Caffeine Has A 6-Hour Half Life...

I don't like to drink things with caffeine.  No; the irony of the fact that I work at a coffee shop is not lost on me.

Did you know that caffeine has a 6-hour half life?  I don't remember where exactly I gleaned this little tidbit from, but I promise I'm not making it up!

Refer back in your memories, if you will, to your 5th grade science class.  Now, shuffle on over to the fossils unit.  Remember anything about carbon-14 dating?  Scientists are somehow able to analyze the amount of carbon remaining in ancient organic matter.  They also know that it takes a prescribed number of years for half of the carbon to leave prehistoric bones or whatnot.  Using this scale, they can figure out how old something is.  

Like I mentioned earlier, I typically don't caffeinate.  I don't like what caffeine does to my body.  It makes me feel all jittery and I can't sleep. 

For some reason that eludes me at present (3:24 a.m.), I decided that it would be a good idea to down a 26oz black iced tea at the end of my closing shift earlier tonight.  There's just something about a nice, big (free) glass of iced tea that makes all of your past knowledge of the effects of caffeine: experiential, academic, or otherwise, just disappear right along with that first satisfying gulp. 

That cursed first gulp took place at 11:00 p.m.  By my estimates, I have about 1 1/2 hours yet, before half of that stinkin caffeine leaves my system.

It doesn't help matters that in addition to the caffeine, tonight my head is full of other things (of an entirely non-chemical nature).

It has been almost 6 months since I started working at the coffee shop.  I began just as my AmeriCorps term of service was ending, full of the naive assumption that my stint as a barista would be short-lived. How long could it take to find my dream job that would simultaneously fulfill all of my idealistic desires for meaningful vocation?  A couple months and scores of fruitless applications later, discouragement started creeping in.  In an effort to stave off the apathy, I became vigilant in my efforts to make the best of where I was and what I was doing. 

I started being more intentional about getting to know the people I was serving on a daily basis.  It turns out that our regulars are pretty awesome, and I began to truly enjoy being part of their daily routines.

I need to have at least a couple people near me who I feel close to and with whom a mutual giving and taking of stories, secrets, joys, and pains can take place.  I deeply value some of the unexpected friendships that have grown out of this job.

6 months later, I can finally say that I am content with where I am.  

Which has its positives (as outlined above)...

and its negatives:  becoming too content/comfortable here, when my passions lie elsewhere. 

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I was presented with a very tempting offer from some dear friends to leave everything behind here, pick up, and start over in another state.  So, in addition to the caffeine, this opportunity is rolling around in my head and keeping me up into the wee hours of the night (time check: 4:16 a.m. [45 minutes until half of the caffeine has left my body]). 

One of my favorite books is Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.  Berry has a fascinating worldview; a true wordsmith, his novels read like poetry, and his poems touch your very soul.  In Jayber Crow, the protagonist/the book's namesake says:

'Now I have had the most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been.  I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier time, it seemed I had been wandering through the dark wood of error.  But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led' (Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 66). 

I've always loved this image of the character in the novel being led throughout his life.  I feel it too.  I've also felt all that 'adrift,' 'wandering,' 'dark wood of error' stuff plenty over the past several months.  But looking back, beyond all of my 'wandering' of late, I can clearly see the path that has led me to here: it's that selfsame path that leads out and beyond here (wherever that may be).