We are what we make.

What do we make?
What do we do?
These are the things that define us. 

Everyone is creating
all the time. 
We make something of ourselves everyday.
We make something of our days.
We make relationships.
We make communities.
Our lives are our creation.

The problem is so many of us don't make things that we are proud of.
So many of us spend our days making things that we don't believe in.
We are formed by the systems in which we operate. 
We have become people who focus on management, not creation.

We are excellent at managing; 
People,
Money,
Credit.
Family.
Jobs.

Management is an act that supports what has been made previously. 
When management becomes our lives,
what are we creating?
What becomes of us?
What are we?

Go and work with your hands.
Finish your job,
and go make something.
Make a garden.
Make a painting.
Make of yourself something you want to be.
Make anything.
Make a coffee company if you want.
But do not be the creation of some system.
Do not be the thing a system made for it's own benefit.

You are here to create,
to bring into this world the things in your heart and in your mind.
You are what you make.

Today I was at the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles.
The whole experience was very much a Vermont DMV experience.
I suppose the quirks about each state's culture come out in a place like the DMV,
but if not, at least my experience today was.

I got off work early today, 
around 2p.
I was working until 1a last night.
We had a work trip to visit some coffee people/places in Portland, Maine.
So I got in late last night and had to be up and roasting relatively early this morning
(while all my other co-tripers were sleeping soundly in their beds).

We had a lighter roasting day
and my wonderful Production Team members let me take off early.
I wanted to go home and sleep
but I had to go register our vehicle.

[Entirely a side note: The hours of the Vermont DMV are unbelievable.
They are open Monday 8:45a-3p
Tuesday 9a-2:30p
and every other Wednesday.
Needless to say it's taken me a few weeks to get my vehicle registered.]

But when I got there at 2p
there was a line out the door.
The parking lot was full.
I put my name on the list - 
that's how you do it here;
No taking numbers with monitor screens showing who's next (Minnesota).
Some one is just hollering your name in a small crowded room (Vermont).

The DMV was in the basement of a building for another government department.
The walls were made of cinderblocks.
No windows.
AC was on.

I went outside to get fresh air.


There was a woman who was outside too.
She had gray hair, long and wavy, loosely pulled up and pinned.
She had kind of an old-timey dress on.
She wore glasses.
She sat on a cement landscaping wall and read a book.


She made me smile because she would kind of laugh to herself as she read.
Quietly.
Little snickers. 
She'd cover her mouth with her hand.

The setting was very Vermont too;
lush green hills/mountains in the background.
Old rusty trucks and shiny expensive foreign vehicles in the foreground.
It had the quiet sound of the woods - there was no city noise. 
It was sunny with rain clouds moving through, sprinkling on and off.

It started to rain and I moved to get under the awning.
The woman was getting wet, but didn't mind.
This was Vermont.
I think I said something then.
I don't remember what it was.
She laughed.

The next person who pulled in and was coming up to the door gave us a funny look when the woman said,
"We're the DMV welcoming committee!"
At this, I laughed, and opened the door for the new visitor with a courteous hand gesture.

The woman outside, whose name I found out was Catherine, started talking about the weather.
Being Minnesotan, I am an expert BS-er on weather. 
The weather is literally all we talk about.
From a funeral to an election day,
with a stranger or your dying relative:
Weather.
so Catherine and I had no difficulties chatting.

As true with all conversations that happen with adults,
eventually she asked me what I do for a living.
I told her I roast coffee.
She stuttered something about it "only being the greatest job in the world."
I agreed.
She told me that she has been mixing tea for a few years
and is now selling her mixes at a few co-ops and general stores.
How great!

She told me all about what herbs she uses,
why she uses them,
how she grows them,
and what I should try.
Oh the world of drinks!

I really enjoyed meeting Catherine. 
She was a bright spot in a day that had been grey up until that point.
And this is what I love about coffee.
I love how tangible drinks are.
I love how they are so concrete.
So inviting.
And I love how I can understand what she is saying about her work and passion
with the only context being that I've tasted things before.
Carpentry, wilderness therapy, academia.
These fields do not share that with coffee.
Another friendship made possible by the power of COFFEE! (and tea).

The other day I was asked, "Why are people so into coffee?"
What a great question.

All of you know me.
And that is to say you know that I am full of it.
So I had all sorts of things to say back to her
but I wasn't satisfied with what I had said.
Because I knew I wasn't right.

I can tell you all the benefits that I have experienced from getting into coffee.
I can tell you how specialty coffee is a model for world business.
I can tell you how in our lifetime coffee is going to become the most widely traded commodity in the world.
More than oil.
And I can tell you how it is used by people to make the world better,
from a home, 
to a neighborhood
to a culture.
But none of those reasons are the answer to the question, "Why?"

I don't know the answer for everyone.
I don't know the larger reason or purpose for most anything.
But I do know why I like coffee.
To the question, "Why?"
I say, "Enjoyment."

It's a way for me to be connected to the moment.
It's a daily thing that I partake in that is so effected by the here and now.
It's not something that I can save
and have at my own pace later.
It's something for which I have to stop my life 
and enjoy.
Pay attention,
focused attention to,
and enjoy.
There are not many other things that demand focused enjoyment of me.
But maybe that's because I'm not expecting that from those things?
Who knows.

I am going to keep that rock in the tumbler 
and see if I can come up with an answer by which I am satisfied,
but until then:
Please enjoy your coffee!

The good news is that I think I've found a way to ship beans anywhere in the States for $5.50,
So that's sweet.
But the downside is that our bags don't fit into those boxes.
Well, I guess they could fit,
but not nicely.

So the next step is that I need to figure out another way to contain the beans.
I thought about making something
like a bag or pouch or something.
But that seems a bit too labor intensive.
Like the boxes that I was making and sending out with every bag.
Those things take a long time to whip up.
I got better at them
but they were still a lot of work.
The thought of making bags seemed like it would be too much.

But then I thought that maybe I'd put the coffee into a plastic bag
and then include the paper bag in the box
so that then you receive the beans you'd just pour them from the plastic bag into the paper bag.
The drawbacks to that idea are painfully evident.
The whole art to putting together a package
the actual thing that you get
isn't assembled
nor does it look good.
Scratch that.

So I guess that's where I'm at.
I need to find a container for the beans
that looks good
fits our style or whatever
and fits a flat rate box A from the United States Post Office.
That's a tall order.

But I'm going-a-looking.
I'll tell you what I find.