On coffee
Average filler episode in Bean's life
Hi blog, what’s good?
As I am writing this, I am sitting in a café (well, technically, outside a café). I am currently on a 2-week break from the office. Is there a reason in particular as to why I am on this break? Not really. Do I get enough paid holidays to do this? Also no. It’s literally whatever.
The thing about being a woman in STEM is that you tend to burn out every once in a while.
I am totally making this up, omg let me start again.
The thing about being an empathetic person in a not-so-empathetic workplace is that you tend to burn out from time to time. Towards the final work days before this break of mine, I found myself crying over the smallest things. Things like small puppies playing together, butterflies hopping from one flower to the next, and my friends agreeing to have coffee with me.
My therapist reads my blog, and she only ever has good things to say about my writing. However, she pointed something out to me in our last session. She noticed that I am not really in touch with my emotions. That, the moment my rational brain realises that it is feeling an emotion, it jumps to form a rationale around it.
Why are you feeling sad, Bean? Why are we crying over a bad outcome that wasn’t in our control, Bean? Bean, you are so fucking stupid, you can’t even solve this one problem that everyone around can solve so easily. Bean, maybe you should quit this job because you can’t even get five sentences out of that mouth of yours without stuttering. My rational brain is a mean bitch.
I have realised my rational self has become my workplace. Specifically, the spiritual embodiment of the emotional apathy that I associate with my workplace. Or any workplace, for that matter.
What does this have to do with coffee?
Back in university, I saw a bunch of my peers picking up the habit of smoking. I am not really sure what drives people to do it, but I always told myself I shouldn’t because I don’t want to voluntarily damage my lungs. An Electrical Engineering degree can be challenging. I’d argue that Electrical Engineering was probably the most rigorous Bachelor’s program my university had to offer. On top of that, I went out of my way to pick courses that constantly challenged my brain. And I really cared about my grades. All of this with the ‘rational’ part of me constantly berating myself should’ve been enough to drive me into stuff like drinking and smoking.
That just didn’t happen. Our university had an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Any time I felt overwhelmed, all I had to do was jump into the pool and do a 2k. Our university also had a fancy café, and my dad would give me enough allowance to buy myself a vanilla latte and a spinach-and-corn sandwich almost every day. Lastly, our hostels had these huge balconies where one could, in theory, sit late at night and cry while talking to their parents. In theory.
The thing about becoming part of the workforce and doing 10-12-hour workdays is that you don't have time to do any of these things.
My rational self is a mean bitch, but I am sure she is this way because I, as a whole, think that that sort of critical feedback is somehow necessary for my survival.
If I practice hurting myself hard enough, nothing anyone says or does to me will have an effect.
If you’re familiar with the activation of a neuron, you must have seen the following graph:
You must’ve noticed the maximum and minimum on this graph. I envision the activation of my rational self to be just like this, even if the reasoning behind it differs. Whenever I am in a situation where I sense that I am being evaluated (school, uni, work, navigating while sitting in the passenger seat), my rational self is on high alert (the potential maxima). Any minor screw-up prompts it to say something mean, before anyone else can get in a word. This exercise is overall exhausting for me, and perhaps that causes me to burn out every once in a while.
This is where coffee comes into play.
I have spent the last three and a half years looking for spaces in Japan that would let me feel at ease. It’s an actual Google Maps collection of cafés, art museums, galleries and parks. Spaces where I can escape from any sort of scrutiny or evaluation. The dip happens when I first enter a space like this. A breath of fresh air, followed by a dip in my energy. My rational self finally deems life safe enough for me to relax.
The last 6-7 months have been exhausting. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I started working in a domain that was entirely new to me while dealing with loss in my personal life. I chose to take a break because I needed to save myself. I genuinely love what I do at work, but that does not change the fact that I am going through a lot. My rational self tried to talk me out of it, and had succeeded multiple times in the past. I don’t think I can afford to care about what critics would think of my human-ness.
These days, I have a fixed routing. I go to a few cafés near my house every day. I talk to strangers, who have now become acquaintances. I have my own usuals at all these places, and if I am lucky, I also get to hang out with babies. On weekends, I try to venture out and find new potential safe spaces.
Like I tell all my friends, I like the life I have built for myself. Does it get lonely at times? Yes. I realise that for someone who misses having people around, I choose activities that might be too solitary. However, I think it is more important for me right now to find my own rhythm.
The following is a playlist I created to go with my safe spaces.
If you’d like, tell me what your safe space looks like?
Loved your self awareness and honesty! Enjoy your break 💕
I love going to parks and people watching and getting a coffee after...it's my tiny routine when I'm not in college:)