LifeSoup by Cherie Dawn Haas

by Cherie Dawn Haas

About three weeks ago I quit drinking coffee. I was tired of being addicted to something I no longer even enjoyed, and I had heard yet another claim about the negative effects of zero-calorie sweeteners. (Read about my first day without coffee here.)

Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how it was going. To be honest, there wasn’t much to report, so I only gave updates in the first days. During the past few weeks, I’ve “cheated” here and there, but not in any way that I regret. I enjoyed an Irish coffee (that’s coffee with whiskey) with some dear friends, a gas station cappuccino on a cold morning when I was running errands … nothing that resembled the 4-5 cup marathon I used to have every morning.

During that time, when I smelled my husband’s coffee brewing, I appreciated the familiar scent. When I left my house with two free hands, sans a travel mug, I felt liberated. During the initial cold turkey endeavor, I had only minor withdrawal symptoms.

Then this morning, around 6:00am, I told my better half, Dwayne, that sometimes I did just want a cup of coffee while I was working at home. When it’s raining or snowing and I’m curled up with my laptop taking care of my day-gig work, coffee is a presence that keeps me company along with our three dogs. Dogs and coffee…wonderful, right?

In addition to quitting coffee several weeks ago, another thing happened. I quietly hit a funk with the novel I’m writing. I was full steam ahead for months – sharing it with beta readers, editing, re-writing, researching. Then it became more like work to be done, instead of a creative project to bring to fruition.

I still worked on it while my son, Aaron, was in his multiple weekly music rehearsals (I’m his driver). I made character notes over iced tea and refined plot points over diet soda. When I told my husband last weekend that I just didn’t feel like working on it, he said, “I wish I knew what to tell you.” I shrugged and said, “I just have to get the work done. Sometimes we don’t feel like going to work, but we get dressed and we go, and then payday comes. I have to stay focused until ‘payday,’ until that breakthrough, but the breakthroughs don’t come unless the work gets done.”

Back to this morning, when I mentioned that I was thinking about drinking coffee again in the mornings, he told about a recent story he heard on NPR. It was about a man named Michael Pollan who has been doing experiments, including one like mine in which he gave up caffeine for three months. He talked about the negative effects it had on his creativity, and boy did my ears perk up. (Read the NPR article about caffeine here.)

In addition to not feeling jump-through-the-ceiling excited about my novel draft, I realized that I was also not as enthusiastic about my yoga practice, even putting down a Deepak Chopra book that I just wasn’t feeling. The book was “The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire,” and in the intro I found myself thinking that I didn’t even know what I desired. To publish another book? Meh.

Ironically, Pollan is quoted as having said something similar about his own book project: “I just couldn’t focus. I lost confidence. The whole book seemed like a really stupid idea. And loss of confidence is actually listed as one of the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal.” Interesting, huh?

In all honesty, I may be dragging from the predictable world-weight associated with winter in Cincinnati; being an amazing (yeah I said it) mom who drives her sons everywhere they need to be, with snacks; and trying to just keep it all together while holding a full-time job, taking care of dogs and chickens and family, exercising and eating right, and keeping my skin moisturized.

But I owed it to you to give an update about the coffee at least. As I return to enjoying a cup or two in the mornings, if I discover anything groundbreaking in regards to a return to creativity and excitement about a slow-moving, somewhat lonely, multi-year project (aka writing a novel as a working mom), I promise you’ll be the first to know.

In the meantime, the takeaway is to experiment. I reached a point where coffee wasn’t making me happy at all, and so I parted with it long enough to realize what the balance can look like. If you have something in your life that needs a break, then address it. See what comes out the other side. Even if you go back to it, like I have with coffee, you’ll have learned something. Let me know how it goes for you.

Peace, love, and coffee,
Cherie Dawn