not-so-clean energy

or: how to be more of myself

I am drinking a Club Mate and skating my socks across the apartment floors. Earlier today, I drank green tea and online shopped for hiking pants. A few hours before that, I had a cup of coffee with a touch of whole milk from the Chemex while jotting some dinner ideas into my notes app. I think my boyfriend prepared the Chemex coffee, but I wasn’t awake enough then to remember.

Tomorrow, I will probably enjoy the same caffeinated drinks, if not more — maybe adding a loose leaf earl grey I bought from the pretentious vegetarian supermarket. Or if it’s warm enough, maybe an espresso tonic. Or if the fog does make its way over Twin Peaks, maybe a hot cappuccino. (The steamer was recently fixed on my old Gaggia.)

They’re delicious but I’m really drinking all these for the quickness that I’ve decided is essential to everyday life, or at least essential to the experience-of-being-Rachel, even if that experience is simply making dumb jokes on the internet or having the energy to meet my friends or the willingness to compile a pivot tables for a few hours.

The drinks also pull me out of a “dead night,” which is when my boyfriend comes home from work to find me laying flat on the couch, hours into TikTok, too tired to get up and too relaxed to do anything else. Work is hard, I need rest! I tell him as I confess I haven’t given any thought to dinner and will not be partaking in any cooking or cleaning. However pathetic it sounds, I was even worse in 2020 and 2021 — when I am pretty sure I broke the national record for the amount of time someone can spend laying down flat on a couch while “participating” in graduate school seminars. 

I had no use for caffeine when I was locked up indoors all day, but now I have 1,000 chores and 1,000 plans and 1,000 fun little ideas. From the Yerba Mate I had on BART last weekend (hoping I’d be a little brighter by the time I got to the Japanese-Mexican small plates restaurant, where the plates were in fact too small) to the Yerba Mate I had at 10am yesterday to get through about six spreadsheets, caffeine’s been big for me lately. It helps me, or at least I enjoy it more because I think it helps me.

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There’s this funny confluence of forces right now where it feels like new energy drinks are dropping every day (Are you a Celsius Girl or a Bang Energy boy?), some positive press about nicotine contributed to nicotine pouches like Zyn getting trendy, and the Adderall shortage — once omnipresent — has begun to lessen (but the aggressive marketing campaigns of direct-to-consumer ADHD treatment startups like Done haven’t!).  All of my friends are getting souped up on stimulants, weekdays and weekends.

Remember when someone died from drinking Panera Charged Lemonade? And then it became an internet meme to go to Panera and drink it, all 390 mgs of caffeine? Even Monster, which has been around as long as I have known there to be corner stores in the world, has a strong presence among today’s TikTok influencers, gamers, and sponsored athletes.

Axios recently reported the share of U.S. adults who had drank coffee in the last day is at its highest in 20 years. Simultaneously, energy drinks seem to be more popular than ever before and as new versions are constantly being rolled out, especially those with a “wellness” component to them. While here and there I’ve heard an argument against caffeine, most frequently it’s coming from a carnivorous tech genius who is simultaneously suggesting I fast from various neurochemicals, so I have never paid much attention to them, so long as I have managed to keep my anxiety in check. (I’ve previously written about another angle of coffee-drinking—how not to let our present culture of “perfection” and “scientificity” eat away at what makes something like the ritual of coffee so special – see: “how to make a mediocre coffee.”)

Source: Axios

The popularity doesn’t seem all that surprising. Between Instagram and your boss both telling you to be better versions of yourself, there’s a huge market for tools to get you there, but only one of them is $1.99 at the corner store or sitting dormant in your pantry. Life’s easier and more fun when there’s more energy involved.

Although I’ll admit it does look a little uglier when you poke into it. Caffeine isn’t an especially new drug — why do we suddenly need all this energy? Does everyone just internalize anxiety as a side effect? Is life getting harder or is the bar getting higher? Is it because everyone’s focus is disappearing at once? Maybe everyone needs motivation because they hate their jobs? Are we actually getting more productive or are we just getting more addicted? 

A lot to consider! Modern life doesn’t make it easy. Companies seem pretty keen to exploit our worsening attention spans. Everyone is scrolling, which we know is just a slot machine for the brain, and work is globalizing so now you’re competing with a lot of other people to succeed. I’ve written before about how these broader cultural and economic trends can fuel anxiety and push yourself to, perhaps futilely, work harder, which pushes one (or at least me in particular) towards checking dumb content like Instagram Reels more frequently as a break—the hamster wheel of discontent.

Although I’ve found that funneling my energy solely towards work is a particularly bad model for the kind of focus that I, and probably most people reading this, need — which is a lot of calm and rational “analysis.” It is not, it turns out, best to have an elevated heart rate for two hours only to suddenly crash on the couch. (I also often cringe at writing when it’s clear the author has consumed too many stimulants.)

Not everyone is as caffeine-addicted as I am, but most of us who spend time online can probably relate to modern challenges with work and focus. Little phone breaks have consequences (one study puts it at 23 minutes and 15 seconds for every time we look at our phone). I once found myself cycling through Instagram stories while my projector displayed an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” I didn’t immediately recognize that I’ve already seen (in other words, the apex of connecting with so much that I fully disconnect, that old online-person habit). I am always telling myself “I need to be better” about focus, but only drinking coffee seems to get me there.

I know cycling between periods of activity and connection with subsequent crashes and disconnect (not unlike my generation’s predilection for both recreational Adderall and ketamine) is something to at least be mindful of. And after a busy afternoon, I know I should take a 10-minute walk in the famously sunny neighborhood of San Francisco that I pay 30% of my salary to live in—but frankly I will probably just drink another coffee.

In a world where I am expected to perform at a high level for approximately 16 hours per day, I have found out a way to have a good time, and at this present moment of my life, I don’t want to think about it too hard.* At least for now.

the corner store order of champions

*Last Saturday night while out with friends I tried a Zyn for the first time and immediately queued “Mambo No. 5” on a crowded bar’s jukebox (to more fanfare than condemnation). It was a good time.