This morning, I stood in my kitchen for 20 minutes, completely paralysed by a rogue coffee pod.

Let me explain.

We have one of those upright, spinny coffee pod holders, you know the ones that make you feel like you’re running a tiny café in your kitchen? It holds six vertical stacks of 10 x pods. In our house, I always take one pod from each of two specific stacks for my cups of caffeinated sanity. It’s a ritual, it’s a system and a delicate balance.

Today, I reached for one pod from each of the two chosen stacks, same as always but as I removed the first one, the last pod in that stack tumbled out. Just launched itself onto the worktop, made a break for it. A caffeinated leap of faith.

That’s when time stopped.

Because my brain went, “Wait! Hold up Henshaw! Was that pod meant to be part of this? Did I just disrupt the natural order?

Did it fall by accident, or was it trying to tell me something? Is this fate? A coffee fate?”

I stood there, two pods in hand, one escapee on the counter, and a completely unreasonable level of inner turmoil building. I could not, nay would not decide what to do next. I stood and looked, and looked and then looked some more. Do I use the pod that fell? Should I stick to the original two? Was it now part of the trio? What if I used the wrong combination and cursed my entire day?

That’s how I lost 20 minutes of my morning to a coffee pod existential crisis.

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Things I Learned:

My brain really likes systems.

My brain really hates it when systems break.

I will subconsciously attribute sentience to inanimate objects before accepting a random accident.

I need caffeine to function, but I may need it before I make the coffee.

Just thought I’d tell you. I’m going to explore the reasons behind this more over the next few weeks.

Right! Time for a brew