How many cups of coffee does it take to run a business?

I love coffee. I love the smell, I love the taste... I even love the sounds that the coffee machine makes as it percolates my happy mug of sanity.

 I don't function very well without my coffee. I know that in this day and age we're supposed to be ashamed of anything even boarding on an 'addiction', while striving for a body that runs on unadulterated, organic goodness alone - but I don't want to be free of my coffee addiction. Call me old-fashioned, but a harmless vice or two seems more than acceptable considering the state of the world right now. Have your caffeine, I say, have your Coca-Cola, your chocolate, your coffee. If it helps you to get out of bed in the morning, and isn't actually hurting another living entity, it simply can't be all bad. 

 I have M.E., so I am basically tired all of the time. There is never a day in which I have oodles of boundless energy. There are days when I can function, and then days when I cannot. For this reason, I drink caffeine at all hours, much to the incredulous shock of friends and acquaintances. I can drink a big mug of coffee just before bed and be out for the count in ten seconds flat. Sleep and I are soulmates, and we are never far apart. Coffee is sadly not a cure for my health problems, but it can definitely make day to day life more bearable for me, as I'm sure it does for countless people around the world. Maybe even You!

 I am beyond thrilled to be launching Kist Creative's creative writing classes at long last. Many cups of milky java have fueled the writing of the 101 textbook, the guinea pig trials, and the marketing brainstorms, which eventually got me thinking about all of the many employees out there jumpstarting their day with a fresh pot of Joe. Without coffee, just where would our society be?

 Thinking on that prospect makes me want to write a dystopian novel in which coffee is no longer available, and the desperate and tired labourers of the age must explore alternative options for igniting their pep on a morning. I'm trying to recall what people did in the days before coffee was readily available...

  Ancient Peruvians used to chew coca leaves... there was tea, of course, which also has caffeine, albeit less...

 Whatever substitutions might be made, however, I just know I couldn't love them half as much as I love coffee. I hope to go on drinking my favourite, aromatic drink in abundance for the rest of my days, allowing its tasty supply of energy to power all of my future endeavours. 

(Kist Creative - brought to you by a coffee-injected Valerie Valente)