Off The Grid: One Week Down

The following was going to be my initial first paragraph:

Normally when I write my posts, I’m usually with a cup of coffee near me. But since I gave up coffee (and caffeine for that matter) for the month of May, I’m drinking my alternative go-to beverage: a cup of herbal tea.

Yeah, this was going to be my initial first paragraph until the fog, and cloudy skies and chilly morning came swooping in and there was no denying myself a cup o’ hot joe. Decaf joe, of course. I simply could not resist!!

I may have only consumed half of a cup, but it hit the spot and tomorrow, I’ll go back to my alternative go-to beverage of some type of herbal tea.

For me, herbal tea is not quite the same, or has the same level of effect that coffee has, obviously. I miss the taste of coffee. I’m having to reset my taste buds here, and my taste buds haven’t entirely been a doing happy dance everyday. If herbal tea tasted like coffee, I’d probably be drinking it all the time, but I know a brief break from coffee is what I need.

For the past several months my sleep has been off. I’ve been having insomnia more times than I’d like to count. Waking up tired, draws me to the coffee, especially the caffeinated kind which perpetuates the cycle of not sleeping well and relying on coffee to wake me up, and so forth and so forth.

Even decaf can have the effect which leads me to conclude I’m sensitive to it. This was probably evident by my major withdrawal symptoms I had when I upped my decaf portion in relation to the caffeinated portion. And sometimes going without a decaf coffee gives me headaches. Grrr. Placebo effect? 

Now I’ve been on herbal teas which don’t have any caffeine, and they’ve been helping me get through my coffee break. Most likely I’ll continue to incorporate more of the tea into my life. That’s if I decide to go back to my daily coffee habit. The verdict is still out on that one. But we’ll see. I did enjoy the few sips I took on this day, but I don’t know if it’s enough to get me back on it daily when this month is over. Maybe coffee will become a “now and then” kind of treat. Maybe.

But for the past week I’ve noticed my sleep has been more restful. And when I do wake up on days when I’m really tired (which hasn’t been many), I don’t feel the heavy tiredness I would often feel when I was drinking coffee regularly.

So all I can say is, so far so good, I’ve been surviving without coffee, and probably more importantly, other people have been surviving with me not having coffee.

I’ve also been surviving without social media, which I couldn’t tell if it was going to be easier, or more difficult, to break up with.

One of the main reasons why I went off social media is because while many people can manage their time well on them, I found myself, becoming more and more distracted.

They were distractions from me dealing with things I need to do, or other things I want to spend my time doing. I can lose so much time on these sites – a minute here, 5 minutes there, a whole hour waaaay over there – and it was time for me to step back and not have Twitter or the Facebook or Instagram be the first things I see to start my day.

It is an odd feeling because I do feel like I’m missing out on stuff even though others who have take hiatuses from social media have told me, they didn’t miss anything. I realize I am going to miss some things like birthdays, anniversaries, funny jokes, race finishes, etc. So I suppose if you’re reading this and have any of these posted in May: Happy Birthday! Happy Anniversary! Haha, that’s hilarious! Congratulations!

However, I find myself curious as to what’s happening in other people’s lives, and have to catch myself from grabbing my phone to check. I could grab my phone all I want, but those apps are not on there so I won’t get too far. This tells me something. Coffee isn’t the only thing I’m addicted to, and this is a wake-up call that I need to examine my relationship with these apps and what I want from them, and what I want to contribute.

At the end of this month, I could have those answers, or I may go back to how things were before. I guess I have another 3 weeks to find out.

Thanks for reading!