The Bloom — attention

We drink the sweet essence of the sacred bean in every season and for a wealth of reasons. It is solace and sustenance, the force that renews and reinvigorates both body and mind to bring focus to our days and the moments within them. In this, there is much power and possibility, and when we take that first sip, we are inviting this energy into our lives to work its magic. Yet for all of its many capacities to illuminate, we rarely tap into what is at once coffee’s most obvious and most overlooked potential. We don’t really consider it...

I seek an orderly life. It’s A to B to C in order to get to D for me. That’s how I roll. But what happens when Z pops up uninvited along the way? The other day I had it all mapped out. There was a route. There were objectives. There was a schedule, a destination, and a list of things to get done. Then Z appeared. A flyer at the gym for a flea market, which normally I am a sucker for but not on a day when I’ve got a serious agenda. I dutifully ignore Z. Then again...

When I was a kid, more than one teacher said I was a daydreamer. They didn’t mean it as a compliment. It was their way of accusing me of lacking focus and having a wandering mind. And I did—it’s always been a little too easy for my thoughts to take off on a little meandering head trip of their own no matter what’s going on around me. I spent years worrying about it, convinced that I was a little too spacey for my own good and that I needed to really focus on focusing or there’d be trouble. After all,...