Every day is toast
Every day is toast, starting again with the same spread, but somehow different.
Some days, actually most days, feel like I'm living in some strange de-ja-vu.
I wake up, attempt to get my bearings, despite laying in the same bed I woke up in yesterday. It feels like my mind is in a haze.
A vague sense of what I need to do to be successful shimmers in the distance, but my thoughts can't quite seem to reach it.
I arise, chug a glass of water, cut two slices of locally baked bread from a loaf that's almost too hard to slice, and pop them in the toaster.
Next up, coffee. I've tried to kick it multiple times, but even after several months cold turkey, life was flat without it. Coffee gives my dopamine system something I don't seem to have without it. Maybe it's a completely dis-regulated dopamine system, or maybe I've just grown dependent on the spicy bean juice from a lifetime of consumption. Maybe I have ADHD because I drank too much coffee. Who knows. I'm sure there's a conspiracy in there somewhere, ha!
This routine is my daily anchor. It pulls me from the eternal realm of crazy dreams and cozy blankets and deposits me squarely, albeit temporarily, back into my waking life.
The goals I set for myself yesterday already a distant dream. It's as if I were trying to remember an all-hands team meeting from a few years ago.
This is where all the lifestyle gurus and health influencers will jump in with their brand of quick-fix course. More this, less that. But the truth is I've been down that road, more times than I'd like to admit. My diet is already cleaner than a caveman's, and I don't fancy injecting myself with god knows what to get superhuman who knows when.
The thing is, my simple water-toast-coffee morning routine does more to anchor me in the present moment than any how-to book has ever been able to.
And somehow, I think that's part of the reason we feel so lost these days, so untethered from the dreams we have for our lives.
We're sold the idea that every problem has a solution. Everything can be optimised to the point where we put an idea in a box and a result emerges out.
Maybe it's true for the guy selling magic beans with giant stalks. Who am I to judge? Though I feel like the only stalks you'll get from Jack and his Magic Beans are the retargeting cookies stalking you from his Javascript trackers.
Where I come from, beans aren't magical, they're more commonly known as musical fruit, for a reason.
Maybe, it's our relentless searching that's actually leading us astray day by day. We get so busy trying to find some magical idea we forget to laugh and enjoy the music of the moment.
In our rush to get to the next thing we miss the absurd fact we can put a slice of baked, fermented, grass seed into an electric box and it comes out toasted, ready for spread.
When I stop to think about it, I realise it's the thinking that's stopping me from enjoying the taste of a life that's already here, on my plate.
I think I'll go make another coffee, I need it today.