I’m drinking yet another cold coffee, and, as it happens, this one isn’t meant to be – I just didn’t pay it any attention until it had gone cold. Honestly, it’s black coffee, and it’s fine, and I barely care, so I just shrug it off and drink it. Lately, I’ve been choosing to reliably stick with some version of black coffee, no added sugar (ever), no cream, creamer, or dairy substitutes, just the straight up real deal. I feel better, generally, as a result. Funny the sorts of changes that matter.

My Traveling Partner and I have been choosing to reduce our sugar intake generally, which seems healthy. I feel less prone to emotional dysregulation, as a result. He also seems to be calmer and generally less prone to irritability. Helpful all around. Sometimes this one is tough; sugar is every bit as appealing as any highly addictive substance might be (at least for me) and I experience more sugar-related “cravings” than I ever experienced cravings over anything explicitly described as addictive. Weird, eh? One might think that sellers of things based on sugar might have some kind of economic interest in persuading the consuming public that sugar is “harmless”… the way they push it on people and sneak it into things. It certainly requires a high level of attention-to-detail and scrutiny to successfully reduce sugar intake.

The commute in was a strange one. Traffic was very heavy, likely a byproduct of recent inclement weather keeping folks home with the result that more people than usual went into an office today. I chose, relatively recently (last fall) to change my approach to driving (after I got a speeding ticket), and began practicing a much calmer more relaxed approach to my commute each day. The result has been noteworthy; every commute seems less aggravating, and this is whether there is any traffic or not. I feel more relaxed, and more centered in my own experience, without “competition” with other drives, and losing the vague sense of entitlement that often kept me on edge and genuinely irritated with what other drivers were doing. I mostly don’t care about that now, I just focus on getting where I’m going safely, without regard to when I get there, or what the driving conditions are like. It’s way more chill, and I find that it gives me time to think thoughts and enjoy the drive itself. “The journey is the destination”, applied to the commute. Another really good result from a relatively small change.

I guess what I’m saying is don’t underestimate the power of a small change to make a big difference in your experience. Hell, maybe those small changes actually matter most – because it’s more likely they’ll become regular practices relatively quickly with minimal upheaval. Something to think about.

I finish my cold coffee and glance at the calendar. It’s time to begin again.