Coffee is a strange love. If we’re being honest, black coffee is sharp, bitter, almost abrasive. It’s not the liquid luxury we imagine in glossy ads unless you smother it in milk foam, caramel syrup, or sugar so thick it could stand a spoon. Yet here I am, looking forward to it every morning, as if it’s the first breath of freedom itself.

Why?

Because long before I liked the taste, I loved the feeling it carried.

As a kid, weekends in our home started with the smell of freshly brewed coffee drifting from the kitchen. No alarm clocks. No homework spread across the dining table. No race to the school doors. Just slow mornings—pajamas, sunshine through the window, family voices, and the easy promise of a day that was ours to shape. My brain learned early: this smell means we’re off duty, life is soft around the edges, and there’s time to just be.

That wiring never left.

Now, aboard Koko, I keep the ritual alive. I hand-grind the beans—not because it’s better, not because it’s faster, but because the act itself feels like an anchor into the present. The sound of the burrs, the curl of aroma, the slow pour—it’s a meditation disguised as a drink. I sit in the cockpit, feel the early air on my face, and watch the first blush of sunlight spread across the water.

It doesn’t matter if the calendar insists it’s Tuesday. Out here, every day carries the unhurried heartbeat of a weekend. And maybe that’s the secret: coffee isn’t just coffee—it’s a key to unlocking the quiet joy we’ve been trained to rush past.

Somewhere between the grind and the sip, I’m home again. And the day is already enough.