Snack Dilemma

On the surface, there are a ton of clouds that shield the office with very few rays of sunshine slipping through to you when you’re glued down in the cube. But this is our life for the next few decades, so the game to master is spotting excitement throughout the day with the objects provided by your office admin.

My strategy for achieving happiness amongst the dreary gray is centered around three key tentpole moments each day: coffee, lunch, snack time.

Coffee

The only way to start the day with a BANG - coffee! I don’t care if it’s hot, iced, latte, cold brew, two sugars & one cream. I don’t care if it’s the 10 hour old coffee that’s gone sour in the pot!! The day needs to begin with a cup and for me it usually is a coffee I enjoy until it’s time for lunch. It’s about maximizing the little things.

BTW - I do actually care. I want to start my day with a Cortado - the apex beverage of the coffee industry.

Lunch

As I finish the final sips of coffee, I head to the kitchen for lunch. The true beauty of lunch is not the food but the 30 minutes away from my desk.

For 30 minutes, I mentally get to refresh. I can stare out the window at the Puget Sound and ponder things “like why isn’t there a tunnel connecting to Bainbridge Island” or “Vegas is an oversaturated market for sports, when the NBA expands to Seattle, the other team should 100% be Vancouver.” Rather than rewriting a teams message to directly tell someone to hurry up without being too rude - “would be great if you could get this by EOD but let me know if your plate is too full.”

Then the storm rolls in for about two hours.

Snack Time

The final piece of the puzzle to get through the day.

Our office has an entire wall dedicated to snacks. It’s stocked full of options including chips, candy, cookies, biscuits, biscoffs (that’s another story), mac & cheese, popcorn, on and on and on.

But you get to the wall, with all these options, and just stand there like a lost child trying to find their mother. Just completely drawing a blank on what to decide. You just hope nobody walks over to snag something as you stand there panicking. Not because there is too much to decide between, rather you go through the same process every day so your attitude toward certain snacks change.

What’s funny about the whole situation is when you’re give a tiny bag of pretzels from the flight attendant, it’s the greatest snack ever meanwhile if that pathetic lil pouch was sitting on our snack wall, even a rodent that scurried by wouldn’t bother taking it.

Anyways, I snag my bag of white cheddar cheez-it’s, my latest obsession, and file back to my desk where I just need to run out the clock for another 45 minutes.

All in all, there’s about 3 hours a day where things feel grim but those other 5 hours are filled with sweet lil treats!