The Importance of Coffee In Writing
I went to make coffee this morning, grinding the beans from the big ole bag of Starbucks I got from Costco, putting in the ten or eleven cups of water, which equates to four cups in my big ole cup, and hit brew. Then I went in and started checking my computer for my real job, calling the people I needed to talk to, doing the tasks I needed to, until I figured the coffee was done and I couldn't function any more. To my absolute horror there was no coffee in the pot!!! Then I did what any rational person would do, I shook it back and forth, checked that there was water in there, and then I pulled the plug, waited thirty seconds, and then turned it back on and waited to see if all that worked.
Nope. Nothing. I'm coffee-less…uhg!
In reality I can go two miles in almost any direction and get to an actual Starbucks. But I like my coffee, with my vanilla flavored creme, in my cup, which gets filled repeatedly. And paying 4-5 buck a few times a day to buy a coffee you can make at home for about .10 cents is complete insanity to me.
I don't need coffee, I mean except for the pounding headaches when I quit drinking it, but really it's my last vice. I used to drink a whole bunch of beer, quite often, which led to large amounts of coke the next morning, the drink, not the powder. But those vices got taken away from me. Not because I got in trouble, or someone had an intervention with me, or anything like that. I went to the hospital with stomach pains after too much fun in Las Vegas over the weekend, and they told me I had Pancreatitis, which they said I could die from if I continued to drink. The day before they told me that is the last drop of alcohol I've had since. That's a really hard transition to go through. Not that I had the DTs with hallucinations or anything like that, because I never drank That much. Its more that I used to go out with my friends lose a little control, be loud, and generally have fun. That's a hard transition to go through, from being the fun guy, to being the stone cold sober one. I tried to keep going out just to hang with my friends, and I was never tempted to drink, because the threat of death will do that to you, but everything was different. Being sober around drunk people allows you to see so many things that should and will make you nervous, that if you were drinking just as much, you'd never even give a second thought. My friends saw the looks on my face and my invitations to go out started to fall away, even with my offers to be the sober driver. I wasn't that guy anymore. I'm not going to tell you that didn't hurt more than a little bit.
Since that happened I've written and self-published four books. My only remaining vice being coffee. What about the coke you ask? Do you know how much sugar is in a coke? I'm not sure either, but its a lot. Too much if you don't have alcohol to dampen the sugar rush so you can sleep. Turns out I'm also highly reactive to sugar. Any sugar product after 12 noon and I'll be up till four or five in the morning. So no coke, means only coffee, and only in the morning. But not this morning. I probably shouldn't drink it at all, but darn it I want to be at least a little bad.
You might ask if I regret my hard partying hellion years, since I've been so productive as a writer since. I'd tell you No, without even hesitating. I greatly enjoyed my prolonged adolescent stupidity. I think going through everything I did gives me a great wealth of experience to draw upon as I move forward in my writing career. You might at this point say, but you don't write about partying too hard, you write thrillers, to which I would respond that the people that populate those thrillers are based in large part on all of the people I met in bars and at parties over all of those years. Thrillers are what I like to read, and the shows I like to watch, so it's what I like to write about, but for those who've know my over an extended amount of time, they'll occasionally spot a description, or a way a person acts, and they'll say to me, 'Hey isn't that so and so?'… and I'll just smile
Of course coffee might help me smile a little more!
Nope. Nothing. I'm coffee-less…uhg!
In reality I can go two miles in almost any direction and get to an actual Starbucks. But I like my coffee, with my vanilla flavored creme, in my cup, which gets filled repeatedly. And paying 4-5 buck a few times a day to buy a coffee you can make at home for about .10 cents is complete insanity to me.
I don't need coffee, I mean except for the pounding headaches when I quit drinking it, but really it's my last vice. I used to drink a whole bunch of beer, quite often, which led to large amounts of coke the next morning, the drink, not the powder. But those vices got taken away from me. Not because I got in trouble, or someone had an intervention with me, or anything like that. I went to the hospital with stomach pains after too much fun in Las Vegas over the weekend, and they told me I had Pancreatitis, which they said I could die from if I continued to drink. The day before they told me that is the last drop of alcohol I've had since. That's a really hard transition to go through. Not that I had the DTs with hallucinations or anything like that, because I never drank That much. Its more that I used to go out with my friends lose a little control, be loud, and generally have fun. That's a hard transition to go through, from being the fun guy, to being the stone cold sober one. I tried to keep going out just to hang with my friends, and I was never tempted to drink, because the threat of death will do that to you, but everything was different. Being sober around drunk people allows you to see so many things that should and will make you nervous, that if you were drinking just as much, you'd never even give a second thought. My friends saw the looks on my face and my invitations to go out started to fall away, even with my offers to be the sober driver. I wasn't that guy anymore. I'm not going to tell you that didn't hurt more than a little bit.
Since that happened I've written and self-published four books. My only remaining vice being coffee. What about the coke you ask? Do you know how much sugar is in a coke? I'm not sure either, but its a lot. Too much if you don't have alcohol to dampen the sugar rush so you can sleep. Turns out I'm also highly reactive to sugar. Any sugar product after 12 noon and I'll be up till four or five in the morning. So no coke, means only coffee, and only in the morning. But not this morning. I probably shouldn't drink it at all, but darn it I want to be at least a little bad.
You might ask if I regret my hard partying hellion years, since I've been so productive as a writer since. I'd tell you No, without even hesitating. I greatly enjoyed my prolonged adolescent stupidity. I think going through everything I did gives me a great wealth of experience to draw upon as I move forward in my writing career. You might at this point say, but you don't write about partying too hard, you write thrillers, to which I would respond that the people that populate those thrillers are based in large part on all of the people I met in bars and at parties over all of those years. Thrillers are what I like to read, and the shows I like to watch, so it's what I like to write about, but for those who've know my over an extended amount of time, they'll occasionally spot a description, or a way a person acts, and they'll say to me, 'Hey isn't that so and so?'… and I'll just smile
Of course coffee might help me smile a little more!
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