Questionable Decisions

I’m sitting here at the kitchen table drinking a coffee that tasted like it just got rejected from its dream job at Starbucks. You know the type — the kind that shows up late to its own interview, forgets its resume, and accidentally wears mismatched socks. This coffee is so confused it can’t decide if it’s supposed to be a comforting hug or an existential crisis in a mug.

I took the first sip and immediately thought, “Wow, this tastes like regret and last Tuesday’s unpaid invoices.” It’s giving “I meant to inspire you, but I accidentally reminded you of your ex.” It’s the kind of coffee that makes you question every life choice you’ve made since 2004, including that one time you tried bangs or dated someone who “just needed a place to stay for a few months.”

This coffee is like that motivational speaker who tells you to “believe in yourself” but then sells you a $3,000 online course on how to breathe correctly. It’s like a pep talk from a raccoon digging through your trash — aggressive, uninvited, and somehow still judgmental.

And yet… I keep sipping. Because if there’s anything more stubborn than my morning optimism, it’s my belief that maybe, just maybe, the next sip will turn things around. Spoiler alert: it won’t.

I sit here listening to the fridge hum its sad little song, the one that sounds like it’s trying to remember its dreams before it became a glorified milk guardian. Outside, the sun is shining like it has absolutely no idea that my to-do list is staring me down like a disappointed PE teacher.

I look at this coffee and think, “Wow, we really are in this together.” We’re both bitter, a little burnt out, and still somehow pretending we’re doing great. We both woke up this morning thinking, “Today is the day!” — only to realize we didn’t even wash yesterday’s dishes or reply to that one email from two weeks ago.

But here’s the magic: despite tasting like sadness with a splash of oat milk, this coffee is showing up. And so am I.

We are both proof that you don’t have to be perfect to keep going. You don’t have to taste like a barista’s dream to make it to the finish line. Sometimes you just have to pour yourself into a mug, face the music (or the unpaid bills), and keep moving forward.

So here’s to the coffee that tastes like questionable decisions and half-baked aspirations. Here’s to the kitchen table philosophers, the email ignorers, the dreamers who still dare to sip something terrible and call it “part of the journey.”

Today, we rise. We might rise shakily, slightly over-caffeinated, and questioning all of our life choices, but rise we do.

And if this coffee is any indication of the day ahead, at least we’ll have a hilarious story to tell later — maybe to a friend, maybe to a therapist, maybe just to ourselves in the mirror as we brush our teeth tonight and whisper, “We survived.”

Cheers to you, my fellow questionable decision-makers. May your coffee eventually taste like hope instead of burnt ambition, and may you find a reason to laugh at least once before lunch. We got this. Probably. Maybe. Almost definitely.