Coffee drinkers, are you ready? The Rules of Engagement

Always follow the rules (Photo nicked from sibling dodgy phone photography ltd)

Rules. Without ’em, you can’t hope to have fun. Well, that’s not strictly true of course. Plenty of people have had fun without rules before. But I’m not one of them. I like rules for the solidity they provide me as well as the sense that everything I’m doing isn’t simply part of a random selection of events and sequences that will ultimately culminate in a broadly pointless existence that I’ll be sitting at home when I’m 50 contemplating and going “where did it all go wrong” (breathes).

Anyway, when it comes to the 30 coffees project I thought that it could benefit from the introduction of a few rules that would help allow the whole thing to have a jazz like structure, deriving free form awesomeness from the few set boundaries that I give it. After a long period of agonised mulling (5 minutes on the sofa in between a GTA 5 sticky bomb rampage), I came up with the following guidelines that’ll help keep the whole (mis)adventure cooler than Miles Davies in an ice box.

30 Caffeinistas Found – Here Comes The Coffee

UPDATE: I’ve managed to get thirty wonderful people signed up to the thirty coffees project meaning that I can begin to plan ahead for the forthcoming hot beverage bonanza. Back of the net!

If you’ve agreed to take part, then you’ll be getting a tweet or email from me pretty damn soon asking you where you live, how I can contact you and where is best to hide near to your house (last one is a joke, please believe that) so I can arrange when to pick you up, take you out for a coffee and disappoint you with me shoddy sense of humour. This project will be running over the next year or so which means that, if you’ve signed up, there’s no escaping from it as I will hunt you down and buy you a hot drink. So you know.

Anyway, if you’re not sure what is going on here and want to know more then why not read this post or, alternatively, contact me via my about page. I promise I only bite gently.

In the meantime, get ready for more coffee related “content” (bleurgh) in the coming months!

George

Welcome to the 30 Coffees Project

Hello there,

If you’re reading this then chances are you’ve stumbled into my crazy little world at some point and have found your way into this obscure little corner. If you’ve done so deliberately then congratulations – you are intelligent beyond belief, incredibly attractive and probably capable of unscrewing a jar lid without needing the help of a tea towel. Nice one.

If you haven’t come here intentionally though, you might be wondering what this little site is all about. It’s a question that I, to be totally honest and up front with you, have kind of asked myself. Initially, the 30 Coffees Project was simply meant as a way of helping me to find my way towards a constructive career path by turning incoherent thoughts into something more solid with the help of thirty of my friends, colleagues and randoms off the internet through the means of a warm beverage and sincere chatter.

So far, so much potential for being bundled into the back of a random van down a darkened London lane. But the more I was mulling this project over, the more I realised that it was a little bit self absorbed. Humans tend to get a bit selfish, even when they think they aren’t being an utterly one minded prick, and that’s something that’s more than crossed my mind when coming up with this whole project. Sure, I was going to pay people for coffee but in return I was going to get time, wisdom and selflessness; an invaluable commodity that no amount of espressos can truly pay for. Profound, I know.

That realisation has lead me to expand the scope of the project a bit. Of course, I’ll still be chatting about my business ideas, plans, aspirations and probably utter nonsense at some point. But I’ll also be taking time to understand the people I meet, how their relationship with me affects their advice and what I learn as a result of spending time with them – both about what I should do in my life and about how we are as people in general.

And, most importantly of all, I’ll be writing it down here. Each coffee/hot beverage will be documented on this blog and will have all the information I can possibly provide to help you understand the relationship with the drinker, the nature of the conversation and the lessons learned – something that’ll hopefully help you have a weird, John Malkovich style entrance to my world while presenting the lovely volunteers in a sympathetic light.

The project kicks off in 2014 and I have twenty eight people signed up already. If you want to climb aboard the good ship coffee, then drop me a comment or get in touch with me elsewhere – otherwise, check back in 2014 when I get this show on the road and join me in this journey into the human psyche and my personal psychodrama (or should that be melodrama?)

George