All That and Then Some

ALICE - Baby Got Back

THE MORNING RUSH IS over. The long (socially distanced) lineup of customers has receded — dental office receptionists and stay-at-home mums filtering back out into the neighbourhood, gripping croissants and flat whites — and our little cafe is transformed again into an oasis of calm. We might get the occasional dog-walker now, with dogs of all shapes and smells tied to their waists by brightly coloured leashes, twisting them up into complicated knots like a canine maypole, but basically, we'll have the place to ourselves until the local high school lets out. At 3:30, we'll flood again, this time with a sea of oversized hoodies and Herschel backpacks, faces buried in cell phones.

I like the high school kids and their taste for expensive lattes. I remember scraping nickels and dimes together with my friends to split a 20 pack of McNuggets or, later, of cigarettes, but it seems like fancy coffee drinks are the filthy addiction of the next generation. As a cafe owner, I couldn't be happier about that. I am #Blessed, as they say, to be the modern-day equivalent of Ronald McDonald and Joe Camel rolled into one. I'm especially grateful they choose to get their $7 caffeine fix here rather than at the glossy, green logo-ed chain up on the main road.

It doesn't escape me that this next generation has a morality that mine utterly lacks and I respect them for it. As much as they may prefer to dress like prison inmates, they seem to be a socially conscious, inclusive and fair generation. There's no doubt they've been fed a little too freely on internet porn and as a result may have developed some unfortunate ideas about how IRL relationships actually work, but for the most part, they're grounded. They have opinions, morals, and an adorable fetish for plant-based milks.

In the lull, I straighten and wipe down our coffee bar, which is stacked like a health food grocery store: Soy milk, Oat milk, Almond milk, Cashew milk, Almond-Cashew milk, Coconut-Almond milk... there's a new variation on the market every week. Natalie, our cafe manager, has taken my car to the cash and carry to pick up a crate of the latest (Pea milk, which, I'm sorry to say I don't think will survive its own unfortunate homophone) and I am left in a bubble of glorious, perfect peace. Clean cafe, stacked and orderly shelves and at least the next few minutes to myself.

Quiet. Nothing to get done. Nowhere to be.

The old impulse is there before I'm aware of it: my hand reflexively reaches for the work phone I don't carry anymore and my brain treats my guts to a shot of that sick dread I used to feel whenever I was about to check email. What awful thing will be waiting for me? What crisis? What petty, stupid, all-consuming workplace drama could be waiting to explode under my feet like an undetonated mine?

It takes a moment to remember: there is no mine. No crisis. No office drama. That's not my life now.

I have shucked off the yoke corporate servitude. I have stared into the greedy eye of executive bonus structures and said, "no more!" I have released myself from the frenzied all-hours whims of egomaniacal CEOs who care nothing for other people's sleeping habits and a great deal too much about what stock analysts are saying.

I can breathe again.

This is what I've been instructed to do by my therapist, who is called Dr. Harold Hartling but who I mentally refer to as "Hippie Harry," based on his love of incense, hemp outfits and yoga as a therapeutic device. He says, when the old feelings sneak up on me like that, I should Breathe Through It.

Harry encourages meditation, but I've had to explain to him that I'm simply not cut out for it. The Headspace app puts me straight to sleep — not necessarily an unpleasant side effect, but waking up on the carpet in a puddle of my own drool is, he admonishes me, missing the point.

I had given up on the idea of meditation altogether when I stumbled on a Buzzfeed headline that reframed the whole issue rather neatly:

"Satisfying is the new Zen - why GenZs are turning to mindless, repetitive tasks for stress relief."