It's February. It is very definitely February. When I leave my house in the morning, I nearly universally forget to bring an umbrella. By lunch, it is nearly universally raining. I borrow an umbrella from a colleague or beg one from the lost and found, and it barely covers my head. Its spindles poke out beyond the sagging plastic.
I tromp through the rain to my favorite coffee place, the one with the espresso so perfectly pulled that I almost can no longer drink coffee elsewhere. A. has a tiny new shop, and I stand there in a willing row with all the other addicts, waiting for my little mug of cappuccino with the perfect foam lid.
"It's so small!" my colleague says when, occasionally, I get it to go and come back to the office bearing a white cup wrapped in my reusable coffee sleeve. "You go all that way for something so small? Why don't you just get a bigger cup at the place across the street?"
"Cappuccino is supposed to be small," I tell her, sipping my six ounces of coffee perfection. "And this coffee is worth it."
When I'm done with my little cup of cappuccino, there is nowhere to go but back to the office. It's raining and cold. The parks are dreary. During the summer, I try to keep my coffee consumption to a few times a week, but here in the winter, I get it every day. If nothing else, I need the walk to get me out of the office.
Winter feels unending, in February. Last winter, I was hibernating at this time. This year, I have promised myself that I will get out more, be more social. I am trying to fight the winter weariness instead of succumbing to it. It's been working fairly well, but this week my strategy has failed me. It could keep up with the weather, but it couldn't keep up with life's random onslaught of difficult things.
This week, I switched to quieter music. The music I usually love hurt my heart. I updated my status across the internet to reflect my crankiness. I am writing a lot. The notebook I bought two weeks ago is nearly half full.
If you had asked me when I was 20, I would have said that by 30 I would know myself. I would have said that by 30 I would be able to just live, without needing to think about why I did or said what I did. I would have said that by 30 life would be easy. Indeed, I have learned a great deal about myself. I know many reasons why I do what I do. I am mostly happy. But I don't know everything, and some weeks I wonder why I said that, or why life is sometimes so hard.
The best thing that I have learned in 30 years is that even the worst moments usually end. This is not the worst moment, but I still need to remind myself, sometimes, that this will end, too.
I tromp through the rain to my favorite coffee place, the one with the espresso so perfectly pulled that I almost can no longer drink coffee elsewhere. A. has a tiny new shop, and I stand there in a willing row with all the other addicts, waiting for my little mug of cappuccino with the perfect foam lid.
"It's so small!" my colleague says when, occasionally, I get it to go and come back to the office bearing a white cup wrapped in my reusable coffee sleeve. "You go all that way for something so small? Why don't you just get a bigger cup at the place across the street?"
"Cappuccino is supposed to be small," I tell her, sipping my six ounces of coffee perfection. "And this coffee is worth it."
When I'm done with my little cup of cappuccino, there is nowhere to go but back to the office. It's raining and cold. The parks are dreary. During the summer, I try to keep my coffee consumption to a few times a week, but here in the winter, I get it every day. If nothing else, I need the walk to get me out of the office.
Winter feels unending, in February. Last winter, I was hibernating at this time. This year, I have promised myself that I will get out more, be more social. I am trying to fight the winter weariness instead of succumbing to it. It's been working fairly well, but this week my strategy has failed me. It could keep up with the weather, but it couldn't keep up with life's random onslaught of difficult things.
This week, I switched to quieter music. The music I usually love hurt my heart. I updated my status across the internet to reflect my crankiness. I am writing a lot. The notebook I bought two weeks ago is nearly half full.
If you had asked me when I was 20, I would have said that by 30 I would know myself. I would have said that by 30 I would be able to just live, without needing to think about why I did or said what I did. I would have said that by 30 life would be easy. Indeed, I have learned a great deal about myself. I know many reasons why I do what I do. I am mostly happy. But I don't know everything, and some weeks I wonder why I said that, or why life is sometimes so hard.
The best thing that I have learned in 30 years is that even the worst moments usually end. This is not the worst moment, but I still need to remind myself, sometimes, that this will end, too.
2 comments:
(sigh)
beautiful post.
i TOTALLY understand about the cappuccino. (i don't think that's how you spell it.) six ounces of perfection. i hope that you take good care of yourself. lots of rain is hard to handle.
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