It is truly amazing what a late night cup of coffee can do for my restless and scattered mind. This is not the first time that I have sat down with a cup of brew after the sun has gone down and spent a couple hours figuring out my life. My to-do and project list has been pitifully short the past couple weeks. That may sound like a good thing, but I assure you it is not. My short list was a product of keeping too much in my mind. I didn't think I really had that much up there anyway, considering my reduced responsibilities and lack of a full-time job. However, once I started writing and sipping my coffee, I rattled off three pages of ideas, concerns, projects, to-dos and other flotsam that was clogging my neural passageways.
Despite my new writing projects and renewed commitment to making something of myself as a writer, I've been plagued by an uneasy sense of underwhelming. I have a ton of free-time and I have not been using it as well as I should. This late night brain dump has filled me with a new sense of energy and purpose, something I have lacked for too long.
The most important thing I accomplished from this activity was breaking down some ill-defined and vague goals into steps that I can actually execute. For example, when it comes to my coaching I don't know what exactly I want to do or how far I'm going to go. I do, however, have some excellent contacts with former coaches (including an ex-NHL coach) that I should utilize. So, I spent a couple minutes to track down some email addresses and phone numbers and will be sitting down next week to discuss my coaching future with a couple of guys who really know what they are talking about. I still don't know what my future holds in terms of coaching, but at least I have taken steps to figure it out.
I really don't know if the combination of late-night caffeine and subtle self-loathing is my ticket to these flashes of motivation and self-realization. All I know is that once every couple months I brew myself a hot cup of joe, resist the urge to go to bed, sit down at my desk with a pen and a piece of paper (or three), and just let my worries, thoughts, and ideas flow out.