2020 Gratitude: French Press

I completely intended for this gratitude series to be one-a-day from December 1st until December 25th – oops! There are still many things that I want to express gratitude for from this year – so I’m going to wrap up the year with the rest of my posts that have been on my to-do list.

I usually try to drink nicer coffee beans (because I’m one of those), but I could not resist this bag of Dunkin’ Polar Peppermint ground coffee when I saw it! Thankfully, it is terrible, and now I know not to fall for zippy marketing!

I have a weird relationship with coffee. In high school, I guzzled bottled frappucinos like crazy and wondered why I had trouble falling asleep at night. In college, I learned about caffeine (it really took me that long!), and used coffee from the dining hall to carry me through long all-nighters. After college, I took advantage of my office’s neverending stash of iced coffee to adjust to the 9-to-5 life.

As time has gone on, I’ve realized that bad sleep was affecting my life negatively and focused more and more on my sleep hygiene. I’ve alternately tried cutting out caffeine all together, replacing coffee for black tea, replacing coffee for green tea, and only drinking coffee when I felt like I “needed it” to get me through a long day of meetings or exploring a new city while travelling. I love the smell and taste of coffee, but, on the other hand, the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life (so far!) has been intense caffeine headaches.

In quarantine, however, I’ve learned to lean on little pleasures to carry me through the day, and coffee has emerged as one of those many little pleasures. At first, I wanted to go to each of the coffee shops in my neighborhood every morning to support them through the pandemic, but quickly realized that this was not financially sustainable! Instead, I decided to invest in a French press and bags of locally roasted beans to make coffee at home.

Coffee has carried me through many rough mornings throughout this year. Boiling the water, grinding the beans, and pouring out my morning cup has become a grounding ritual, and a way to start my day without jumping straight into work!

2020 Gratitude: Discord

I started using Discord in late summer. One of my friends introduced it as an easier way to configure voice chat while playing games of Among Us.

However, while we first started using it as a way to talk about video games, it has become an invaluable way for me to keep in touch with friends that I was struggling to maintain regular communication with.

I’ve never been great about reaching out to individual people unless I had a specific reason to – and those reasons are few and far between, especially now, when not much is happening, ever! Instead, I leaned a lot on group chats, where I could rely on other people to throw out topics of discussion and participate on an ad-hoc basis. Though this worked out fine for a while, especially when I could still see people in person, it started to become less reliable for me as time went on. I eventually narrowed my range of group chats down to a small amount, which was good for my easily distracted brain, but ultimately bad for actually keeping in touch with a wider range of people about a wider range of topics (as many of those chats were created for specific purposes or discussions about specific things).

However, Discord has allowed me to expand my horizons! Through the different rooms, I still have the structure of focused “group chats”, but with the ability to mute and lurk and and jump in whenever I want, without having to worry about people noticing that I’ve muted a chat, or feeling excluded from conversations. These servers also include friends that I do want to keep in touch with but have never had specific reasons to talk to, giving me a convenient way to have organic conversations with them.

Keeping up with friends has always been an immense source of stress for me – ask my therapist about it! – and while Discord doesn’t solve all of my problems (honestly, it’s created some new ones), I think it’s been a net positive, and I’m looking forward to continuing to use it in the new year!

2020 Gratitude: Brewing Kombucha

In the “before times”, I often treated myself to a bottle of kombucha whenever I needed a pick-me-up. In my head, I likened it to, “basically juice, but it has probiotics, right? so it’s healthy too!” (I wish I could say it more elegantly than that – but it is the truth! Kombucha is Millennial juice! My blood glucose levels are not fooling anyone!!!)

Though I knew it was possible to brew kombucha at home, and even got a kit as a Secret Santa present a few years ago, the convenience of getting right before checking out at the grocery store always won. However, the price started to add up as well. Quarantine gave me a great excuse to finally tear into my Christmas present and try out kombucha brewing for myself.

The process was surprisingly simple – brew some tea, mix in some sugar, add water and starter, and let sit in a cabinet. After my second or third batch, I was pretty comfortable with the process, and was happy that I could now sip some Millennial juice in the comfort of my own home, without having to go to the grocery store to satisfy my cravings.

The next thing I have to experiment with is flavoring – maybe in the new year!