There’s a kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. You wake up with it already installed. It feels less like exhaustion and more like static. Too many tabs open in the mind. Too many unfinished gestures. Too many tiny negotiations with the day before it has even started. For a while I thought this was just adulthood. Or work. Or the news cycle. Pick your villain.
The first time I read about Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I was sitting in a café not unlike the one in the book — quiet, a little narrow, the kind of place where time seems to gather rather than pass. Outside, the city was still in its morning hurry, but inside there was only the soft hum of the espresso machine and the faint clatter of cups.
I don’t want to run like this anymore. It’s not doing me any good. More than that: it’s jeopardizing my health. I’m jeopardizing my health. And my joy of running is at risk too. I owe this realization to a gadget, not my own insight. But let’s start from the beginning.