50 coffee meetings the year I turn 50 years old.
It’s a simple concept, and yet it’s no piece of cake.
I just launched the project and find it both exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. I am both energized and super stressed out about it.
And that’s all part of my why for doing it. To challenge myself, to get out of my comfort zone, all while also reconnecting with people from different parts of my life and also helping to connect others.
You can read more about the project in the About page. I thought I’d kick off the blog with a post about the logistics of it, and the interviews.
Why coffee?
I started drinking coffee at age 15 and fell madly in love with it. In college, one of my jobs was working at the flagship and first Starbucks Coffee in Boston. It’s one of my favorite jobs to this day.
I love coffee. I mean, I also love wine , and thought about putting my spin on it as a 50 Glasses of Wine project, but honestly, that’s a bit too much – even for me. As much as I love everything about the wine industry, I can’t imagine having 50 wine meetings with people.
And although I enjoy tea, I far prefer coffee.
Coffee is life. Coffee shops are community havens. And since one of my reasons for doing this project is to reconnect and rebuild community, coffee is the logical choice.
The interviews
In addition to introducing you to people from all different parts of my personal and professional worlds, I’ve decided to ask each person the same three questions. There’s reasoning behind each of these questions. And there are absolutely no wrong or right answers.
Question 1: What is something you wish more people knew about you?
What I’m looking for: This can be a personal or professional experience, a personality trait, something that you did, something that happened to you that shaped your life — anything at all that you wish more people knew.
Why I am asking this question: We all have personas that people know us by, whether they are personal or professional images, online or in-person. This is your chance to share something that is important to you that you would like more people to know about.
Question 2: What is your deepest fear?
What I’m looking for: What worries you the most? What are you most afraid of? This can be something specific and physical, like a deep fear of spiders or fear of heights. It can also be a general life fear: fear of failure, fear of letting people down, fear of not living up to one’s potential.
Why I am asking this question: Because it’s too easy to see someone’s social media feed or read an article about someone and forget that they, too, have real life stresses and worries, just like you. This is a simple reminder that we are all human. That we all have fears, concerns, worries, troubles. There isn’t a single person on the planet who lives a life without fear, and sometimes I think we need to be reminded of how more alike we are than different.
Question 3: If you had unlimited funds, what would your life look like?
What I’m looking for: Interviewees can answer this question in a multitude of ways. People can share how not having to worry about money would affect their day to day living. They can share specific items they would spend their money on, or specific ways their money would be spent.
Why I am asking this question: Because money is something that can often hold us back. I want us to imagine a world in which we each have unlimited amounts of money and never have to worry about it. What would life look like? What would you do with your days? In other words, I ask this to learn more about what is important to you.
The blog posts
So there’s a little more about my spin on the 50 Cups of Coffee concept. I will be sharing each person’s interview here in separate blog posts.
Just a heads up: I’m writing these blog posts without much editing. For Urban Bliss Life, I write anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 words every day, and I edit each post meticulously.
50 Cups of Coffee is a personal passion project. There’s nothing suited up or buttoned up about this. So you’re gonna get a free flowing stream of thought whenever I have time to write out the interviews in-between working, mothering, and living loudly.
Enjoy the interviews!
