I flirt with giving up coffee. I stock my tea niche with caffeine alternatives: Earl Grey, Irish Breakfast, Jasmine Green. Perhaps, I seem to think, their presence will tempt me, lure me, from the pot to the kettle. Perhaps it will bewitch me into forgetting coffee.
Which is just ridiculous. As with most things in life, my problem isn’t one of choice but of habit and association. Until I traded my full-time day job and night writing schedule for night classes and day mommyhood, coffee was my wake-up partner and tea was my working partner. I left coffee behind when I left the house at 7am. Now I have no such distinctions. One might say my job migrated to my house. I work when I wake up: jot the beginnings of a blog post, write directions to an assignment, or argue my preschooler into a decent set of clothes. It all gets done with coffee.
And coffee, which begins with a deep resonance of peaceful mornings, ultimately ends with me fidgety and cranky. And, later, energy-less and craving sweets. It’s all a bad recipe for writing, for that unexpected 20 minute window where the child entertains himself or I discover a lunch break in a working day.
There are some wonderful stories out there about writers and their coffee cups. All I can say is: How did they stay in their seats long enough to get words on the page?
I swear I will give up coffee. It will make me a new woman! A better mama! A reborn writer! I’ll have energy and spunk and energy. In the morning, though, tea tumbles out of the cabinet like a bad idea. Overstocked, ignored, and passed over for one cup—I’ll just have one, I tell myself—of the brew that’s something between bitter and bland. I drink it near black, so I really taste it when I screw up the grounds. I suppose I should screw it up more often, but I chalk it up to pitying my husband, the wretch who hooked me on coffee in the first place.
Intellectually, I know coffee has nothing to do with writing. I used to write with tea at hand. I used to write in the break room at the office, while it was filled with warehouse workers chatting and making the microwave beep and I had nothing at all in front of me.
What does have to do with writing: a notebook and taking advantage of unexpected time to myself.
It would be nice, though, to have those moments and not feel my shoulders pulling toward my ears or my fingers wanting to scratch the surface of the couch to make sound and friction or my mind wandering every fifth word to the endless other things I need to be doing. I could just do one of those other things, so it would drift out of my mind. But what would drift is the story idea, the poem snippet, that sentence I’ve almost formed about writing the perfect beginning. Do I have any clean clothes? No. Crap. It will wait! It’s writing time. I just need to keep my notebook close, and ditch the coffee.
Soon as I finish this cup.
Today's Author 
It is no secret that I love coffee. But I also love tea. I drink coffee in the mornings, then switch to tea, usually peppermint, in the afternoon and evening. I don’t need the coffee for me to be able to write or anything, but I like to have a mug of *something* when I settle down to write. Since I write best in the morning (I am totally a morning person), it is usually coffee.
The difference for me may be that coffee, like alcohol, simply has no effect on me. I drink it and nothing happens… no jitters, nothing. That said, my doctor has said that it is probably the reason (or at least a big reason) why I am not diabetic despite the fact that all of my family is diabetic. Another amusing anecdote is that when I had pneumonia a couple years ago (before I knew it was pneumonia), I had a 104 degree fever for several days. Assuming I was probably dehydrated from the fever, I stopped the coffee and just drank tea. When I finally decided I had to see the doctor a few days later, she yelled at me about the coffe… and actually filled out a prescription blank with “stop for a cup of coffee on the way home”. Clearly, I followed doctor’s orders. 🙂
This describes me as well. Although I only became a morning person as an adult. When I was working full time and sleeping like a child-less person, I would sometimes wake up really early and take myself out for breakfast before work. Got some of my best writing done then, before my brain filled up with the minutia of work, when it moved seamless from conscious to unconscious.
I do miss those days. But I’m beginning to see I may actually get them back — in the far future, but still in the realm of possible.
But now I have to look up that link between coffee and diabetes! I know coffee (or caffeine?) has a negative effect on circulation.
I envy those people who say coffee keeps them awake. I wish it would keep me awake! When my teenage daughter was training for her job at Lone Star Steakhouse, I had to pick her up at midnight. I’d get there at 10:00PM and sit in one of the booths and wait for her. They kept me supplied with endless cups of percolated coffee for the next two hours (usually to go with my chocolate brownie and ice cream) and I went home and slept like a baby. These days though, I try to have only one cup of coffee in the morning, a couple of cups of tea during the day and the rest of the time water.
I love the fragrance of coffee, and it is fragrance, so much more seductive than the ordinary smell of familiar things. Usually it’s tea I’m drinking, but more often, it’s hot tea getting tepid in the cup or cold tea getting bland. I write until I must get up and move or be forever glued to the computer chair. I stretch limbs as achy as if I’d exercised, but it’s just the ache of inertia. And then I might get up and reheat the tea or even – brew a pot of coffee. Sometimes just for the scent. Now you’ve got me yearning…
Yes. This is also how it is for me.
If I start brewing coffee later than 6 am I am doomed. For the rest…again, right there with you. Although I’m grading and writing directions or emails, not anything more stimulating to match the level of stimulant in my bloodstream.
Enjoy your tea & coffee times.