I’ve been feeling pretty low energy lately. I think I can pinpoint the start to a week and a half ago. It was right when I was ending a lengthy job interview process (which would end up leading nowhere). I was stressed from juggling the dual responsibilities of the interview process and my full-time job. I was also drinking a lot of coffee. I always order drinks based on how I am feeling. And at that time my orders had been veering into the harsher territory – both in terms of taste and potency.

I remember one Friday afternoon; I went out for lunch at work and got a large black coffee from the McDonalds down the street. As I came back into the office and continued sipping, I found my heart starting to race. I felt anxious and overwhelmed. As I retreated to a bathroom stall, I continued to feel closed in on and uncomfortable. I decided to not finish the coffee I had been working on. And I also decided in that moment to cut back overall. My rule was this – I could have only one full-sized coffee (or equivalent beverage in terms of caffeine) per day, in the morning. After that I could have a soda for lunch. But that was it.

With those guidelines in hand I set out into the world to live the next (short-lived) phase of my life. The first day of my new caffeine fast, I went to sleep early. And when I slept that night, I slept deeply and woke up feeling great. My conclusion was that this fast would then be a good thing. I remember waking up feeling awesome physically. I was also pleased with myself for being such a model of restraint, self-control, and self-awareness.

In the days that followed, I continued to adhere to the ruleset I had laid down, with a kind of fervor I didn’t know I had. Even when I was sitting in my office and heard the crack of a Red Bull being opened and thought, “That sounds good”, I stayed strong. At first it was easy to stick to the plan, because my sleep was great and I was getting a lot of it. For a while, that was reward enough. As the week progressed however, adherence to my ruleset became more difficult. I was over my friends’ place this past weekend, and, when they broke out the matcha, I had to flee the scene lest temptation took over.

When I returned to the office on Monday, I truly felt like I was dragging. On Monday and Tuesday, I had to have slept for ten hours each day. And even when I was awake my time outside of work was mostly spent laying in bed, alternating between watching TV and scrolling through my phone. This led to me sitting in my office Wednesday morning, feeling totally miserable. I wanted my energy back. And I was feeling increasingly misanthropic. As I sat under the fluorescent office lights, I found myself getting increasingly irritated at any noise, quip, or aside my coworkers made.

So, I broke down Wednesday afternoon. When I went to get lunch, I also picked up a (sugar free) Red Bull. As I sipped, I felt my misery slowly fading away and I felt my sense of annoyance towards those around me slowly dissipating and becoming harder to reach. Instead, my mind thought about the sunshine outside coming through the glass of the building. And as I was sitting there, I did think, “I needed this”. Sometimes you need to know when to pull back, but you also need to know when to indulge.