I don’t write, i don’t call… you’d think that I don’t like the internet. Really, it is sometimes what keeps me awake, alert, and alive. Especially because of coffee.

I have discovered that I cannot ingest anything more than the most minuscule amount of caffeine. This falls somewhere between inconvenience and embarrassment when it comes to the caffeinated peer pressure that in inherent in the corporate environment. Each morning my co-workers invariably fuel up on coffee, breezing through the coffee station at the breakfast stand like a stealth bomber quickly refueling in the air. Coffee keeps them going, it makes them sharper.

Coffee does not make me sharper. Not in the least. Coffee fuzzes my edges, as if my body is a camera trying unsuccessfully to capture a subject in motion. An afternoon trip to Starbucks leaves me feeling drugged, unable to control myself or stop talking or just think clearly for a single second. Is this what it’s like, i think, to be on speed? Moving without even having to think about it.

I have resigned myself to empty-handed trips to the cafeteria at ten fifteen, when they are just heading for a reload. As they return, sipping their caramel-colored drug, i slip into my cube, surreptitiously loading Little Yellow Different or bluishorange or Wockerjabby and getting my fix and then, reinvigorated, re-attack my work.

You have so much energy!, is what they always say. I always extol the virtues of eight cups of water and a bottle of cranberry juice a day with no red meat and only a touch of liquor. I guess i should really just own up and tell them to get a blog.