time spent offline

French press is the superior coffee brewing method: Boil water, add ground coffee to French press, pour water, and a few minutes later you will have delicious liquid caffeine to jolt you into sweet-sweet reality. I let my coffee brew for four minutes. I used to fill that time with scrolling. What can you really do in four minutes anyway? Scroll. Kill time. It’s only four minutes anyway. But you can’t scroll when your phone is a dumb smartphone. Out of desperation, I arrive at a valuable lesson. The best lessons are arrived at. I look at the dishwasher that needs to be emptied. I don’t think there is enough time to empty a full dishwasher while my coffee brews. It only takes four minutes. Not enough time to put the dishes away. Not enough time to reload the dishwasher. Not enough time to put recyclables outside. Not. Enough. Time.

But I have nothing better to do. I could just stand there and wait, but I can’t do that just yet. Time is painfully obvious when you stop, pause, just stand there. Out of desperation, with no better option to pass four whole minutes— which all of a sudden feels very long and painful— I start emptying the dishwasher. It feels good to have it empty. I look at the timer and there’s two whole minutes left. I figure I could reload the dishwasher. When I’m done with that, there is still a minute left. I put away things on the counter back in the cabinet. Four minutes is a long time. So now every time I make coffee, I set the timer to four minutes and do things instead of scrolling. Often, I empty the dishwasher, reload, clean around the kitchen. Sometimes I’m rushing but I know once I set my coffee to brew, I have four minutes to get dressed, grab all the stuff I need, and be ready to leave. Four minutes is a long time when you’re not scrolling.