I hadn’t really thought much about my morning routine until the morning I discovered I was out of tea and the whole thing went south! It was definitely a wake-up anyway and in many more ways than one because that was when I realised just how much I operated on autopilot until that first morning cuppa went down and took hold and up until that point I’d never really thought about how a simple thing could have such a big impact.
But then I began to recall the horror stories of others whose AM thingy was rudely interrupted by such things as the discovery that they were out of milk or their favourite cereal or whatever. Like the co-worker who dumped his flatmate because the flatmate had a habit of using the last of the milk the night before which meant black coffee in the morning. My co-worker didn’t like black coffee and on those days it took him until lunchtime to recover from the bad start to his day. Likewise, a good friend who was an orange juice junkie first thing in the morning. She always had more than one bottle on hand but to get to the point, she also had a husband, five kids and a big sign on her fridge that read “Remember how Mummy gets if you scoff all the juice!”
So there I was in a quandary over my lack of tea. But it also started me wondering about that. Like, should it really matter? Will my life end on the spot if I don’t have that cup of tea? Could I get around it with a hot chocolate??? Turned out I could if I want to be honest and I think in the end it was a good thing because it made me start deliberately varying what I did to start my day. Look, it could have been a lot worse. My thing might have been illegal drugs or alcohol. Or orange juice. I may have been the type of personality type that gets all antsy if the routine changes (I only got a bit toey) but it did bring me around to the realisation that maybe things needed to change and I’m proud of my efforts to successfully address this. In fact I did it so well that these days I can wake up to just about anything; coffee, water, or an eggflip as a system kicker and it’s all good. I still function and I like the fact that I can be so flexible these days. Sure, tea is still my favourite but I’m not going to go into meltdown if I have to have something else instead. I can do this, you know?
But now I’m starting to give a little thought to those Peanut Butter M&Ms that live in my office. These are my favourite snack of choice when working or reading. I have never really considered any other type of snack for those particular activities but am starting to wonder if I may have developed a dependence here without even realising it. I mean, those, and only those, are what I reach for. Well yes, they are really good and I think of the whole M&M range, these are the absolute best but do I place too much on having them to hand? On second thoughts, no I don’t. They are just my favourite snack that’s all. I could give them up any time I want!
I just don’t want to.