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If there’s one thing that will get an office full of government employees out of their seats, it’s coffee.

Recently our social club organised a coffee machine so people in the building could buy cheaper coffee than the cafeteria supplied. While I applaud their reasoning for doing so (the cafeteria jacked up their prices), I can’t believe how much attention the thing has picked up.

I find myself forming strong opinions on things that aren’t really that important to me. For instance, since selling my car and riding to work more often I am in disbelief when I hear about people driving 8 minutes to work rather than riding or walking. I end up labelling them all sheep and just disregarding their opinions from then onwards. Ok so maybe it’s not that bad, but I guess you could say that it “fuels the fire”, the fire being my hatred for lazy car drivers. People that could be walking, riding, jogging, and catching public transport and usually have no good reason not to do so.

Coffee is fast becoming my newest and biggest gripe. I’ve always been in tune with my hydration. Right now as I’m typing this I know that I need more water, even though I’ve had a good 5 pints of water already today. It’s only recently that I have realised the affects that different foods and drinks have on my hydration, and how important it is for myself to be hydrated.

Up until about a month ago I used to have the occasional black coffee. I actually like the taste of it, but recently my “stand” is more important than my need to drink coffee. I’ve quit (until I go to Italy next year). There are a huge number of people in my office, and obviously worldwide that start their day with a coffee, have another coffee for morning tea, then have a coke with lunch, and later have another coffee for afternoon tea. If their body is lucky it will finally get some water with dinner! Living like this is terrible for your body, but it’s so accepted that I’m the freak for not having a coffee in the morning, and for going to the toilet every hour.

Anyway, this is my gripe and I’m sticking with it. Now do yourself a favor and drink a glass of water!

I’ve been watching a lot of The Sopranos lately. I love the show, and to be honest I don’t know why. The life that they are leading is one that would just never interest me. For those that don’t watch the show, it follows the life of a mob boss, and everything that goes on around him in his day to day life. Long work days, carrying the pain of killing people (often loved ones), and stress about work and the consequences of his exploits (being arrested or killed). His family has every possession they could want, yet so many problems as a result.

Walking to the bus interchange today I noticed that someone had spray painted “Life?” on the path. It wasn’t like the usual graffiti that I see around there. This was written more like one of those “No Milk” or “Go Vegan” tags, which aims to make people think. It made me think for sure. I don’t know what it was meant to mean but to me it seems as though it’s asking me, as I walk to the interchange to catch a bus to work. Is this life? Am I living? Or am I merely just “getting by”? Doing what everyone else does and calling it life..?

It also reminded me of a radio show called “Hack” that I was listening to a few weeks back. On this particular show they were talking about death and all things death. One of the people they spoke to was a freestyle motocross rider who “flirts with death” for a living. When asked about life, he says that a lot of people are nowadays just living and working 9 till 5, and he’s more scared of that than dying. For him it’s all about feeling life and “being alive”.

Incidentally this morning as I was thinking about all of this, I played a song called Entertainment by Rise Against. The line that struck me was “We’ve all made petty fortunes but we can’t afford a life”, and I really think it rings true in a lot of people’s lives. Why do so many of us earn decent wages, but never seem to have enough to really enjoy life? I’ve spoken about it before – working to live or living to work. For most it’s a very fine line, unable to shake the expectations of friends, family, colleagues and so forth. For others it’s easy to just leave the life that is expected of them, in order to live the life that they will enjoy.

After just having four days away from work over Easter, I’ve had a good break to catch up with my fiancee. Yesterday we just laid on a rug and lied in the sun for an hour or so, just talking about everything and enjoying the outdoors together. That, to me is living. I’ve realised that in order to enjoy life I only need a handful of things, very few of which have anything to do with money. Today I’m in an office surrounded by people still trying to get a big enough hit of coffee to wake themselves up at lunch time.

This ain’t living.