October 9, 2014 by Amy

Where I confess my drinking problem

I have a problem that I think might be shared with other
writers who spend much of their days at a desk, pecking away at a keyboard. I
tend to accumulate a lot of drinks (non-alcoholic, mind you), or drink-holders (i.e. cups and mugs and bottles and the like), at my desk throughout the
course of a day. Usually by the end of a single day at my desk I have a used
coffee cup, an empty can of sparkling water, and a plastic water bottle. At
minimum, I have at least three different drinks on my desk. Sometimes there is
more.

I do not understand why, when I go to fill up my water cup, I
do not take the coffee mug and wash it out, then stash it in my desk. I think about
this all the time, but I never do it. So things accumulate.

And then, just now, I realized that I’m enabling myself. Because
I don’t like to work at a cluttered desk, I found myself pushing the used
coffee mug around the back of my laptop screen, so I just can’t see it. It’s
hanging out with the lemon drop jar, the Tardis, and a box of tissues. And probably some other cups and mugs. It will
not be dumped and washed until tomorrow morning, when I want a fresh cup of
coffee.

It is disgusting to me that I leave a mug with some coffee
in the bottom sitting on my desk for most of a day and then all night. In the
morning, the non-dairy creamer has separated from the old coffee and it doesn’t
even resemble what I consumed 24 hours before. Which makes me wonder about the
quality of what I’m consuming. Day-old water, after all, looks just like fresh
water.

This is the kind of shit that stews around in my
brain, but which I just can’t seem to remedy.

Maybe another cup of coffee would help.