Okay. I lied. I don't drink coffee. I am pretty sensitive to stimulants, and the first time I really drank coffee I ended up going for a 15 mile walk, in the middle of the night, barefoot. So I mostly drink tea. Lots of tea. The first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning is making my first cup of tea. And then I make it and return to my bedroom, and propped up on my bed, I open my laptop and start chasing the crumbs.
I am still numb in the morning, if not actively depressed. I wake up and don't want to do things, and feel daunted by the day ahead. And then I might open up the news and feel even worse. So then I go out to my task of seeing how many internet points I accumulated while sleeping. Has anyone e-Mailed me? Have any observations on inaturalist.org got identifications? Has my YouTube channel gotten any views, any spikes shown up on the graph of whether people are paying attention to me? If I am using reddit, are there any replies or upvotes, including to bog standard observations or jokes that managed to sneak in early? And what about old reliable e2? Has someone given a comment on something I wrote 15 years ago and can't remember? Are people, in the world, noticing me? Like Pac-Man, I chase little approval pellets on the internet. And like Pac-Man, my exits from this maze also just warp around. Every once in a while I hope that something will give me a flash, spark a new connection, take me to another level, that one of my thousand off-hand observations or projects will engender strategic transcendence. But, of course, the game of internet points stays the same.
And at some point during this, I get up, go back to the kitchen, and drink my tea. Sometimes I come too early, and it is still hot, and I sip it. Sometimes I have gotten lost chasing bread crumbs and it is room temperature. Sometimes it is hot and I give in, throwing in a host of ice cubes, splashing tea over the counter will it will stay, staining the countertop until I remember to sponge it up. And then I gulp my tea up. And my soul is warm, maybe not electric, but warm and limber enough to function. I let the tea wake me up, and take out my big ball of string, with cables running all over the world, and proceed to tug and pull on the cables, seeing what, if anything, they will pull in. A fisher of information. A sailor on the seas of fate. And so there I am, reaching a happy medium, warm tea glow and limber soul, combing along the world's ebb and flow of information, even if I don't get anywhere in particular.