Hey — It’s Toffer.
It’s 2025. I stopped.
Estimated read time: 5 minutes
Act I: Brew
Every morning starts the same.
A soft whir, low mechanical hum, and the click of hot liquid hitting ceramic. The machine’s not fancy—just reliable. One button. Same beans. Same IKEA mug.
I like the ritual. It gives the day a start line.
But lately, I’ve been staring at the machine as it brews—already halfway through a message I haven’t written, already calculating if I can squeeze a meeting before lunch.
The coffee finishes. I take the mug. I walk away.
But I don’t feel present until the third sip. Maybe fourth.
Sometimes not even then.
It’s not the coffee.
It’s not even the machine.
It’s me—somewhere between what I’m doing and what I’m supposed to be doing. Too distracted to call it peace. Too functional to call it loss.
Act II: Blur
It didn’t start with burnout. There was no breakdown.
What I felt was more dangerous—something I could still function with.
A slow forgetting.
Not of schedules or names.
Of how to hold a thought long enough to find what’s underneath it.
It showed up quietly. Skimming books instead of finishing them. Starting sentences I couldn’t land. Saving articles I’d never read, as if future-me had more attention than I do.
My life is built to respond. To pivot. To make things smooth.
But thinking—the kind that bruises a little, the kind that digs—has no place in a calendar built for flow.
So I started outsourcing it.
Smart voices. Clean summaries. Playlists labeled “for deep work” that somehow made me forget what deep even means.
I told myself I was learning.
But I wasn’t digesting.
I was just swallowing.
I wasn’t bored.
I was afraid of friction.
And friction is where meaning begins.
Act III: Friction
I don’t commute anymore. I walk—to SM, to errands, around the village.
That’s a gift. But even on foot, I feel myself rushing.
I used to fill every walk with podcasts. Learning while moving. No dead time. No gap wide enough for discomfort to sneak in.
Lately, I’ve started leaving the earphones behind.
At first, all I heard was noise—half-arguments I never said aloud, mental to-do lists, echo thoughts. But underneath those came something else. A sentence I needed to write. A question I hadn’t answered. A memory that didn’t ask for permission, just showed up.
That’s where I found the thread again.
Not in the clarity.
In the confusion that I stayed long enough to face.
Act IV: Return
There’s no fix.
I’m not switching to analog. I’m not moving to a mountain. I’m not deleting my apps and announcing it.
I’m just trying to do one thing at a time—and feel it.
A printed essay I read slowly, without highlighting.
A five-minute walk without a goal.
A book I finish not because it’s “for work,” but because it bent something honest inside me.
And the coffee.
I still make it the same way every morning. Still press the button. Still wait for the hum. But now, I don’t leave the machine while it brews.
I stay.
I listen to the motor. Watch the stream. Smell the bloom of heat. I let the moment finish itself.
I do nothing else.
It’s not a ritual.
It’s resistance.
To be here.
To hold one thought, long enough to know it’s mine.
To notice again.
Because if I can do it with coffee—
Maybe I can do it with the rest of my life.
Your Friend in Time,
Toffer