friends – nemo travels

That feeling of being home and doing nothing is actually quite comfortable after having to make sure you catch your flights for work and get everything done. I totally get it now. I mean, I was always the type to want to cram things into my schedule. I have 2 hours free here? What can I do? These days, I find myself just being okay without doing that. I have the afternoon free today? Maybe I’ll just start a new book or continue reading the one I started last week!

Is this me being comfortable? Is it me getting older? Perhaps I’m settling in? Or maybe it’s just me realizing I don’t need to be constantly on the move. It’s okay if I don’t want to do anything.

A friend messaged me recently and asked if I wanted to go rock climbing. And then he said after trying to guilt trip me that we’re still cool even if I don’t want to go. That’s how it should be. I’ve never felt like I had to give into peer pressure to join in on things or do things. I have always felt like I can say no to the people around me because they would understand. I think that I am fortunate to see that and to have fostered those relationships with people because I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of people who don’t feel like they can say no. There are a lot of people who feel lonely if they need to sit in a coffee shop on their own. There are a lot of people who feel a need to be with people in order to kill a few hours.

Perhaps this is comfortable. Comfortable with the way my life is right now. Until the next idea or ambition pops along then?

Hello again. As I sit here and drink my coffee, I think about how nice coffee meetups are. Work has been busy lately and people in general have other priorities, so the usual crowd hasn’t met up as much lately. In any case, if we can’t meed for coffee during the day, we can always meet for a boozy time later. So many choices.

Come to think of it, it’s coming on two years since I met this one group through Gunter, an old co-worker. One day, Gunter invited me to join them for drinks and the next thing I knew, I’d been given the stamp of approval and was inaugurated into the coffee gang. I haven’t looked back since. Coffee breaks are our smoke breaks. It keeps us from going mental at work and our eyes from glazing over too much.

Naturally, when Ritual introduced Coffee Week last year, we were all on top of our coffee game. Until we weren’t. Salim and Morag the Destroyer (yes, since I’m the storyteller, I get to come up with the names too) started sounding the coffee bells and it was off to the races.

Day 1 was great. Everyone ordered $1 coffee from the usual joint at the time (and I do mean at the time because there are just so many pop up and hipster coffee shops these days).

Day 2 was also great. Everyone got their $1 coffee from a different coffee shop.

Day 3 was more of the same. We each ordered our own $1 coffees from a third coffee shop on the approved list.

Day 4, we decided to go back to our usual joint for more $1 coffees. And that’s when it happened. As we met up and started congregating towards the coffee shop and ordering on the Ritual app at the same time, we realized that the coffee was no longer $1. But it was coffee week! What happened?

After a moment of confusion, we realized our mistake. The Coffee Week deal was only good once at any coffee shop. We considered our options. How many coffees do we need to buy in order for the shop owner to offer us a free coffee? Probably too much. Mcdonald’s was running its dollar coffee deal as well and there’s always that apple pie special. We could pick another coffee shop off Ritual or we could just get coffee from the favourite anyway at regular price.

At the end of it all, there was just never really any other option. Old comforts are old comforts. We headed back to our usual place and paid regular price for our usual coffees. So much for being savvy dealfinders. I am fairly positive that every time any of us does something like this, we hear our parents’ voices in our heads asking us why we didn’t just drink the free (crappy) office coffee, but we had all successfully suppressed these little voices for better coffee. What’s work without enjoying the fruit of our labour?