It’s day 13 of Blogvember. I’m following the prompts from Andrew Canion, which can be found here.

Every morning, I usually like to start my day by brewing a cup of coffee. I typically enjoy my coffee black, or occasionally with a splash of cream, when I brew it myself at home. In the morning, my preference is always for my coffee to be hot, irrespective of the time of year. While I’ve certainly heard that drinking a hot beverage on a hot day is the best way to cool down, for me it boils down to comfort. There’s nothing quite like a hot drink to start my day.

I’ve read that for some coffee nerds (I suppose I could include myself there, but I daresay I’m on the mild to moderate side of the coffee nerd spectrum), the important part of coffee is the ritual. For others, it’s the need for caffeine. I fall in neither camp, most days; there’s certainly days I go without, due to time or other factors, and I rarely feel that sense of craving or other symptom of dependence. I like to think I do that from time to time to prevent a physiological dependence, but it’s never a conscious decision. (And, in the interest of fully fleshing this idea out, I may very well be dependent on it; but for the sake of this discussion, I like to think that’s not the case.)

For me, it’s a simpler reason I enjoy it: having a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning is just about the only part of my life which is consistent. My work schedule is unpredictable from one day to the next, and on a given week, I can have a first start to the day in a different place every day of the week. So that cup of coffee? It helps ground me (pun surprisingly not intended, but recognized and embraced almost immediately) in a way that other things can’t.

The simple act of heating some water in a kettle and taking a moment to gently brew a pour over cup of coffee is something I look forward to and enjoy every day. When all else is up in the air, at least I can make a good cup of coffee and go from there.