

The coffee I reach for on mornings like this is our Slow Sunday blend, even on a Tuesday. It says "breakfast blend" right on the bag, which always gets me a little, because somewhere along the way breakfast blends got branded as the safe, unexciting choice. Mine isn't trying to be exciting. It's medium roast, easy going down at 6am, and it doesn't ask much of you before your brain's ready to think about anything. You just drink it. That's sort of the whole point.

Here's the thing about mornings, or at least the thing I keep relearning: they don't need to be earned first. I spent a long stretch of years treating any kind of slowness like something you had to deserve, with a cleared inbox or a finished workout or whatever the metric of the day happened to be. Somewhere in the middle of running this shop mostly on my own, that stopped making sense to me. Some mornings I just sit there with the mug longer than I technically have time for. Nobody's harmed by it.

So, do you have a version of this? A few minutes most days that belong to nobody but you, before the day starts handing you its list of things to do?

I think it's worth protecting, mostly because a person is worth something before they've done anything at all that day. Before the inbox. Before the list. Just as they are, mug in hand, nothing proven yet.

Choose to be kind. Choose to be grateful. Choose to be happy.

— Nina of GiaNina Collective