How coffee works

For me anyway. Okay this is an exciting new discovery, and the fact that after 2 hours of sleep in the last 28 hours or so I feel up and perky and inspired to blog about it, says something about the effect on me.

I had a cup of strong coffee about 12 hours ago. And worked through the night with a little sleep in between. Woke up naturally after 2 hours because I was done sleeping. Right now, physically speaking, I feel a bit heavy, like if I entered a particular mood I could go to sleep and then could drag myself around all day talking about being sleep-deprived. I just don't want to, emotionally. Like there's a habit that would drag me down, but I can also choose not to.

I'd always thought that coffee was supposed to MAKE you alert and wired and awake. And the few times I tried coffee and caffeine pills, waiting for that to happen, it never happened. Always felt sleepy or unaffected. Now I see I was doing it wrong! I see I have to cooperate with the coffee.

Tonight I still felt I was getting drowsy and that I could easily fall asleep any time I chose to go to sleep - it was just incredibly easy to stay focused and motivated if I wanted to. So I stayed awake - I had a deadline to catch. I've done all-nighters before without coffee, just by getting into this zone of forgetting everything else because getting the job done is the only thing that matters, and it's urgent - and that state actually makes it easy to work long hours on things that otherwise don't interest me. Much less distraction, much narrower focus and more power. Sort of like people get in extreme dangerous or life-threatening situations where they're capable of incredible feats of endurance and will, that's what I often need to invoke to do my daily job. Shit.

Only this time with coffee my mood was altered, the feeling was much lighter and much less pressure was needed to keep motivated. As if I forgot why it was I didn't like this. As if you could give me anything to do and I would just do it because that's what was necessary right now, with no resistance. Resistance and the attitude that this is bad or unpleasant came only as a thought, but I was actually enjoying myself, so I didn't need to go to sleep. The desire to avoid work, was lifted. I still feel very motivated to go into the day and take care of things that need to be taken care of.

This is actually not unlike the feelings of flow and acceptance I've sometimes had without coffee, a kind of elated state where everything is just taken as it comes, and dealt with. Only now I discovered how coffee especially facilitates that. I'm high on caffeine. How cool is that.