Some days, you discover you're still cradling a coffee mug that's gone cold.
That was me this morning. I'd been staring into the abyss of the grey street beyond the coffee shop windows. This week's been a bit intense, work-wise, and I was feeling tired and a little uninspired. Begrudgingly, I nudged myself onward to keep sifting through the website architecture of a current project.
Next to me, a woman had been chatting on the phone with a laptop open in front of her. I figured she was in her twenties, wearing a beanie and a flannel while searching for the right words to say to whoever was on the other end of the call. By my best guess, it was a sales call. Either that, or she was an account manager of some sort dealing with a tricky client.
I had my Loop earplugs in and noise cancelling headphones on, but still couldn't block out her voice. For the vibe of the call, she was surprisingly calm and steady. But loud. So I turned up the volume of the music I was listening to.
Opting out of my usual work playlist full of instrumentals, I went for something a little more lively.
I was a teenager when I joined the ranks of devoted Dave Matthews Band followers. In high school, my friends and I would go to the Comcast Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts to tailgate before piling onto the lawn section of the pavilion. I'd never seen anything like it. Aside from the jam-bandy, tie-dyed-haze, seeing a group play live with such fervent musicianship was exhilarating. We all thought so. Going actually became something of a summertime tradition for us. As we got older, went to college, got jobs, and moved away, it gave us a way to get together and escape the world for a bit.
The coffee shop snapped back into focus when Grey Street came on.
While the woman kept chatting away next to me, I found myself chuckling at the irony of getting so much joy from a song about the lack of it.
What's your go-to way of getting through a slog?
onward.
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